Service Science

Services Marketing: People, Technology, Strategy is the ninth edition of the globally leading textbook for Services Marketing by Jochen Wirtz and Christopher Lovelock, extensively updated to feature the latest academic research, industry trends, and technology, social media and case examples.

This book takes on a strong managerial approach presented through a
coherent and progressive pedagogical framework rooted in solid academic research. It features cases and examples from all over the world and is suitable for students who want to gain a wider managerial view.

This globally leading textbook extensively updated to feature the latest academic research, industry trends, and technology, social media and case examples. The test takes on a strong managerial approach presented through a coherent and progressive pedagogical framework rooted in solid academic research. It features cases and examples from all over the world and is suitable for students who want to gain a wider managerial view.

У статті розглянуто питання особистіс-ного розвитку персоналу, його впливу на підвищення конкурентоспроможності ком-паній у сфері послуг. Розкрито поняття «особистісний розвиток», його критерії порівняно з поняттями «гармонійний розви-ток особистості», «професійний розвиток особистості», загалом уточнено поняття «особистість». Виділено та розглянуто специфічні характеристики сфери послуг, такі як невідчутність, непостійність якості послуг та неможливість зберегти послугу, щоби потім її використати. Виділено ще одну характерну ознаку сервісних організа-ції, а саме клієнтоорієнтованість як спеці-альну активність, яка забезпечує вивчення, аналіз та задоволення потреб клієнтів і сприяє підвищенню прибутковості та кон-курентоспроможності компанії. Уточнено поняття «клієнтоорієнтованість компанії», яке реалізується через побудову системи управління відносинами з клієнтами сервіс-них організацій, та «клієнтоорієнтованість персоналу», що реалізується через розви-ток трьох основних компонентів, а саме професійного (професійні знання, навички та вміння), соціального (соціальна поведінка, яка спрямована на задоволення потреб клі-єнтів) та особистісного (базові цінності працівника та його психологічні характери-стики), які тісно між собою пов'язані та орі-єнтовані на формування професійно кваліфі-кованих фахівців для роботи у сфері послуг. Особистісний розвиток персоналу у сфері послуг розкривається через сприяння роз-витку таких інтраперсональних характе-ристик, як прийняття себе, відкритість внутрішньому досвіду переживань, розу-міння себе, відповідальна свобода, ціліс-ність, динамічність, та таких інтерперсо-нальних характеристик, як прийняття та розуміння інших, соціалізованість, творча адаптивність. Розвиток цих характерис-тик сприяє реалізації особистісного та соці-ального компонентів клієнтоорієнтовано-сті персоналу, отже, професійного, оскільки вони тісно пов'язані між собою. Ключові слова: клієнтоорієнтованість, сфера послуг, особистісний розвиток, інтерперсональність, інтраперсональність.

The article discusses the issues of staff personal development, the impact of this factor on improving the competitiveness of the service companies. The concept of "personal development", its criteria in comparison with the concepts of "harmonious development of personality", "professional development of personality" and in general the concept of "personality" are specified. The specific characteristics of the service sector are highlighted and considered-insensitivity, the inconsistency of service quality, and the inability to save the service to use it later. There is also a characteristic feature of service organizations-customer orientation as a special activity that provides study, analysis, and satisfaction of customer needs and helps to increase the profitability and competitiveness of the company. Refined "customer orientation" concept of the company which is implemented through the construction of customer relationship management service organizations and "customer orientation" of the personnel-through the development of three main components-professional (professional knowledge, skills, and abilities), social (social behavior aimed at meeting customer needs), and personal (basic values of the employee and his psychological characteristics), which are closely related and collectively focused on the formation of professionally qualified professionals to work in the field of services. Staff personal development is revealed by promoting the development of such intrapersonal characteristics as self-acceptance, openness to inner experience, self-understanding, responsible freedom, integrity, dynamism, and interpersonal characteristics-acceptance of others, understanding of others, socialization, creative adaptability. The development of these characteristics contributes to the implementation of personal and social components of customer orientation, and therefore professional, as all three components of customer orientation-professional, social, and personal are closely related.

n order to meet the ever-increasing demands of the market place, many organizations have sought to become more agile and flexible. One potential route to increased flexibility is home working. However, in a service dominant world what is less well considered is the impact of such flexible work practices on co-workers, partners and customers. Some of the human resource management literature provides a positive stance, where both employee and employer benefit from home working arrangements, whereas other studies have challenged and questioned the practice and suggest that the benefits of home working have been overstated. This paper draws on results of a case study investigation to appraise, for the various stakeholders, the qualitative benefits and costs of homeworking.

