Service Management and Marketing: Customer Management in Service Competition (3rd ed.)

Citation

Narasimhan, K. (2009), "Service Management and Marketing: Customer Management in Service Competition (3rd ed.)", Managing Service Quality: An International Journal, Vol. 19 No. 5, pp. 629-630. https://doi.org/10.1108/09604520910984418

Christian Grönroos is a globally recognized expert on services management and marketing and has contributed to that field for 30 years. He is Professor of Service and Relationship Marketing at the Hanken Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration, Finland, has associations as Visiting Professor or Scholar at other universities in the United States, Sweden, New Zealand, P.R. China and Thailand. He takes a view that all organizations have a service component and, hence, ought to be managed as a service business to be more successful.

The book comprises 17 chapters. Most of the chapters start with an introduction and end with a summary, Questions for Discussion, comprehensive Notes and a list of Further Reading. The text is supported by 95 exhibits (figures and tables) and 18 case studies (short and long).

Chapter 1 briefly introduces four strategic perspectives (core product, price, image, and service), before honing in on explaining the service and customer relationship perspectives chosen as the themes for the book. Chapter 2 describes the nature of relationship marketing (RM) perspective and how and when RM can be implemented. Chapter 3 discusses the process feature of services and analyses the difference between process consumption and outcome consumption. The following two chapters deal respectively with service and relationship quality, and gap analysis framework and holistic model for managing service quality.

Chapter 6 discusses the return on service and relationship costs to service providers and their suppliers and customers. It also explores the links between perceived value in relationships and profitability. Chapter 7 introduces the augmented service offering model for taking into account the impacts of the technical quality (outcomes) and the functional quality (how customers perceive the process). Service Management Principles is the topic of Chapter 8, which discusses the pitfalls of traditional management approach in service contexts and the nature of strategic approach based on the importance of customer‐perceived quality to success.

Chapter 9 deals with the nature of productivity in services and how it can be measured and managed. It shows how important it is to integrate quality and productivity and presents a number ways of improving service productivity.

The following three chapters are devoted to the theme of services marketing, which requires customer focus from all parts of an organisation. Topics covered respectively are Market‐Oriented Management, Managing Integrated Marketing Communication and Total Communication, and Managing Brand Relationship and Image. Chapter 10 concludes with a discussion of the marketing strategy continuum for maintaining and enhancing ongoing customer relationships. Chapter 11 describes the communication circle concept and discusses the relationship dialogue concept, which aids in designing process to establish shared meanings between the organisation and the customer. Creating service brand relationships and managing company image are covered in the next chapter.

Chapter 13 focuses on structuring service organizations and managing service processes in becoming a customer‐oriented service provider, and shows how to facilitate a total marketing process by incorporating successful interactive marketing. A service system model and an extended servicescape (a landscape where service encounters take place) model that can be used for analysing and planning service systems/processes are also presented. The following two chapters deal respectively with issues of internal marketing, and developing a service culture and its importance.

Chapter 16 discusses in depth how manufacturing organisations can transform themselves as a service logic‐based business to gain sustainable competitive advantage, by aligning their processes with those of their customers. The concluding chapter summarises the scope, the six “rules” of service and barriers to achieving results.

As other reviewers have commented, this book is a thought‐provoking, scholarly piece that concentrates on concepts rather than a hands‐on practical approach book. The author's personal experience and thinking are brought to the surface.