Critical review on Services Marketing Literature.

Service Gap Model in the context of increased role of IT

MA in Marketing Student: Valentina Kopaliani Student number: 1756585 Lecturer: Dr. Roisin Vize Module Code:MK692 Word count: 3774

Table of content
Introduction Main body 1. Origins of the Services Marketing. Biological evolution framework. 1.1. Crawling Out 1.2. Scurrying About 1.3. Walking Erect 2. Developing the field. Social evolution framework. 2.1. Making Tools 2.2. Creating Language 2.3. Building Community 3. Service Gap Model in the context of increased role of IT Conclusion Bibliography

Introduction
It is claimed that services are no longer a secondary and supportive part of economic activities and they are not considered of a lower echelon of economies (especially of developed countries). For many years the role of the services on the market was underestimated. For example, Adam Smith famous pioneer of political economy labeled such representatives of services businesses as doctors, lawyers and armed forces as unproductive of any value (Smith, 1977, cited in Palmer 2011, p.2). According to Adrian Palmer (Palmer, 2011) such attitude to services began to change at the end of XIX century, when Alfred Marshall one of the most significant economists of the beginning of XX century recognized that all tangible products exist only due to the series of service performances. But it is one thing to defend the importance of the role of services in the economies itself and the other is to stand up for the right of services marketing to be called the scientific field and be respected within the academics. The filed of services marketing has been developing since quite long time ago. Although it is difficult to settle some exact time frames there are academics that managed to review the history of the field and break it into stages. For example Fisk, Brown and Bitner, (1993) and later Fisk and Grove (2010) in their articles managed to work out and then develop framework in which they traced and described the main stages of the establishment and development of marketing services scientific field. In my work I will pay attention to the works specified in this above-mentioned reviews and make the observation of the literature of services marketing since its genesis till the present moment. I will describe the evolution of paradigm and changing attitudes of the scholars, explain the frameworks that were used as basics for the field. And in the end I will concentrate on the topic of the importance of innovations in for the services. In particular I will review the importance of innovations from the point of view of the service quality.

1. Origins of the Services Marketing. Biological evolution framework. 1.1 Crawling Out.
As it was already mentioned the major attempt to stage the evolution of services marketing literature was made by Fisk, Brown and Bitner in 1993. According to this framework if we make the parallel with the biological evolution model the whole history of marketing services literature can be divided into three stages: 1. Crawling out stage (Pre-1980) 2. Scurrying about (1980-1985) 3. Walking erect (1986-1992) Later in 2010 Fisk and Grove developed this framework to show the changes in services field that had happened since 1992. And if the first edition (if it can be said so) of the framework metaphorically depictured biological evolution now the authors used social evolution as their pattern. 4. Making tools (1992-200) 5. Creating language (2000-2010) 6. Building community (the Future) By the middle of 1940s the US economy was prevailed by the services sector. But the academics from the marketing field took their time to start to study and explore service economy from their (marketing) point of view. The field had neither a research model to abide no a support from the academics. The genesis of it on the early Crawling Out stage began in 1953 when the first scholars took risk writing about the discipline that other academics considered to be minor and subsidiary to the goods marketing. The majority of literature of that period is highly conceptual, based on debates and the attempts to start studying services marketing were mainly through dissertation researches (McDowell, 1953; Parker, 1958, cited in Fisk et al, 1993, p.67). As every scientific field services marketing required its

own paradigm to facilitate the research process and generate the assumptions that would simplify both studies and practices. The scholars began to develop the paradigm for the young field. According to Kuhn (1970, cited in Lovelock, and Gummesson, 2004, p. 21) paradigm is a fundamental set of assumptions that is shared by the members of a particular scientific community. So to develop a paradigm it is quite important to start asking questions. Such questions as: are services different from goods. And if so then how and why they are different? And what consequences this fact may have for their marketing. Later Johnson (1969, cited in Fisk et al, 1993, p.67) in his dissertation was the first to ask if goods are different from services. And before and after that there were attempts by different authors to identify the distinguishing characteristics of services. Those attempts led to the creation of IHIP framework (the major outcome of the Crawling Out stage), which stands for Intangibility, Heterogeneity, Inseparability and Perishability. In vast number of publications it is confirmed that discrete components of IHIP were widely used by scholars as organizing concepts for the field. The concepts of IHIP go back to classical and neoclassical economics. Though there were very few publications in 60s and more in 70s and 80s all of them were fundamental and highly significant for the new academic branch. For example Parker (1960, cited in Lovelock, and Gummesson, 2004, p. 21) identified intangibility and perishability to be the most significant. The first authors who named all four characteristics were Sasser, Olson, and Wyckoff (1978 cited in Lovelock, and Gummesson, 2004, p. 21). A very profound and thorough review on the distinguishing characteristics of services was done in 1985 by Zeithaml et al (46 publications by 33 authors for the period 1963-1983), in 1993 by Edgett and Parkinson (106 publications for the period 1963-1990). To sum up we can say that the main and major assumptions made by the scholars on this stage were that services and products are different. Goods versus services debates, that crowned the Crawling Out stage, were central advocating the right of the whole field to exist. However they didnt end at that phase and their traces could be found in Scurrying About and Walking Erect stages.

