Services research - a truly global discipline

Citation

Wirtz, J. and Brah, S. (2006), "Services research - a truly global discipline", International Journal of Service Industry Management, Vol. 17 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijsim.2006.08517baa.001

Services research - a truly global discipline

Jochen WirtzAssociate Professor of Marketing at the National University of Singapore. His has published in journals like Harvard Business Review, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Retailing, Journal of Service Research, and Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. He co-authored the fifth edition of Services Marketing – People, Technology and Strategy (with Christopher Lovelock), Prentice-Hall, 2003; and Flying High in a Competitive Industry – Cost Effective Service Excellence at Singapore Airlines, McGraw-Hill, 2006.

Shaukat BrahAssociate Professor of Operations Management at the National University of Singapore. He has published in European Journal of Operational Research, International Journal of Production Research, International Journal of Production & Operations Management, Production Planning & Control, International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, Long Range Planning, among others. He is a member of Alpha Pi Mu Honor Society, Decision Sciences Institute, and INFORMS.

Services research – a truly global discipline

Contents

The 2005 ServSIG Conference reflected the diverse and global nature of service research, with 150 participants coming from 22 countries on five continents. In total, 110 papers were accepted and presented at this conference. This special issue of the International Journal of Service Industry Management highlights that diversity, featuring five stimulating papers selected through a double-blind reviewing process from among the 31 submissions received for this issue.

The five accepted papers were written by scholars from around the world and their wide-ranging topics include managing call centre employees, technology acceptance, switching behavior in B2B services, and consumer behaviour in services. We are pleased the authors accepted our offer to develop their papers further for this publication.

ServSIG research conferences

ServSIG initiated its biennial services research conference in 1999 and has held it every two years on a different continent. This conference has played a vital role in creating and maintaining a stimulating global network of service researchers. The first conference took place in 1999 in at UNO in New Orleans, the second at Deakin University in Sydney, Australia, in 2001, and the third at Reims Management School in Reims, France, in 2003.

The fourth conference moved to Asia, where it was hosted by the National University of Singapore and held on June 2-4, 2005. Full details of the program, including abstracts and proceedings, can be found at: www.servsig2005.org/programme. Details of the four plenary keynotes, including downloadable PowerPoint slides and videos of the speakers making their presentations, are available at: www.servsig2005.org/keynotespeakers.

As the conference hosts, we were particularly excited to see the increasing research output being generated in Asia, as evidenced not only by conference presentations but also by publications in IJSIM and other key services journals.

Reviewers for this special issue

We thank our reviewers for their critical and constructive feedback on the papers. They were: John Balmer (Bradford University School of Management, UK), Leonard L. Berry (Texas A&M University, USA), Michael Bowers (Rollins College, USA), Ken Butcher (Griffith University, Australia), Tony Garrett (University of Otago, New Zealand), Dwayne Gremler, Bowling Green State University, USA), Kevin Gwinner (Kansas State University, USA), Betsy Holloway, (Samford University, USA), Hean Tat KEH (Peking University, China), Doreen Kum (National University of Singapore), Christopher Lovelock (Yale University, USA), Vikas Mittal (University of Pittsburgh, USA), Richard L. Oliver (Vanderbilt University, USA), Amy Ostrom (Arizona State University, USA), Paul Patterson (University of New South Wales, Australia), M A Razzaque (University of New South Wales, Australia), Dennis Rook (University of Southern California, USA), J.C. de Ruyter, (Universiteit Maastricht, The Netherlands), Deepak Sirdeshmukh (North Carolina State University, USA), Tambyah Siok Kuan (National University of Singapore), Stephen Vargo (University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA), Nancy Stephens (Arizona State University, USA), Ian Wilkinson (University of New South Wales, Australia).

Finally, we thank Ingrid Hansson for guiding us through the production of this special issue, and Bo Edvardsson for having encouraged and supported the production of this special issue.

Jochen WirtzGuest Editor and Chair of the 4th ServSIG Research Conference Shaukat BrahGuest Editor and Vice-Chair of the 4th ServSIG Research Conference