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Service robots present a new frontier in the provision of services, with far-reaching implications for customers and managers alike. The purpose of this chapter is to examine how service robots impact service providers' current marketing strategies. For this, the authors perform an integrative, nonsystematic review of international gray and academic literature to understand how both practitioners and academics perceive the impacts of the technology. Based on this analysis, the present work identifies three key themes that emerge from the current state of practitioner and academic research, namely (1) service robots demand new core business capabilities and competencies, (2) service robots offer new value propositions, and (3) service robots impact not only service providers' cost structures but also revenue streams. These insights are combined into the Service Robot Innovation Canvas, a visual tool for service providers to identify the impact of service robot implementations on a company's marketing strategy. In addition, based on the analyzed literature, the most pressing questions for researchers are laid out in a research agenda.

Relationship marketing is not effective in every situation or context. This study investigates the impact of three categories of potential contingency factors on the effectiveness of relationship marketing efforts in a retail services context: demographic characteristics of the consumer (age and gender), personal values of the consumer (social affiliation), and shopping-related consumer characteristics (product category involvement, consumer relationship proneness, and shopping enjoyment). The data relate to more than 1,700 mall intercept personal interviews conducted in the United States, and in two western European countries (the Netherlands and Belgium), covering a wide variety of food and apparel retailers. The found moderating influences were inconsistent across samples, stressing the need for an adapted relationship marketing strategy per country and industry. The results do provide a first indication that relationship marketing efforts are relatively more effective if they are directed at consumers who are young and female, have a high need for social affiliation, and show high levels of product category involvement, consumer relationship proneness, and shopping enjoyment. The results provide a preliminary framework for retailers to optimize the allocation of their relationship marketing budgets.

Today, services officially represent more than 22% (or about USD 3 trillion) of world trade and are the fastest growing sector of world trade for the last two decades (OECD, 2004; WTO, 2001). Optimist analysts believe that services will reach 50% of world trade by 2020 (Hibbert, 2003). Nearly half of the 100 biggest multinationals are service firms with an average revenue of over USD 50 million in 1997 (Hibbert, 2003; Keillor, Hult & Kandemir, 2004). The American McKinsey and Company in management consulting, the Danish ISS in facility management and the Dutch VNU in business information illustrate how service firms may succeed in gaining and holding a global dominant position. On top of the official service economy, the (hidden) service component of product markets is responsible for a major and increasing part of the total value of the world merchandise trade (Brown et al., 2001; Grönroos, 1990). Illustrative in this respect is the critical role of the global service systems of the Swedish/Swiss ABB in automation technology and of the American Caterpillar in construction and mining equipment.