1.2

Scurrying About

A Scurrying About period is noted to be a bridging period for the services marketing literature. The nature of the publications has changed and the quantity of literature increased. The goods versus services debate faded and the interest shifted to the implications that these differences have on the marketing management. A number of mark worthy books were published

during that period (Lovelock, 1984; Fisk and Tansuhaj, 1985, cited in Fisk et al, 1993, pp. 73-74). Two significant journals came into existence: Services Industries Journal (1981) and the Journal of Professional Service Marketing (1985). According to cited in Fisk et al (1993) scholars began to pay attention to more narrow topics for investigation such as: service quality (Zeithaml et al, 1985, 1988), service encounters (Solomon et al, 1985), service design and service mapping (Shostack, 1984). At this period were first fundamental publications on the issue of service quality. The research on this topic continued and developed and still exists in the service marketing literature. Fisk et al (1993) also noted that there are 2 main achievements of the Scurrying About stage, which are deregulation of the service industries and interaction among the participants of the field. Increased rivalry among participants of services industries and raised customers expectations resulted in the strengthened importance of marketing within firms. Trying to achieve competitive advantage the firms were eager to acquire and implement in practice marketing knowledge. Seeking to meet the peculiar needs of some service industries scholars developed various educational programmes and consulting courses for practicing managers. These were the times when academics and practitioners started a dialogue between each other. The demand for this kind of conversation among representatives of the services marketing field lead to the series of services marketing conferences. The American Marketing Association sponsored some of them, others were supported by Marketing Science Institute and New-York University. A considerable deal of the literature of 80s and 90s appeared as the result of the discussions that took place on the above-mentioned conferences. So in general we can say that the Scurrying About stage was the period when a rapidly growing and enthusiastic community of scholars quickly built the basic structure of services marketing (Fisk and Grove, 2010).

1.3

Walking Erect

The Walking Erect stage is the period at which we can confidently state that the field achieved respect and legitimacy from the representative of marketing discipline and beyond it (Fisk, Grove, 2010). This era in the history of the field can be characterized by the rapid growth in the number of publications mainly of empirical and theoretical content. Now provided with the support of academics more and more students dedicated themselves to the field of services marketing writing dissertations on services topics.

Continued practice of annual AMA Service Conferences contributed to the research processes. Apart from AMA there were other institutions that demonstrated support, such as Service Research Center at the University of Karlstad, the First Interstate Center for Services Marketing at Arizona State University, Center for Services Marketing at Vanderbilt University. A number of significant books were issued at that period as well (Heskett, 1986; Johnson, Scheuing, and Gaida 1986; Lovelock, 1988, 1991, 1992; Berry and Parasuraman, 1992, all cited in Fisk et al., 1993). At that period publications became more focused on some specific marketing problems in services businesses. The most examined was the issue of service quality. The debate was supported and expanded by a number of authors (Babkus and Boller, 1992; Bolton and Drew, 1991; Carman, 1990; Brown and Swartz, 1989; Cronin and Tailor, 1992; and Parasuraman, Berry and Zeithaml, 1985, 1991, all cited in Fisk et al., 1993). Empirical data on the very related question of service satisfaction was accumulated by others (Bitner, 1990; Bitner, Booms and Tetreault, 1990; Crosby, Evans, and Cowles, 1990; Oliva, Oliver and MacMillan, 1992, all cited in Fisk et al., 1993). A number of frameworks that facilitate the study of the service quality field were developed during that period of time. The approach to the service quality researches was different within different scholars and in general can be divided into two academic schools: Nordic School and American School. According to the Nordic School the quality can be of two types: technical quality (tangible, measurable dimensions of the service, such as time spent waiting for the service performance) and functional quality (intangible dimension, how customers receives the service. The main representatives of this school to be named are: Grnroos (1982, 1984, 1990, 2001), Gounaris (2005, 2010). The American School of service quality research is well known for its so-called disconfirmation approach. According to it service quality is in minds of the customers and can be defined as difference between Perceptions and Expectations of the customers. The most famous representatives of American School are Parausraman, Zeithaml, Berry. The most popular and used frameworks of this school are for example: Service Gaps model (SERVQUAL dimensions), SERVPERF, Importance-Performance Grid, Composite Models. Other issues that were discussed within the scholars of the field during the Walking Erect stage are for example service encounters/experiences (Czepiel, Solomon, and Suprenant, 1985; Binter, 1990; Bitner, Booms, and Tetreault, 1990; Larsson, and Bowen, 1989; Berry, and Parasuraman, 1991; etc., all cited in Fisk et al., 1993), service design (Schostak, 1984, 1987, 1992; Kingman-Brundage, 1989, 1991; Baumm, 1990; George and Gibson,

