Crossing boundaries in service research: the La Londe Service Conference

Citation

Goudarzi, K., Llosa, S. and Orsingher, C. (2015), "Crossing boundaries in service research: the La Londe Service Conference", Journal of Service Management, Vol. 26 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOSM-05-2015-0154

Crossing boundaries in service research: the La Londe Service Conference

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Journal of Service Management, Volume 26, Issue 5.

The International Research Seminar in Service Management, or the "La Londe Service Conference", as it is more commonly known, takes place every two years in France. The conference was founded in 1990 by Pierre Eiglier and Eric Langeard who, more than 25 years ago, foresaw the academic and managerial implications of the interdisciplinary nature of services. Throughout the years, the conference has followed the development and the direction of the service debate, with interdisciplinarity as a key distinctive path. Academics and managers are encouraged to cross the boundaries of their traditional academic fields and use theories and methods that can be integrated in service research frameworks.

This issue of the Journal of Service Management hosts two stimulating papers that were presented at the 13th La Londe Conference, which was held in 2014 and attracted 100 participants from 18 countries. Mary Jo Bitner (Marketing), Kimmy Wa Chan (linking OB to marketing), Roger Maull (Operation) and Pierre Eiglier (Strategy) chaired the conference tracks.

The paper written by Soumaya Ben Letaifa and Javier Reynoso titled "Toward a service ecosystem perspective at the base of the pyramid" deals with services directed at the almost five billion people worldwide who live in poverty, often called Base of the Pyramid (BoP). The paper fills the lack of service research at the BoP and adds to the extant research through the ecosystem framework. As a result, the paper provides a rich conceptual framework that offers a comprehensive perspective on how to understand and address BoP contexts. The integration of ecosystem components (i.e. multi-actor approach, social embeddedness of actors and resources, biodiversity and ecosystemic value) with fundamental SDL premises for BoP provides several future research ideas for scholars and practitioners wanting to better serve the BoP.

The paper by Matthieu Mifsud, Anne-Sophie Cases and Gilles N'Goala titled "Service appropriation: how do customers make the service their own?" deals with service appropriation, referred to as the process by which the customer makes the service their own. Based on an interdisciplinary review of appropriation literature and an exploratory qualitative research in the health sector, the article identifies six underlying dimensions of service appropriation that can be measured and monitored by service companies: service knowledge, service conscientization, self-adaptation to the service, service control, service creation and psychological ownership of the service. The paper offers insights on how service providers and managers should design their services and integrate the roles of their customers in the coproduction process.

Kiane Goudarzi and Sylvie Llosa

AIX-Marseille Graduate School of Management – IAE, Aix-en-Provence, France, and

Dr Chiara Orsingher

University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

The authors cannot conclude this editorial without thanking Jay Kandampully for having supported the appearance of these papers in this issue. The authors also wish to thank the reviewers who kindly agreed to review the papers and provided valuable suggestions for improvement.