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Examines the development of new services in service organizations, which has often been incomplete and has resulted in the needs of the marketplace remaining unsatisfied. Considers the findings of a study comparing the process of new service development in different service industries. Reports on how development may be improved and offers a model allowing greater input from the service recipients.

Offers a fresh outlook for managing the delicate interaction between the customer and the contact employee in the service environment. Emphasizes that the quality of the customer‐employee interfacehas a great effect on customers′ perceptions of the quality and value of the service, as well as on their satisfaction. Suggests a model of how companies can improve this interface by treating employees ascustomers and customers as employees, thus developing lower cost and higher quality services and also higher levels of satisfaction on the part of both customers and employees. Recommends various steps for management to take.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

Findings from a national survey in which senior marketing executives from over 700 American banks are reported and appraise the state of personal selling in their banks. They assess managerial interest in improving bank selling performance and managerial commitment to making it happen.

Describes the job of selling health‐care services and compares it to traditional types of sales positions. Providing such a comparison may stimulate marketing managers in other service industries to conduct their own survey of salesforce characteristics and to analyze critically the findings. The research design serves as a model for the research process, analysis and interpretation to be utilized in other service marketing arenas. Promotion of health care has evolved from an emphasis on advertising to a current interest in personal selling. Along with public relations and planning research, sales is becoming a significant part of the marketing function of health‐care organizations. Specifically, the study was designed to define the basic characteristics that profile the present salesforce in health care in the USA. Addresses attributes of the organizations, as well as organizational variables. Managing a successful salesforce in the approaching health‐care reform era will be essential to an organization′s survival.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to show how a company can improve the interface by treating employees as customers and customers as employees.

This article presents a conceptual model (reinforced with a review of extant literature and numerous examples) demonstrating the desirable consequences associated with the phenomenon we refer to as “trading places,” which occurs when organizations mix the treatment and roles of employees and customers.

Traditionally organizations have treated employees and customers as separate constituencies. Operations and human resource managers have developed their own approach to deal with employees (e.g. as “resources” to be utilized), while marketing managers have related to customers through somewhat different lenses (e.g. viewing customers as “prizes” to be won). Yet, in service organizations, we find that as employees assume more customer‐like roles and customers increasingly resemble employees, successful organizations are drawing from both approaches – treating employees more like customers, while treating customers more like employees.

As a conceptual piece, this article presents an alternative way of thinking about organizations' relationships with their employees and customers. Particularly relevant to service environments, it shows how organizations, employees, and customers all benefit when the “trading places” phenomenon is recognized.

The article updates the “trading places” perspective by reviewing relevant literature, providing a conceptual model, and illustrating the application of the approach with numerous examples.

Contemporary research on service quality and satisfaction has limitations. First, current satisfaction models treat the consumer as an isolated individual, not considering the social context of the service provision. Second, while satisfaction and quality are thought to be process outcomes, the dominant survey research approaches are not well suited to learning about processes. Finally, popular paradigms assume consumers’ determination of service quality and satisfaction is based solely on a set of attributes. Symbolic interaction and ethnographic methods expand the theoretical basis of service quality/satisfaction research beyond an individually centered psychological view to consider social influences and processes, thereby providing a deeper understanding of how consumers experience quality and satisfaction. The knowledge gained from this approach is easily accessible to service managers and may serve to improve employee recruiting, training and evaluation. Examples of employing symbolic interaction and ethnographic methods are provided. Actions to improve the management of service providers are listed

To determine the impact of service recovery on consumer evaluations of service delivery.

An experiment investigated consumer responses to three dimensions of perceived fairness of recovery efforts: redress, responsiveness, and empathy/courtesy.

Results revealed that higher levels of redress independently increase positive consumer responses. It was further found that the interaction of employee responsiveness and courtesy can also have a dramatic impact on consumer evaluations. Satisfaction was highest and negative word‐of‐mouth (WOM) intentions were lowest only under conditions of high responsiveness and courtesy. Additionally, an interaction between courtesy and tangible rewards significantly decreased the level of negative WOM.

The research offers empirical support for the “service recovery paradox” suggesting effective post‐recovery efforts may not only counteract bad service experiences, but may increase satisfaction beyond levels held before the service failure.

Key elements for the proper structuring of a service recovery process are identified for management.

Many types of services involve a sequence in which customers choose a service provider followed by selection of service specifications, that is selecting when and how the service will be performed. Specifications selection can be dominated by the provider, the customer or the customer and provider can jointly select specifications. Customer satisfaction results if specifications selection meets customer expectations of the provider‐customer role. Specifications selection unfolds as a process where information is exchanged between the customer and provider and the provider can be more or less customer oriented. Effective information exchange and a strong customer orientation by the provider contribute to customer satisfaction. Customers make attributions of provider or customer responsibility for specifications selection depending on the type of specifications selection that occurs and provider provision of specifications information. Customers who attribute specification selection to their decisions assume responsibility for the specifications selected.

This paper examines the role of managerial curiosity as a critical factor in determining the future impact of disruptive information technologies in a global organization. Specifically, this paper presents curiosity as a managerial characteristic that plays an important role in identifying disruptive information technologies and facilitating their early adoption. Further, it uses resource‐based theory as a theoretical lens to illustrate how managerial curiosity can be a source of sustained competitive advantage. Finally, it examines the individual decision styles that are best suited in assessing disruptive information technologies.