1991; etc., all cited in Fisk et al., 1993), customer retention and relationship marketing (Grnroos, 1990; Crosby and Stephens, 1987; Hart, Hesket, and Sasser, 1990; etc., all cited in Fisk et al., 1993), internal marketing (Grnroos, 1990; Berry and Parasuraman, 1991; Bowen and Lowler, 1992; etc., all cited in Fisk et al., 1993). At the same time such diverse scope of literature led to the understanding of cross-cultural nature of services marketing.

2. Developing the field. Social evolution framework. 2.1. Making Tools.

If the first framework by Fisk et al was describing the genesis and establishment of the young field using the metaphor of biological evolution the later developed model used the metaphor of social evolution. There is already a society of academics and this society is moving in its development, the culture of it is changing. Fisk and Grove in this framework use the term of meme as the unit of imitation (Dawkins, 1976, cited in Fisk, and Grove, 2010) to describe the changes in the history of discipline. They claim, that recent changes in the services marketing field represent behavioural and verbal memes, which have spread to the marketing discipline at a large (Fisk and Grove, 2010). In the late 1990s Information Technologies began to invade the services field and transform its understanding of the service processes. Email, the Internet, mobile telephony this new environment acquired new ways of performance. So by the 2000s the ordering and production of many services has changed (Gummesson, 2007). The increased role of IT motivated businesses to enhance technology use and sophistication of the services provided. Especially it was important for the self-service businesses (Swartz, Bowen, and Brown, 1994; Dabholkar, 1996; Teresa, Swartz, and Iacobucci, 2000). The new IT tools were created and they facilitated service industries (Brown, 1997, Mick and Fournier, 1998, cited in Brown, 1997). All the new trends that appeared in the field lead to broadening the research area, deepening and sharpening the research. More quantitative research was done to provide with new methodological research tools such as measurement scales, data analysis, statistics and decision support modeling (Fisk, and Grove, 2010).

2.2

Creating language.

Language is the most sophisticated and probably one of the most ancient tools created by the humanity. Each discipline has its own specific language with the help of which the academic knowledge is being transferred among both scholars and practitioners. So the field of services marketing is not an exclusion. Originated in services marketing such terms as service encounters, service quality, service theatre, servicescapes, etc. became very traditional and commonly accepted all over the world. Service-dominant logic (Vargo, and Lusch, 2004; Vargo, and Lusch, 2006, all cited in Fisk, and Brown, 2010, p. 4) speaks for the assumption that services marketing becoming the language of the whole marketing field. Thus the next stage of its development would be elaboration a broader service-dominant language. New wave of expansion of the literature, increased number of conferences and research centers worldwide illustrate that the discipline is becoming more and more global and cross-functional. At the same time it is worth mentioning that this period (2000-2010) was the period when the fundamental understanding of the whole field of services marketing was doubted and put up in the air. Lovelock and Gumesson in their work Whither services marketing?.. noted that the underlying paradigm which stated that the distinguishing characteristics of services (IHIP concepts) imply different approach to marketing is quite unstable due to the fact that those concepts are not that unique to services. Later one of the authors (Gummesson, 2007) developed this thought: How should we handle the dependency between goods and services? Take any service and there are goods elements; take any good and there are service elements. Goods and services are destined to live together, and to become competitive even to love each other. After having worked with marketing in organizations and done research in services for several decades, I dare now say with confidence that we begin to see the light: All marketing is about value propositions! (Gummesson, 2007, p. 4) Author also provides evidence why IHIP elements fail to describe the differences between services and goods if there are such.

2.3.

Building community.

