PhD Position in Inclusion and Exclusion in Estonian Retail and Service Environments

Navigating the Servicescape: Inclusion and Exclusion of Elderly and Physically Disabled Consumers in Estonian Retail and Service Environments

Estonia presents a compelling and underexplored research context. While the country is internationally recognized for its digital transformation and e-governance leadership, its physical service environments carry a different legacy. As a post-Soviet society, Estonia inherited institutional attitudes toward disability in which people with physical limitations or age-related challenges were largely kept out of public life rather than accommodated within it. Retail and service spaces were not designed with these groups in mind, and the social norms shaping service encounters often reflect this history.

This creates a meaningful gap between Estonia’s modern self-image and the everyday service experiences of elderly and physically disabled consumers. EU accessibility legislation and Estonia’s obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities provide a legal baseline, but the distance between regulatory requirements and actual service practice remains largely unmeasured and poorly understood.

Core Research Questions

• How do elderly and physically disabled consumers experience servicescape environments in Estonian retail and service contexts?
• What role do physical design, employee behavior, and social norms play in shaping inclusive or exclusionary service encounters?
• What drives differences in perceived servicescape inclusion across consumer groups, service types, and retail formats?
• What outcomes does perceived inclusion or exclusion produce in terms of loyalty, avoidance, wellbeing, and word of mouth?

Fit with the Inclusion Hub

This PhD represents the locally rooted, empirically grounded strand of the Inclusion Hub in Marketing Research. It delivers on the hub’s promise of societal relevance and regional impact while producing internationally publishable quantitative work. The Estonian focus makes it directly relevant to state funders and creates natural collaboration opportunities with retail associations, service sector organizations, and municipal government in Tallinn.

Ideal Candidate Profile

• Estonian speaker (required for consumer and employee interviews)
• Background in marketing, consumer behavior, service research, or social sciences
• Openness to quantitative methods and willingness to develop statistical modeling skills
• Interest in applied societal research with policy relevance

Supervisors:

Main supervisor: Visiting Professor Volker Kuppelwieser: Department of Business Administration

Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) is an international scientific community with approximately 9,000 students and 2,000 employees; it is one of the largest universities in Estonia, the leading EU country in digitalisation. The university's strengths are broad multidisciplinary study/research interests, a modern research environment, and strong collaboration with international educational and research institutions. TalTech is aiming to be an organisation leading the way to a sustainable digital future.

The research carried out at the Department of Business Administration in the School of Business and Governance in TalTech deals with various aspects of business – entrepreneurship, sustainability, knowledge and technology transfer, operations and strategic management, digitalisation, marketing, supply chain management, accounting and performance management. The School has over 200 employees.

For information about the admission process, please visit the PhD Admission homepage

Applications can be submitted from 01.06.2026 to 30.06.2026