Service Marketing

With the rise in deregulated service-based economies in developed countries over the last forty years, an understanding of the marketing of services is essential to the marketing student, researcher, and practitioner. This four-volume collection is structured around the evolution of services marketing scholarship from 1970 to the present, giving an unprecedented, detailed account of the relationship between the theory and practice of services marketing and the changing social, economic, and technical environments over time.

Each volume takes a distinct time period and theme as its subject. Volumes one to three offer the last word on services marketing research of the 20th century, with volume four looking towards a unified marketing approach for the current century.

Volume 1 treats the evolutionary stages of research that established the credibility of services marketing.

Volume 2 treats the period in which service marketing became recognized as a sub-discipline of marketing, with its own boundaries and debates.

Volume 3 treats the scholarship of the late twentieth-century which started to foreshadow changing consumer experiences brought about by technology.

Volume 4 treats the service-dominant logic of marketing with a focus on the debates seeking to eliminate the division between business-to-business marketing and business-to-consumer marketing.