"Purpose – The speed and variety of new business models emerging in the current economy created a disruptive environment that lacks theoretical frameworks and perspectives to help academics, practitioners and policy makers to critically understand and appraise the phenomenon of new business models emergence. This paper addresses this neglect by discussing the phenomenon of service innovation from a systems thinking perspective, shedding light on issues concerning change and adaptiveness of business models.

Design/Methodology/approach – We revisit fundamental questions raised by Normann (2001) to discuss change and creation phenomena. We also build upon his concepts of ‘bifurcation points’ of instability as well as Beer’s concepts of attenuation and amplification of variety (Beer, 1981) to differentiate ‘homeostatic change’ from ‘disruptive change’. We use the theoretical perspective developed in the paper to explain the emergence of new business models enabled by digital technologies in a service sector context.

Findings – We point out that adaptive variability does not necessarily entails reestablishment of an original state of equilibrium. This is particularly the case of companies developing new business models. The newness of a ‘new’ business model infers non-existence of an antecedent original state that provides basis for adaptation towards equilibrium. The novel state of a new business model can be considered as a new referential state for future homeostatic changes to maintain equilibrium until other disruptive changes take place.

Practical implications – From the theoretical perspectives here addressed, one can see disruptive technologies as drivers of bifurcation points of instability for organisations. To deal with these instabilities, companies can opt for implementing either an attenuation or amplification strategy. The attenuation strategy is developed through homeostatic changes that attenuate disruptions in order to maintain a state of equilibrium. On the other hand, the amplification strategy can be implemented through disruptive changes that amplify disruptions by contextualizing the disruptive technologies into a new business model proposition for the market.

Originality/value – We provide a systems thinking perspective for service innovation through new business models. We infer that the development of a new business model entails change to a different organisational state that, due to lack of a referential status for equilibrium, represents a state of dynamic disequilibrium, which paradoxically may provide basis for a state of equilibrium if the new model is successful. In this sense, we postulate that in organisations developing new business models homeostatic adaptations to restore equilibrium are typically preceded by adaptation to a different state of temporary dynamic disequilibrium.

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Insurance agents play an imperative role in marketing of life insurance plans. They are the brand ambassador of Life Insurance Corporation. Nowadays, roughly nine of out of ten policies in LIC is sold through the agent network. From the insurance company point of view, the agents are selling the life insurance products but at the customer point of view they are acting like an agent, advisor, and financial manager and so on. Hence the marketing efficiency of the life insurance company is largely relying on the services provided by the agent network. In this direction this study is started with the objectives of knowing their personal profile, agent role in marketing of LIC policies, marketing efficiency of agent, suitable service and operational mechanism. This study has been conducted with primary data in Salem division of LIC. This study collects samples from 100 respondents through the provision of well-structured questionnaire. The collected data has been analysed through simple percentage analysis, Kendall’s Coefficient of Concordance and T-test. This study was concluded that the agents are delivering multiple services to bring efficiency in marketing of life insurance policies.

The success of developing service networks rely on obtaining a correct understanding of the end-to-end business processes. However, there are major concerns as to the lack of research efforts to examine methods to successfully manage the complexity of service networks. The insufficient communication efforts between business and technical experts results in a dissatisfactory service delivery and the inability to predict and measure the service network performance. This literature survey is initiated with purpose of finding a novel way to represent business processes in service networks and analyses the process performance. Specifically, we discuss the need to conceive tools and techniques to manage the complexity of service networks without jeopardising the performance of service networks and provide an overview of current simulation-based modelling approaches and optimising business processes.

