From 29 September to 1 October 2025, UP took part in the Experience Research Society’s (Expresso’s) inaugural Around the World in 48 Hours: 7 Experiences Summit – a pioneering online global conference spanning all seven continents. The event brought together scholars, practitioners and experience designers in an uninterrupted 48-hour dialogue on experience research and practice from a multi-disciplinary approach.

UP’s Department of Marketing Management, in the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences, joined a distinguished network of international institutions, including LAB University of Applied Sciences (Finland), Auckland University of Technology (New Zealand), Tongji University (China), University of Oulu (Finland), Universidad del Desarrollo (Chile), California Polytechnic State University (United States), and Brigham Young University (United States) to engage in this cross-continent event experience.

The event took off in Finland at 10:00 UTC on 29 September 2025 with an opening by Jarkko Toikkanen, Chair of the Experience Research Society, Senior Lecturer and Researcher in the EU-based Horizon project involving new work technologies and disability studies. The second session was hosted by UP’s Department of Marketing Management, proudly representing Pretoria, South Africa and the African continent. The session was hosted by Dr Bianca Frost, together with Prof Adré Schreuder, who contributed to the global dialogue through a focused discussion on customer experience.

Following the sun across time zones, the summit connected regional hosts in a continuous global conversation about how experiences shape organisations, consumers, and societies at large.

Part of the Finland session was streamed live from Lapland Winter Park, located near Rovaniemi, the official hometown of Santa Claus. During this session, Anna-Emilia Haapakoski and Emily Höckert from the University of Lapland shared valuable insights on eco-phenomenology in tourism experiences, emphasising storytelling, human-nature relationships, and the importance of slowing down to reconnect with the environment. The live broadcast from a room in the snow-covered Finnish forest – complete with a fire burning at the centre of the room – offered an immersive and memorable experience, symbolising warmth, connection, and global collaboration in experience research.

Tourism researchers presenting from Lapland Winter Park in Finland

The Pretoria session featured distinguished keynote speaker Prof Schreuder, the first-ever Chair in Customer Experience (CX) Management at the University of Pretoria and an esteemed expert in the field of experience management. Drawing on over 25 years of both academic and industry leadership, Prof Schreuder delivered a 90-minute keynote address entitled “How do CX measurement, customer centricity and CX standards actually drive performance?” In his keynote, Prof Schreuder unpacked the evolution and future trajectory of CX as both a discipline and strategic capability within organisations. Some of the key focus areas included:

• experience redefined – exploring how experience ecosystems are transforming in the age of data, design, and human emotion;
• customer experience refined – bridging the science and art of CX through measurable, actionable insights;
• CX measurement and standards – defining new frameworks for evaluating experience performance;
• experience psychology & foundational theories – linking human behaviour, perception, and affect to customer experience design; and
• customer centricity – embedding empathy and value co-creation in every organisational layer.

This powerful keynote showcased UP’s pioneering role in advancing customer experience management and the measurement of customer experiences not only through scholarship, but also the real-world impact of CX practices in shaping organisations and customer lives worldwide.

Prof Schreuder presenting his keynote at the inaugural Around the World in 48 hours
Experience Research Summit

Departmental research presentation
Following the Pretoria session, a special issue article presentation featuring papers accepted for publication in the Journal of Design, Business & Society took place. The session was chaired by Prof Barbara Neuhofer, Professor of Experience Design in the Department of Business and Tourism at Salzburg University of Applied Sciences.

Dr Bianca Frost presented an article co-authored with Prof Yolanda Jordaan, Head of the Department of Marketing Management at the University of Pretoria, entitled “Exploring Virtual Running Event Satisfaction Factors Across Participant Experience Levels”. This study contributes to the growing body of experience research by examining how participant experience levels shape satisfaction in virtual event contexts.

Article presentation by Dr Frost and Prof Jordaan

This milestone marked a significant moment for both UP and the continent, as it placed African experience scholarship and practice at the centre of an international conversation on the future of experience management.

The event concluded at the Universidad del Desarrollo (UDD), located in Santiago, Chile. At the end of the event, participants and speakers were invited to mingle with other participants over a virtual drink and share their experiences from the 48-hour journey around the world and experience research.

The Experience Research Society (Expresso) (https://experienceresearchsociety.org/) is an
international community of scholars and practitioners dedicated to fostering cross-disciplinary collaboration centred on the study of experiences. The society differentiates from other experience-related communities by embracing all experience research fields, such as psychology, education, arts and design, technology, business, sociology and health, with a united goal of fostering both scientific and societal impact.