I am a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources at Colorado State University. I am often called “Dr. Bear” because my last name means “bear” in Chinese. I came to the U.S. in 2006 for graduate school in University of Delaware from mainland China. I completed my Ph.D. in Business Administration from Temple University in Philadelphia in 2013. My dissertation titled “Employee brand internalization: the central route to a brand aligned workforce” received a Highly Commended Award of the 2014 Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Awards in the Hospitality Management category.
At CSU, I teach tourism marketing and management courses. My research areas include internal branding, service marketing, and destination marketing. These areas emphasize an internal stakeholder perspective in building a sustainable competitive advantage through internal branding among tourism employees at the micro-level as well as destination residents at the macro-level. This research focus is critical for tourism organizations because a unique service brand experience can only be achieved through employees who are motivated to meet customers’ prior brand expectations through their brand-aligned attitudes, behaviors, manners, Similarly, residents at destinations play an critical role in substantiating tourists’ prior destination expectations. I have published many articles in top tourism and hospitality journals including International Journal of Hospitality Management, Journal of Travel Research, European Journal of Marketing, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, etc. A list of publications is provided in the Research page.
Contact
Lina Xiong, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Director of Academics, Master of Tourism Management – China
Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources
Colorado State University Office: (970) – 491- 5694
Email: lina.xiong@colostate.edu
Mailing:
Lina Xiong
Colorado State University
1480 Campus Delivery
Fort Collins, CO 80523-1480