Guest editorial

Citation

Wirtz, J., Johnston, R. and Khoe Sin Seow, C. (2009), "Guest editorial", Journal of Service Management, Vol. 20 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/josm.2009.08520eaa.001

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Journal of Service Management, Volume 20, Issue 5

Many Asian economies are intensely competitive, innovative and set in a different cultural and regulatory environment, and therefore can offer alternative perspectives on many aspects of marketing, human resources and operations management in the services sector. Furthermore, Asia has been arguably the fastest growing region in the world for the past decade and is likely to soon be home to three of the largest economies in the world – Japan, China, and India. The large customer base of over almost reaching half of the world's total population with fast rising disposable income offers immense market potential in Asia. Service researchers and service organizations alike searching for new impetus and growth increasingly realize that they must understand and cater to these emerging consumers and markets. However, the services literature has been largely derived from research based in the “Western” world.

Managing service businesses in many Asian countries requires working around a set of complexities less common in the developed economies of the West. Research and practice in services in Asia is at the exploratory stage. It requires new knowledge and is likely to need departures from existing tracks. This special issue seeks to highlight research and practices surrounding services management in Asia and hopes to encourage more diverse and innovative research exploring theoretical implications of the unique cultural, socio-economic, regulatory, and technological environment in Asia's diverse economies.

The sequence of papers begins with a paper from Connie Zheng entitled “Keeping talents for advancing service firms in Asia.” In her paper, she maps out a number of human resource practices used by service companies to examine the effects of talent retention as perceived by multinational companies in six Asian countries – Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand – on service delivery capacity and business growth. Continuing on the human resource theme, Matthew H.T. Yap and Elizabeth M. Ineson's paper “HIV-infected employees in the Asian hospitality industry.” Matthew H.T. Yap and Elizabeth M. Ineson invite us to identify and discuss Asian hospitality and catering human resource managers' perceptions of employing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected applicants and to examine the treatment of HIV-infected employees in their workplaces. Their paper provides a platform for the discussion of some sensitive HIV-related issues in an Asian context. It also supplements the sparse literature addressing the contribution of HIV to the discrimination and stigmatisation of hospitality applicants and employees in their workplaces.

Jyh-Shen Chiou, Lei-Yu Wu, and Yi-Ping Sung's paper “Buyer satisfaction and loyalty intention in online auctions: online auction web site versus online auction seller,” examines the issue of the influential factors of buyer satisfaction and loyalty toward online auction websites and online auction sellers in Taiwan. Their paper cautions sellers on online auction web site to be weary in making online auction web site change decisions. Mark S. Rosenbaum and IpKin Anthony Wong continue on this theme through their paper “Modelling customer equity, SERVQUAL, and ethnocentrism: a Vietnamese case study” in which they explore how the return-on-marketing framework and its customer equity drivers – value, brand, and relationship – can be combined with the service quality measures to help managers develop strategies for high- and low-ethnocentric Vietnamese customers.

Khanyapuss Punjaisri, Alan Wilson, and Heiner Evanschitzky draw the special issue to a close through their paper “Internal branding to influence employees' brand promise delivery: a case study in Thailand” – which reinforces the common thread throughout this special issue – the impact and influence of an organisation's human resources in delivering service excellence. Their findings and analysis provide insights in the relationship between internal branding and the behavioural outcome and mediating effects of employees' brand identification, commitment, and loyalty.

This editorial concludes with our thanks to Bo Edvardsson, Editor of Journal of Service Management, for enabling us to initiate such a call for papers, to the authors who responded enthusiastically to this call, and finally, to our set of dedicated reviewers whose spent an significant amount of time providing critical, detailed and constructive feedback. The reviewers for this special issue are as follows.

Temi Abimbola, Warwick Business School; Jannis Angelis, Warwick Business School; Colin Armistead, Bournemouth University; Rebecca J. Bennett, Louisiana Tech University; Kah-Hin Chai, National University of Singapore; Millissa F.Y. Cheung, Hong Kong Shue Yan University; Adrian Choo, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Cindy Chung, Nanyang University; Graham Clark, Cranfield School of Management; Kim Fam, Victoria University of Wellington; Theodoro A. Peters Filho, FEI University – Centro Universitario; Sabine Fliess, FernUniversitaet in Hagen; Paul Freathy, University of Stirling; Paul Gemmel, Ghent University; Mihalis Giannakis, Warwick Business School; Richard Greatbanks, University of Otago; Siong Lin Ho, Ngee Ann Polytechnic; Paul Iles, Leeds Metropolitan University; Hans Kasper, Maastricht University; Xiangyu Kong, Warwick Business School; Kaushik V. Pandya, Birmingham College; Srisuphaolarn Patnaree, Kasetsart University; Harry Maddern, Exeter Business School; Jan Mattsson, Roskilde University; Stefan Michel, IMD; Irene Ng, University of Exeter; Sandy Ng, RMIT University; Sofia Salgado Pinto, Universidade Católica Portuguesa; Kate L. Reynolds, Cardiff Business School, Dan Sarel, University of Miami; Rhian Silvestro, Warwick Business School; Nigel Slack, Warwick Business School; Bernd Stauss, Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt; Alan Wilson, University of Strathclyde; Barry Witcher, University of East Anglia; Oliver Yau, City University of Hong Kong; Iris Vilnai-Yavetz, Ruppin Academic Center; Chi Kin (Bennett) Yim, The University of Hong Kong; Hongtao Zhang, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Guest Editors