Joby John

The future of services marketing: forecasts from ten services experts

Over the past two and a half decades services marketing has emerged as a well established area of inquiry in the marketing discipline. In many ways, its growth and acceptance in the academic arena are indeed noteworthy. A question arises, however, concerning the direction that services marketing as a field of study should take in the future. This article reports and content‐analyzes the insights of ten leading services scholars regarding that question. That group comprises Leonard Berry, Mary Jo Bitner, David Bowen, Stephen W. Brown, Christian Gro¨nroos, Evert Gummesson, Christopher Lovelock, Parsu Parasuraman, Benjamin Schneider, and Valarie Zeithaml. Recurring themes and provocative observations among the services experts’ comments are related and discussed. Concluding remarks are offered.

A dramaturgical view of the health care service encounter

Examines the “dramaturgical” view of the service encounter to understand the service consumption experience. Illustrates this by demonstrating how the drama metaphor is applicable and useful in understanding perceived quality in health care services. Presents a strategic model of the medical encounter. Suggests impression management guidelines and, from a practical standpoint, serves to stimulate the imaginations of physicians and health care administrators on managing evaluations by paying attention to certain characteristics of the medical encounter.

A Cross‐national Examination of Innovation Resistance

Do consumers in countries that differ widely in cultural values and in economic development also differ in their resistance to innovations? And, if so, why? Addressing these questions will help international marketing managers formulate an appropriate strategy for a successful product introduction in diverse foreign markets. In this five‐country study, the cultural values of fatalism, traditionalism, and religious commitment were found to explain cross‐cultural variation in innovation resistance in Senegal and in the United States, but not in India, South Korea, or Thailand. Even though the results were different for every country, fatalism was generally associated with less willingness to try new non‐technical products and with higher levels of perceived product risk. Differences were found to be related to entertainment and media innovations as opposed to technical or fashion‐oriented innovations. The results do not support the contention that a global, standardised marketing strategy may be appropriate...

Improvisation in service performances: lessons from jazz

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to establish the efficacy of jazz improvisation as a useful metaphor to understand and implement features that contribute to excellent service performances.Design/methodology/approach – The paper begins by presenting services as performances that often require flexibility and adaptability in their enactment. It then offers the metaphor of jazz improvisation as a means to comprehend and communicate the dynamics of such flexibility and adaptability. Jazz elements are used to illustrate their application to service delivery issues.Practical implications – Similar to jazz, services deal with complex and real time delivery circumstances; this makes services prone to uncertainty at the service encounter. Lessons from jazz offer service managers guidelines for improvisation by each player in their ensemble that can enable them to adapt to customers and produce a coherent and cohesive performance.Originality/value – The jazz improvisation metaphor offers a template and gui...

Entry-Level Marketing Research Recruits: What do Recruiters Need?

The marketing research industry offers numerous entry-level positions to marketing majors. However, because of poor and inappropriate choice of courses and inadequate internship experiences, recruiters find the graduating student ill-equipped to fill marketing research positions. This article reports a survey of research suppliers, advertising agencies, and other organizations that conduct marketing research. The findings provide useful information to academic and career advisors on college campuses who are in a position to counsel students in their pursuit of careers in marketing research.

A model for understanding benefit segmentation in preventive health care.

The marketing of traditional health care services, such as hospital and physician services, has matured with the integration of research from the medical sociology discipline and the marketing literature. In this article, we present a model to illustrate how an understanding of predispositions to health care behavior, integrated with benefit segmentation analysis, can contribute to more focused and effective marketing strategies for health-related products and services.

Lumpkin's Abbreviated Version of Rotter's Locus of Control Scale: How Reliable is it?:

Lumpkin (1985) proposed the use of a six-item scale (derived from Rotters I-E scale), in those instances where the locus of control construct is not the primary focus of the research, but rather, merely an intervening variable. We have used the Lumpkin scale in a series of studies and found its reliability to be considerably less than expected. Consequently, in such instances, we recommend that researchers interested in measuring the locus of control construct use Levensons 1974 scale or its subscales.

Disservice: A Framework of Sources and Solutions

Undoubtedly, the services marketing literature addresses questions pertaining to improving service processes and customers’ experiences, with the broad assumption that the organization and service personnel operate in systems designed to provide levels of service that are adequate or above. From 30 years of focused research, a knowledge base of practices and systems has emerged capable of providing service levels necessary for success, when implemented properly.

Strategic planning for nursing homes: a market opportunity analysis perspective.

Market opportunity analysis is a framework for systematic strategic planning involving the analysis of demand, market segments, competition, industry, and channels of referrals. This approach enables nursing homes to select target markets and to design marketing programs to attract those target markets.

Perceived Quality in Health Cake Service Consumption: What are the Structural Dimensions?

Health care service is even more difficult for consumers to evaluate than most other services, because, this esoteric discipline is too technical for the average health care consumer. Nevertheless, health care providers would benefit tremendously from aknowledge of how their consumers evaluate the quality of the health care service that their organizations provide. Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (1986) developed a scale (SERVQUAL) that can be used to measure consumer perceptions of the quality of service. This paper reviews the literature on patient satisfaction and borrows from SERVQUAL to develop a model of perceived quality in health care service consumption.