Essentials of Services Marketing

Citation

Reynoso, J. (2009), "Essentials of Services Marketing", Journal of Service Management, Vol. 20 No. 1, pp. 122-123. https://doi.org/10.1108/09564230910936887

Reviewing this publication enlightened by the inspiration of our dear colleague and friend Christopher Lovelock, undoubtedly one of the pioneers and leading thinkers of services marketing, is a special privilege as it is the opportunity to keep learning from his example and wisdom reflected in the energy he always put to work in new projects like this book; the recent endeavor he conducted with passion, enthusiasm and happiness together with Jochen Wirtz and Patricia Chew.

This new book on services marketing is structured in five parts which contain a total of 15 chapters and 20 cases. The first three topics covered in the book give an overview about services, their consumers and markets. Positioning of services is a particularly relevant issue to help readers avoiding the risk of generalization in services. Market segments play a key role in understanding consumer behavior in services. In part two, ESM uses a 4P framework as the basis to present and discuss a number of elements which could be seen as a basic cycle for services. Some key issues are worth highlighting, including branding in relation to service development; a topic that deserves more attention in service literature; franchising as a key strategy for service distribution which has become specially important now that more services are operating globally, and ethical issues in connection to price and revenue. In today's society, ethics is a particularly relevant aspect to be explicitly addressed and carefully explored in the marketing of services. In part three, the book goes on to analyze the customer interface by addressing key elements of service delivery and execution. Issues included in this part are, for example, service process mapping and self‐service technologies which are very useful to understand the importance of service design and process management. Patterns and inventory of demand are interesting illustrations of essential elements in service operations. The holistic nature of service design and the notion of serviscape also provide very good marketing insights about the important role of service environment. In relation to human talent, issues like emotional work and low‐contact services are useful to emphasize the particular relevance of people in the service delivery interface. Part four of the book relates to profitable service strategies, particularly those about customer loyalty, complaint management, service recovery as well as service quality and productivity. Strategies worth mentioning here include the discussion of CRM failures, the recovery paradox, fraud in services and types of jaycustomers, a term incorporated in the service literature by Christopher Lovelock. Some classic service quality contributions such as a modified version of the gaps model are combined with some quality tools traditionally used in manufacturing operations. This part of the book ends with a chapter on change and service leadership, an element which is addressed at different levels of analysis. Part five contains a collection of twenty cases from The Americas, Europe and Asia. These short to medium length practical cases raise study questions helping the reader to understand different types of services in relation to those topics included throughout the book.

ESM is a textbook designed for bachelor and polytechnic students in the areas related to services marketing framed in a managerial context. The book is organized around an integrated framework. Without a doubt, one of the main and distinctive attributes of this book is its reader‐friendly approach. Its is full of color aids, very visual, easy‐to‐read contents, hand in hand with images that make concepts and models very accessible for the reader. Another valuable attribute is its systematic learning approach. Each chapter begins with specific learning objectives, illustrated by an opening vignette. Those objectives are marked along the chapter for easy identification. Examples are used to illustrate the contents linking theory with practice and providing service insights which show specific applications of key parts of the contents. At the end of each chapter there is a collection of features oriented to integrate the learning process. A summary is linked to each of the learning objectives. Some key questions are provided so the reader could realize and gage how much has learned. Also, some review questions are included and exercises are provided helping to understand the application of the contents covered in the chapter. The rich collection of cases included at the end of the book, covers organizations and examples from a variety of regions and countries, creating a good balance of the application of concepts, models, strategies and tools in different cultures and environments. This feature gives a global flavor to the book, making it accessible to a great range of academic programs, faculty members and students around the world.

Overall, the structure of the book is very good. The first four parts present an array of chapters covering in a fluent, easy‐to‐follow sequence a good collection of important contents in the services marketing field. They are a nice, balanced combination of traditional Lovelock's service contributions with recent service developments. The element of value could bring additional strength to the design and contents of the book, by increasing explicit emphasis on service logic and co‐creation of value throughout the four building blocks of the book. This textbook does a very good job in keeping the right balance and focus on the marketing orientation of service, avoiding the risk of a significant overlap with a service management orientation, structure and contents. ESM could definitively be considered the first of a new breed of services marketing textbooks aiming to guide and support the learning process of young generations in the services marketing field.