Kevin Kam Fung So

Dr. Kevin Kam Fung So is internationally recognized as a thought-leader in hospitality and tourism management. He is the recipient of 37 research awards. His research expertise lies in services marketing, with strong emphasis on human factors in service innovations, customer engagement, digital marketing, the sharing economy, and human-AI interactions. He is ranked among the Top 10 scholars globally in major research topics including Hospitality Marketing (#6), Customer Engagement (#6), Sharing Economy (#5), and Customer Experience (#7), as well as Tourism Marketing (#11) based on citations from Google Scholar. He has published more than 100 scientific publications, 80 of which have appeared in the discipline’s internationally acclaimed A or A+ journals. Prior to joining Purdue University, Dr. So served as William S. Spears Chair in Business, Professor, and Ph.D. Program Coordinator with the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Oklahoma State University.

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Dr. So has received numerous research awards, including the Best in Track Award at the Summer American Marketing Association Conference, the Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research Article of the Year Award, the Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing Martin Oppermann Best Article of the Year Award, and the William Bradford Wiley Memorial Best Research Paper of the Year Award. In 2022, his 2014 Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research article was named the no. 1 most highly cited among 748 articles published in the journal in the past decade. In 2019, Dr. So was named a Breakthrough Star of the University of South Carolina. Three years in a row (2022, 2023, and 2024), he received The Richard W. Poole Research Excellence Award from Oklahoma State University. Dr. So is one of few scholars in his discipline to have been named on the list of Highly Cited Researchers from Clarivate™️ consecutively for 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. Many of his publications have been ranked among the most highly cited and most frequently downloaded articles in top-tier hospitality and tourism management journals.

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Dr. So serves as a Coordinating Editor of International Journal of Hospitality Management and Associate Editor of Journal of Hospitality Marketing and Management. He sits on the editorial board of 12 leading academic journals in his field and serves as a reviewer for 13 other journals. He has chaired or served on the dissertation committees of 20 Ph.D. students. Dr. So’s work on using tourism as catalyst for economic development has been funded by state and federal funding agencies including the United States Department of Commerce, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the American Hotel and Lodging Association, as well as peer institutions in the United States, Australia, and Hong Kong.​