Competition in the current marketplace requires businesses to provide consumers with the utmost convenience in purchas-ing services and goods. Buyers expect that, as an aftersales service and risk reliever, they can “return ” goods if they are not satisfied with them. Such product returns significantly influence retailers ’ profits not only because of a reduction in net sales but also because of increased costs. Despite its substantial impact, research focused on retailer–consumer return policies has been limited. To fill this gap, we study a retailer that has to set the product return policy parameters—specifically, the price and the return period. The impact of these parameters on consumers ’ valuation function is also taken into account. We study the model analytically and provide insights through various numerical examples. We find that even with fraudulent consumers ’ negative effect on sales, a retailer could expect both its profits and prices to increase with an optimally det...

Emergency medical response providers' primary responsibility is to deploy an adequate number of ambulances in a manner that will yield the best service to a constituent population. In this paper we develop a two-stage integrated solution for complex ambulance deployment and crew shift scheduling. In the first stage we develop a dynamic expected coverage model to determine the minimum number of ambulances and their locations for each time interval and solve via a tabu search. For the second stage, we develop an integer programming model which uses the solution obtained from the first stage to determine optimal crew schedules. We present computational statistics and demonstrate the efficacy of our two-stage solution approach using a case study.

This study is the first to provide an integrated view on the body of knowledge on artificial intelligence (AI) published in the marketing, consumer research, and psychology literature. By leveraging a systematic literature review (SLR) using a data-driven approach and quantitative methodology (including bibliographic coupling), this study provides an overview of the emerging intellectual structure of AI research in the three bodies of literature examined. We identified eight topical clusters: (1) memory and computational logic; (2) decision making and cognitive processes; (3) neural networks; (4) machine learning and linguistic analysis; (5) social media and text mining; (6) social media content analytics; (7) technology acceptance and adoption; and (8) big data and robots. Furthermore, we identified a total of 412 theoretical lenses used in these studies with the most frequently used being: (1) the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology; (2) game theory; (3) theory of mind; (4) theory of planned behavior; (5) computational theories; (6) behavioral reasoning theory; (7) decision theories; and (8) evolutionary theory. Finally, we propose a research agenda to advance the scholarly debate on AI in the three literatures studied.

On August 13, 2020, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi explained that Uber is backing Proposition 22 that would exempt it from Assembly Bill 5 (AB5), a California law that would require Uber to treat its drivers as employees with benefits effectively on January 1, 2020. To win over California voters, Uber and Lyft were considering to shut down their services “temporarily” in California as a means to appeal to voters who vote on Proposition 22 in the November ballot. 
Given Uber lost over US$8 billion in 2019, and was expected to lose US$6 billion by October 2020, the AB5 law was expected to increase Uber’s operating cost dramatically. Also, it would be a major blow to Uber and other gig economy (e.g., Uber Eats, Grubhub, Deliveroo) if other states in the United States and other countries were to propose labor laws similar to AB5. In that case, Khosrowshahi’s premonition that Uber may never be profitable when it filed for IPO in 2019 would come true. Was this law to become the beginning of the end for Uber?

If the intellectual property system does encourage innovative activity, then what transpires in the absence of
protection? In particular, how does the current intellectual property system affect the dynamics of service
innovation, and vice-versa? Furthermore, how can service firms survive and thrive in the absence of an intellectual
property system vis-à-vis the coming sharing economy? There is an opportunity to use service design thinking in the
formulation of new business strategies to achieve differentiation and cost advantages which incentivizes service
innovation in the absence of an intellectual property regime. Case study research was conducted with three businessto-
business (B2B) consultancies (knowledge-intensive businesses, or service firms) to investigate and understand
their relationship to intellectual property. It seems that B2B consultancies, and by extension, service firms, have a
tenuous relationship to the existing structure of intellectual property, and that despite the fact that only fragments of
service provisions can be protected, service innovation still occurs. Using a six-step framework based on four core
themes that emerged from this study, B2B consultancies can structure and guide their efforts to innovate service,
while achieving a formidable competitive advantage. The six steps are: break down barriers to co-create, look into
the future, manage knowledge effectively, match-make, support through culture and space, and P.I.E.: practice,
iterate and evolve.