The stage at which the services marketing field exists right now is labeled Building Community. The service marketing (in general and broad understanding of the field) has come to the critical point. At the current

phase it is necessary to create a multidisciplinary approach supported by the carefully and meticulously elaborated network that will help to extrapolate the precious knowledge within academics and businessmen. No discipline alone can provide with full information that will help to find a way out. But at the same time each academic discipline in discrete plays a central key role in the mission of creation and expansion of the knowledge. A key to success is not to treat the boundaries of academic field as nation boundaries. This way they become an obstacle to progress and evolution. What is important is inclusiveness and will to collaborate and share the knowledge. This need of collaboration between disciplines appears to be especially important with the rising use of technologies. The customers role in innovations, engineering and service production is essential so it is vital for the marketers to understand the basics of service operations management and development (Gummesson, 2007) In the next paragraph of my work I will try to illustrate the role of innovation in the services marketing and in particular I will review the literature on the question of defining the service quality in the HITECH world.

3. Service Gap Model in the context of increased role of IT

The service quality topic in services marketing field is a very broad area with the wide rage of authors and frameworks that I referred to in the previous paragraphs of my work. To review the whole scope of it would take more time and volume than it is allowed for my project so I would need to focus on a particular framework in particular context. My chose is to review the most popular framework developed by the representatives of American school of research Service Gaps model from the point view of the increased role of innovation and IT. As I already mentioned before technologies has significant impact on the essence of services and in particular on the way they are delivered to the customers and the customers satisfaction hence the quality of service delivery. For example a number of Internet-based companies (Amazon, eBay, etc.) have developed a completely new types of services based on the IT tools. Other tools facilitated and redefined conventional face-to-face services (bill payment, answering questions, information search, etc.) providing customers with the more accessible, convenient and productive ways of service delivery. But IT simplifies service performance not only for customers. It provides employees with significant assistance as well. And

finally new technologies make it possible to get a grip of the customers all over the world. So to describe the impact that IT had on the service quality I would like to first briefly picture the Gaps model originally introduced by a group of authors, Parasuraman, Zeithaml, Berry, at Texas A&M and North Carolina Universities in 1985 (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry, 1985). Later the same authors developed their work introducing in-depth measurement scales for service quality (Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry, 1985). In 2005 Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Malhotra worked out the scale for evaluating service quality of Web-based businesses called E-S-QUAL. The alternative ways to examine the quality of web-based businesses (on the example of eshopping) were discussed in the work of Ha and Stoel (Ha, and Stoel, 2007). The Gaps model has two distinguishing traits that speak for the use of it in the relevant situation in the services marketing area. First one is that this framework reflects the cross-functional nature of the field. And the second is that it is highly customer-centric and its primary goal is to close every possible gap between customer expectation and the services provided. Originally appeared in the 1985 the model pictured possible gaps in service performance. There were four of them in the first edition of the framework: Gap1 is difference between what customers expected and what management perceived about expectations of the customers; Gap2 is difference between perception of the customer expectations and the service specifications; Gap3 is difference between service specifications and the actual service performance; Gap4 is difference between service delivery and the promised service quality. Later literature (Zeithaml et al., 2009, cited in Bitner et al., 2010, p.199) suggested specific strategies that would clause each gap. The increased number of self-services or technology-assisted services caused changes in the nature of service delivery. On the one hand skipped stage of face-to-face contact would decrease the risk of service failure due to the human factor. But on the other hand some customer (and in particular some groups of customers) are not willing or ready to use technology. More information on self-service businesses may be found in Beatson et al. publication (Beatson, Lee, and Coote, 2007). Another interesting influence of IT is the change in the attitude to the word-of-mouth communication. They has always been taken with the grain of salt and very rarely been used as a too to learning about and form expectations for service providers, but technology has changed the nature of word-of-mouth communication. For today web sites include customer recommendations, appraisal and discourage for just almost any type of service (Ward and Ostrom, 2006, cited in Bitner et al., 2010). These impact result in new problems for the

Gaps Model to solve. For more information about the model and the way, how the Gaps can be closed in todays hi-tech world you can address Bitner et al. and their work Technologys Impact on the Gaps Model of Service Quality (Bitner, Zeithaml, and Gremler, 2010).

Conclusion
The Gaps Model of Service Quality has been the fundamental on in the academic field. With the time it did not only manage to defend its positions within academics and practitioners, but also evolved to provide all representatives of service industries with the effective and reliable tool to evaluate the quality of the services provided. Very concisely Bitner et al. expressed the status of the framework: We believe the Gaps Model should be one of the fundamental frameworks for service science going forward. Its primary contributions are its crossfunctionality from a business perspective, its incorporation of theories, ideas, and frameworks from multiple academic disciplines, and its keen focus on the customer. While service science will benefit from new theories and frameworks coming out of engineering, operations, computer science, and management, it is our belief that there are fundamental principles that currently exist that should be carried forward as part of the core of service science. The Gaps Model of Service Quality is, we believe, one of those core knowledge areas. (Bitner et al., 2010, p. 217)

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