Dr Szu-Hsin Wu

Summary of research expertise

• Transformative service and consumer wellbeing
• Human–human and human–computer service interactions
• Value co-creation and sustainable innovation
• Cross-disciplinary approaches to social and climate challenges

Szu-Hsin’s research applied service marketing strategies to help organisations improve services and customer experience, organised around three threads: (1) customer experience and engagement in high-contact services; (2) value co-creation between customers and providers; and (3) service failures induced in human-computer interactions. In addition, she also explored means for achieving sustainable innovation through network action learning to translate sustainability goals into practice. Through EU-funded collaborations (GETM3; Dŵr Uisce), she accumulated experiences of working with multi-disciplinary team and cross-sectional stakeholders.

Recently, her research sits at the intersection of consumer experience, transformative services, and wellbeing, with a focus on how service systems can better support young people and migrants. Her current projects include:

• Grief journey – exploring young people’s experiences of loss and resilience (British Academy ECR Network Seed Fund - £5000);
• Migrant service experiences – investigating adaptation and wellbeing in host societies (Royal Society of Edinburgh Bilateral Visit Fund - £2900; National Science and Technology Council, Taiwan - £5000).

Selected Publications 

• Chen, I.S., Wu, S.-H. and Choi, J.N., 2025. Make an environmental impact beyond organizational boundaries through green leisure crafting of employees. Applied Psychology, 74(1).
• Zhang, R.W., Liang, X. and Wu, S.-H., 2024. When chatbots fail: exploring user coping following a chatbots-induced service failure. Information technology & people, 37(8), pp.175-195.
• Dreyer-Gibney, K., Coughlan, P., Coghlan, D., Wu, S.-H., Bello-Dambatta, A., Dallison, R., McNabola, A., Novara, D., Rafique, A., Schestak, I. and Spriet, J., 2024. Responding to the UN sustainability goals in transdisciplinary partnership through network action learning. Environment, Development and Sustainability, 26(12), pp.31757-31788.
• Wu, S.-H., Coughlan, P., Coghlan, D., McNabola, A. and Novara, D., 2022. Developing green process innovation through network action learning. Creativity and Innovation Management, 31(2), pp.248-259.
• Wu, S.-H. and Gao, Y. (2019). Understanding emotional customer experience and co-creation behaviour in luxury hotels. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.  31(11), pp. 4247-4275. 

Research themes

• Health, Welfare and Education
• Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Creativity

Impact and Knowledge Exchange

My PhD research engaged hotel managers to translate insights on customer emotions into service design guidelines for co-creating positive customer experience. These guidelines have informed practice in high-contact service settings by giving managers actionable design cues (e.g., touchpoint sequencing, staff prompts, and recovery scripts) that improve consistency and emotional outcomes.

Through the Dŵr Uisce project, she worked with public, private, and non-profit partners in action-learning workshops, producing a set of recommendations for organisational learning in sustainability-oriented innovation. This work supported teams to embed iterative reflection, cross-functional coordination, and stakeholder engagement into their innovation processes.

With the current grief journey project, she launched Making Space, a public-facing research blog that translates academic insight into accessible resources on young people grief journey, grief literacy and empathy design for social impact. Content is written for educators, youth workers, and community practitioners, enabling them to adopt conversation starters, reflective prompts, and co-designed activities in real-world settings.

• BU51017 Customer Experience Design
• BU52025 Digital Marketing
• BU51030 Digital Asset Management
• BU51026 Place Branding for Cities, Regions and Countries
• BU52039 Brand Management and Strategy