This paper models and simulates IT operations command center. It outlines the activities performed by the command center and describes the model and modeling approach to simulate these activities. The paper appreciates the discrete and continuous aspects of modeling the operations of the command center. The purpose of this model is to predict the behavior of a command center engagement over time. The model is used to test and understand the effect of scenarios on the engagement. This provides a good governance framework for the engagement as governance is key to success and failure of a service engagement. Policies are defined and analyzed to mitigate impact of scenarios and/or achieve objectives thus implementing a feedback loop monitoring system for command center operations management.

Chapter 12 focuses on achieving profitability through creating relationships with customers from the right segments, and then finding ways to build and reinforce their loyalty using the Wheel of Loyalty as an organizing framework. This chapter closes with a discussion of customer relationship management (CRM) systems.

Chapter 5 examines the time and place elements. Manufacturers usually require physical distribution channels to move their products. However, some service businesses are able to use electronic channels to deliver all (or at least some) of their service elements. For the services delivered in real time with customers physically present, speed and convenience of place and time have become important determinants of effective service delivery. This chapter also discusses the role of intermediaries, franchising, and international distribution and market entry.

Literature review shows, that customer loyalty concept in relation to services is not working, both in theory and practice. Loyalty is still regarded as significant phenomena, because of its practical importance. Loyalty notion require deepening conceptual research. Conditions of appearing relational loyalty in complex services relationships are more  clear than in other market contexts. Based on research included in literature, author of the paper presents features of relational loyalty which is defining from customer perspective, such as: mutuality, complexity, dynamism, constancy, trust and free will. In the paper it is also presented deepen considerations of obligation notion, with reference to the complex service relationships mainly. The analysis of dependence between relational loyalty and obligation, result, that these notions can be found independently from each other and simultaneously, both in customers and service providers. Obligation may reinforce relational loyalty. The problematic situation in service relationship can be the lack of relational loyalty with remaining obligation.

We introduce a unified concept of service life cycle (SLC) for the study of service system evolution. The need for this research arises from the fact that studying service ecosystems has become a critical need in the modern service economy. Adopting the view that a service ecosystem is a complex adaptive system of interacting service systems, we propose Agentbased Modeling methodology as a potential candidate for service research. Our agent-based model simulates an artificial market, in which one hypothetical service is being offered and customer agents interact with service provider agents to co-create value. The design of the model takes inputs from the service dominant logic, Kauffman's NKCS model and the ISPAR model of service system interactions. The simulation results reveal that the evolution of service providers follows a life cycle pattern, which we call the Service Life Cycle. We propose the SLC to be used as a reference to evaluate the performance of service providers in a service ecosystem, initiating a novel S-D logic based discussion on sustainability of business firms.

Chapter 1 highlights the importance of services in our economies. We also define the nature of services and how they create value for customers without transfer of ownership. The chapter highlights some distinctive challenges involved in marketing services and introduces the 7 Ps of services marketing. The framework shown in Figure I on the facing page will accompany us throughout as it forms the basis for each of the five parts in this book. It systematically describes what is involved in developing marketing strategies for different types of services. The framework is introduced and explained in Chapter 1.

Высочайшие стандарты обслуживания обеспеченных клиентов в бизнес-авиации требуют новаторского подхода к качеству питания на воздушных судах.
В современных условиях традиционный пакетированный чай, изготавливаемый из отходов чайного производства, уже не удовлетворяет высочайшим стандартам качества. В современные пакетированные чаи часто добавляется синтетические ароматизаторы и усилители вкуса, которые могут вызывать аллергические реакции, что создаёт дополнительные риски при перевозке пассажиров.
Данное пособие позволит сотрудникам авиакомпаний получить всю необходимую базовую информацию об истории, культуре чая, видах элитного и эксклюзивного чая, правилах его хранения, заваривания и подачи.
Эта информация позволит повысить культуру обслуживания клиентов, увеличить продажи на борту воздушного судна, добавит гибкости при обслуживании пассажиров первого класса, клиентов деловой авиации и высокопоставленных лиц (включая первых лиц государства и членов официальных делегаций) на специальных бортах.

