Trends and directions in service triads research

Abstract

Purpose

Service triads refer to tripartite relationships in which client firms serve their customers through third-party service providers. The purpose of this paper is to systematically review the nascent but fast-growing literature on service triads to explore the broad themes along which the literature has grown, and to identify the gaps and future research opportunities.

Design/methodology/approach

Systematic literature review (SLR) approach is adopted to retrieve, select, and synthesise relevant service triads studies. A citation network analysis on the corpus resulting from the SLR identified the core articles of the literature.

Findings

The SLR uncovered ten themes of research along the articles’ objectives, theories and methodologies. The classification framework of service triads, the roles of customers and providers, the size of the provider, triadic risks, controlling service delivery and service quality, regulated triads, the stability of the triads, and cross-country, cross-culture triads emerged as significant under-researched areas.

Originality/value

The paper illustrates research trends and provides insights into the neglected and under-researched problems of service triads. This is the first SLR on service triads.

Citation

Sengupta, S., Niranjan, T.T. and Krishnamoorthy, M. (2018), "Trends and directions in service triads research", International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, Vol. 48 No. 3, pp. 333-360. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPDLM-02-2017-0095