The Team.
Where expertise meets inspiration.
The team of the XRLab@MCM combines expertise in marketing research & thinking with insights and inspiration from digital visionaries and industry experts. It is part of the Marketing Center Münster, which was founded in 1968 by Prof. Heribert Meffert as the first marketing department at a German university, and which has a longstanding reputation as one of Europe’s leading think tanks in terms of market-oriented leadership and (digital) marketing.
Prof. Dr. Thorsten Hennig-Thurau.
Thorsten Hennig-Thurau alias “ProfTHT” is Professor of Marketing at the University of Münster, Germany, and holds the Chair for Marketing & Media Research at the university's Marketing Center. He oversees the university’s M.B.A. in Marketing program and serves as Academic Director of the XRLab@MCM. Thorsten is consistently ranked as one of Germany’s leading business scholar; the Stanford study in PLOS lists him among the Top 100 most impactful marketing scholars globally (Rank 52 as of 2024). Thorsten’s work studies the digital and cultural economies and has been honored with several awards, including a Lifetime Award for Published Scholarly Contributions from the UCLA and the JAMS Sheth Foundation Best Paper Award in 2015, 2018, and also in 2023. His publications include the seminal article on 'EWOM' (cited more than 10k times) and the 900-pages monograph 'Entertainment Science', which has been downloaded almost 2 million times.
Björn Ognibeni.
Björn Ognibeni serves as Strategic Director of the XRLab@MCM.
Based in Hamburg, Björn's professional background includes over 20 years of working for a wide range of consultancies, agencies, and brands. His main focus is digital transformation and the opportunities for leadership, product development, and marketing & sales that result from it. On these topics, he regularly writes columns and op-eds for media outlets like FOCUS/DLDaily or Handelsblatt and is a frequent keynote speaker at conferences and events. As co-founder of the online think tank ChinaBriefs.io, he also helps Western executives understand what they can learn from digital innovation in China. Björn has studied physics and economics at Braunschweig, Austin, Texas, and Göttingen.
Nilusha Aliman.
Nilusha Aliman is Research Executive at the XRLab@MCM. She is a doctoral student at the Chair of Marketing & Media Research at the Marketing Center Münster. Before joining the MCM, she studied business and marketing at the Catholic University Ingolstadt-Eichstätt, Germany, and Toulouse School of Management, France.
Dr. Ronny Behrens.
Dr. Ronny Behrens is a Senior Researcher at the XRLab@MCM and an Assistant Professor at the Chair of Marketing & Media Research at the Marketing Center Muenster. Holding a Ph.D. from Muenster University, his academic work focuses on the intersection between strategic challenges, digital technologies, consumer behavior, and cutting-edge data science – and has been honored with a wide range of scholarships and awards during his academic career. Besides his academic interests, he is the Head of Tech and Data Strategy at Matter of Facts, a science-tech-startup that aims to make research more accessible for academics, industry professionals, and society.
Alina Herting.
Alina Herting is Researcher at the XRLab@MCM. She is a doctoral student at the Chair of Marketing & Media Research at the Marketing Center Münster. Before joining the Chair of Marketing & Media, Alina studied Economics at the University of Paderborn and Business Administration at the University of Münster.
Hanna Pott.
Hanna Pott is a Researcher at the XRLab@MCM and a doctoral student at the Chair of Marketing & Media Research at the Marketing Center Münster. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration from the Heinrich-Heine University in Düsseldorf, and a Master's degree in Business Administration with a major in Management and a minor in Marketing from the University of Münster.
Philo Freiboth.
Philo Freiboth is a Researcher at the XRLab@MCM. He is a doctoral student at the Chair of Marketing & Media Research at the Marketing Center Münster. Before joining the MCM and the University of Münster, Philo completed his bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and his master’s degree in Marketing and E-Business at the Georg August University of Göttingen.
Lars Grewe.
Lars Grewe is Researcher at the XRLab@MCM. He is a doctoral student at the Chair of Marketing & Media at the Marketing Center Münster. Before joining the Chair of Marketing & Media, Lars completed his bachelor’s and master’s degree in Business Administration at the University of Münster.
Patrick Wöhnl.
Patrick Wöhnl is a Researcher at the XRLab@MCM and a doctoral student at the Chair of Digital Transformation. He has a background in computer science and project management. In his last position, he worked as a technical specialist at Microsoft in Dublin.
Prof. Dr. Raoul Kübler.
Prof. Dr. Raoul Kübler serves as Associated Scholar at the XRLab@MCM. Before becoming Associate Professor of Marketing at ESSEC Business School, Paris, he was Junior Professor of Marketing and Marketing Analytics at WWU’s Marketing Center. Raoul analyzes artificial intelligence, user-generated content, deep learning, as well as social media and human-human as well as human-AI interaction. His work has been published in leading marketing journals such as Journal of Marketing and has received several awards.
Prof. Dr. Sebastian Hohenberg.
Prof. Dr. Sebastian Hohenberg serves as Associated Scholar at the XRLab@MCM. He holds the Chair for Digital Transformation and is the Co-Director of the Research Center for Business Transformation at University of Münster’s School of Business & Economics. With his research, Sebastian strives to solve essential business problems related to the digital transformation of business and organic growth. His work has been published in leading scholarly outlets such as the Journal of Marketing and Journal of Marketing Research. His analysis of how virtual reality can improve new product development of durable products is the first empirical study on virtual reality in a top marketing journal.
Jérôme Loucatos.
Jérôme Loucatos is a Student Assistant at XRLab@MCM. He supports the Chair of Marketing & Media Research at the Marketing Center Münster, while doing his Master's degree in Marketing at the University of Münster. Before joining the Chair of Marketing & Media, Jérôme studied European Business at the University of Applied Sciences Münster and Marketing at the Dublin Business School.
Alumni of XRLab@MCM.
Dr. David Jütte.
Dr. David Jütte is a Senior Researcher at the XRLab@MCM and Assistant Professor at the Chair of Marketing & Media at the Marketing Center Münster (MCM). Prior to joining the MCM, he completed his Master’s degree in Innovation and Marketing at the RWTH-Aachen University in Germany, focusing on the opportunities and challenges facing consumers and businesses in the digital age. As a continuation of this research interest, his academic work focuses on the intersection of social change and marketing in the digital age. In doing so, he focuses on the digital disruption of consumer behavior and the associated variety of consequences for consumers and companies.
Dr. Marc Linder.
Dr. Marc Linder served as Researcher at the XRLab@MCM. He was a doctoral student at the Chair of Marketing & Media Research at the Marketing Center Münster researching on the impact of the digital transformation on consumer behavior with the ultimate goal of aiding effective managerial decision making. Before joining the Marketing Center Münster, Marc studied business at the University of Düsseldorf.
Dr. Gerrit Cziehso.
Dr. Gerrit Cziehso served as Senior Researcher at the XRLab@MCM. He was an Assistant Professor at the Chair of Marketing & Media Research at the Marketing Center Münster. Holding a Ph.D. from Dortmund University, his academic work focuses on the interface of marketing and digital technologies. Gerrit has been honored for his work with the Dissertation Award of TU Dortmund University and the Best Retail Paper Award of the Academy of Marketing Science. Next to his academic interest he is also highly engaged into the transfer of theoretical knowledge into the real company world, working together with big players like Amazon, Netflix, or E.ON as well as small - but highly innovative - start-ups in the tech industry.