The growth of the global service economy has led to a dramatic increase in our daily interactions with highly
specialized service systems. Service (or value-cocreation) interactions are both frequent and diverse, and may
include retail, financial, healthcare, education, on-line, communications, technical support, entertainment,
transportation, legal, professional, government, or many other types of specialized interactions. And yet surprisingly
few students graduating from universities have studied anything about service or service systems. Service Science,
Management, Engineering, and Design (SSMED), or service science for short, is an emerging discipline aimed at
understanding service and innovating service systems. This paper sketches an outline and provides an extensive, yet
preliminary, set of references to provoke discussions about the interdisciplinary nature of SSMED. One difficult
challenge remaining is to integrate multiple disciplines to create a new and unique service science.

Negli ultimi vent’anni la Pubblica Amministrazione è stata caratterizzata, a livello mondiale, da un intenso processo di cambiamento, fondato sui pilastri della misurazione costante della performance e dell’orientamento alla soddisfazione del cittadino. Tale impostazione, nota anche come “new public management”, si è andata gradualmente diffondendo nei vari paesi, stimolata da specifici interventi legislativi nazionali, incontrando tuttavia diversi ostacoli e rimanendo pertanto a tutt’oggi parzialmente incompiuta. Ne è derivato un ampio dibattito internazionale, al quale il presente lavoro si propone di contribuire segnatamente con riferimento al contesto italiano.
In particolare, questa trattazione concentrerà l’attenzione sui concetti di customer satisfaction e di marketing negli enti locali italiani, discutendo i principali nodi irrisolti che si frappongono ad una piena realizzazione della nuova prospettiva. A tale scopo verranno presentati anche i dati di una ricerca appositamente svolta presso un campione di Comuni italiani con una popolazione inferiore ai 20.000 abitanti.
Questo lavoro intende, quindi, contribuire (e fungere da stimolo) al dibattito concettuale che sta impegnando responsabili della Pubblica Amministrazione ed accademici, senza alcuna intenzione di proporsi come manuale “pratico” di approfondimento delle diverse tecniche di rilevazione della customer satisfaction e delle strategie operative di marketing: a tale scopo, si rimanderà di volta in volta, ad altri libri ed articoli.
Il volume è organizzato come segue: dopo una serie di precisazioni concettuali e terminologiche contenute nel primo capitolo, la seconda sezione ripercorre le tappe fondamentali che hanno determinato il progressivo orientamento al cittadino e alla performance “esterna” da parte della P.A., sino ad introdurre il concetto di marketing e a dibatterne significato e limiti con riferimento allo specifico ambito di analisi. La terza parte, partendo da un richiamo ai principali riferimenti della normativa italiana in tema di marketing e customer satisfaction, presenta i risultati di un’indagine svolta su di un campione di enti locali “minori” del nostro Paese. Il quarto capitolo, infine, conclude il lavoro avanzando un’ulteriore ipotesi interpretativa alla base delle
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frequenti difficoltà di introduzione della nuova impostazione in alcuni ambiti della Pubblica Amministrazione.
Al termine di questa parte introduttiva, desideriamo ringraziare tutti i Comuni che hanno contribuito alla ricerca presentata nelle pagine seguenti, nella speranza che i risultati che verranno descritti e discussi possano contribuire ad utili riflessioni, nella prospettiva di un costante miglioramento loro e di tutti i Comuni italiani.

Chapter 6 provides an understanding of pricing from both the firm and customer’s points of view. For firms, the pricing strategy determines income generation. Service firms need to implement revenue management to maximize the revenue generated from available capacity at any given time. From the customer’s perspective, price is a key part of the costs they must incur to obtain the desired benefits. However, the cost to the customer often includes significant nonmonetary costs too. This chapter also discusses ethics and fairness in service pricing and how to develop an effective pricing strategy.

