Before taking up a Chair in Marketing and Service Management at Loughborough University, Professor Gruber worked as a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Manchester Business School. He received his PhD and MBA from the University of Birmingham.

Professor Gruber co-founded the Centre for Service Management (CSM) in the School of Business and Economics in 2013 and is currently the Director of the Centre. From 2015 to 2017, he was also the Anne-Marie and Gustaf Ander Foundation Visiting Professor of Service Management at CTF- Service Research Center, Karlstad University, Sweden. Among Professor Gruber’s current main research interests are service failure and recovery, service robotics and transformative service research. He regularly presents his latest research findings at leading conferences worldwide and publishes in prestigious international peer-reviewed journals such as Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Journal of Service Research, Journal of Business Research, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Service Management, and Journal of Marketing Management.

For his research, Professor Gruber has received several awards such as the Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence (Outstanding and Highly Commended Award) in 2007, 2010 and 2012. He is a winner of the methods@manchester Annual Competition for Innovative Methodological Developments in 2009 and winner of the Academy of Marketing Research Initiative Award in 2008. Further, Professor Gruber won the 2013 Journal of Service Management Robert Johnston Award (Highly Commended Award). He was also nominated as Manchester Business School’s candidate for “Teacher of the Year 2010/2011” and “Researcher of the Year 2011/2012”, as part of the University of Manchester’s Distinguished Achievement Awards. Most recently, Professor Gruber received the 2014 AMA SERVSIG Best Service Article (Runner Up Award) and the 2014 Journal of Service Research Best Article Award (Finalist Award). More recently, Professor Gruber won an Emerald Citations of Excellence Award in 2016 and the 2016 Journal of Services Marketing Best Service Consumer Paper at the AMA SERVSIG International Service Research Conference in Maastricht, Netherlands.