Erik van 't Klooster

My professional focus is twofold:

1) Marketing Management

Over the past ten years I have taught on topics such as marketing strategy, marketing communications and consumer behavior for educational institutes such as the Rotterdam School of Management and Hotel School the Hague, for groups of 20 to 600+ students.

Since 2006, I have been the academic supervisor for the MAEUR International Research Project and Bachelor Consultancy Project, which, on a yearly basis, perform 8 market research projects for some of The Netherlands's largest companies, in over 20 countries. Also, I have coached many master theses on a wide range of marketing topics (e.g. retail, b2b, service delivery, e-commerce, storytelling and social media). I am experienced in both qualitative and quantitative research methods.

Specifically I have taught and consulted on marketing issues related to Event- & Tourism Marketing on masters level in collaboration with Prof. dr. Frank Go (Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University). In 2009, I co-founded Placebrandz (see placebrandobserver.com) together with Robert Govers (goodcountry.org) and Gerard van Keken (merkwaardigeidentiteit.nl). We have consulted, for example, on the place branding strategy for the Maastricht region and the cluster brand strategy for the polymer sector in the province of Overijssel, the Netherlands.

2) Education and Internationalization

In 2014 I received my PhD from the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University for my research on "Travel to Learn. The influence of cultural distance on competence development in educational travel". The aim of this research is to work towards a competence framework for educational travel (e.g. study abroad and international internships) and how the learning of competencies was related to overcoming cultural differences in a globalizing world. My research was discussed in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Times Higher Education and The Chronicle of Higher Education.