Karma yöntem araştırma deseniyle tasarlanmış bu keşfedici araştırmada, ilk olarak, üzerinde görüş birliği bulunmadığı ifade edilen ve 'her bedene uyan bir ölçüsünün' olmadığı öne sürülen girişimci üniversite paradigmasının temel kategorileri ve kavramları sistematik literatür taraması yoluyla ortaya çıkarılmıştır. Daha sonra, bu kavram ve temaların birlikte oluşma yöntemiyle ağ ve yoğunluk analizleri yapılmıştır. Bu analizlerden elde edilen bulgular ışığında yarı yapılandırılmış derinlemesine görüşme soruları hazırlanmış ve İtalya Campania bölgesindeki üniversitelerde görev yapan hizmet baskın mantık, hizmet bilimi ve hizmet yeniliği profesyonelleriyle derinlemesine görüşmeler yapılmıştır. Sonuç olarak girişimci üniversite paradigmasının, Campania bölgesindeki İtalyan uygulamaları üç farklı kurumda çalışan akademisyenlerden elde edilen nitel verilerle değerlendirilmiş ve girişimci üniversite kavramları kamu hizmet baskın mantık ve yeni kamu yönetişimi kavramsal çerçeveleriyle yorumlanmıştır.

Anahtar Kelimeler: girişimci üniversite, kamu hizmet baskın mantık, yeni kamu yönetişimi, hizmet bilimi, hizmet yeniliği

Chapter 10 focuses on the physical environment also known as the servicescape. It needs to be engineered to create the desired service experience and facilitate the effective delivery of service processes. The servicescape needs to be managed carefully as it can have a profound impact on customers’ impressions, guide their behavior throughout the service process, and provide tangible clues of a firm’s service quality and positioning.

The techniques of measuring service quality and service quality dimensions have become a major area in marketing literature during the past few decades. Since the increasing importance of services, scholars and practitioners have been operating on the quality of services delivered. This study focused on the service quality models. The methodology of this study was to review the existing service quality models in chronologic order. In discussion part, the dimensions of the models were examined and three main groups that consist of service quality dimensions were obtained. They were associated with the three elements of services marketing mix (7P) such as physical environment, people, and process. It was advised that practitioners should pay attention the services marketing tools and 7P to increase the quality of their services offered. The limitation of this study was that the existing service quality models which have been developed until 2000s were reviewed since e-services practices have started to increase and e-service quality models have just begun to evolve in these years.

This research, conducted by the author when a Senior Researcher at Newcastle University, UK, was funded by a UK governance organisation to help them assess, integrate and improve their understanding of the governed population.

ABSTRACT: Governance organisations have been urged to develop more holistic evidence-based approaches with partners to better deal with issues affecting the governed population. This presupposes an understanding of the population, yet there has been little research work addressing how governance organisations come to understand their governed population, nor how this understanding can be improved upon within such organisations.

This case study examined in-depth how understanding of a governed population was developed within one UK local governance organisation and it explored how such understanding might be developed and improved through more holistic and evidence-based organisational learning within the organisation and its governance partnerships.

The research methodology involved placement within the governance organisation, participant observations on several projects and innovative initiatives, observations within, across, and outside the organisation, and also interviews with varied key stakeholders.

The study examined:

- stakeholder engagement and networks
- current and varied understandings of the population
- mechanisms actually used for developing understandings
- the influence of context on organisational learning

and analysed these to arrive at a recommendations to improve organisational understanding of the governed population.

In the case studied, significant strengths were found: including innovative past learning trials for development, extensive ongoing networking activities, and many varied and accumulating quantitative datasets available across partnerships.

However, entrenched organisational approaches and practices constrained the development of holistic evidence-based understanding, for instance: the absence of systematic maintained collective learning processes; weak recording and forgetting of understandings; methodological exclusion of stakeholders from the development of understanding; the relative neglect of qualitative data, explanations, investigations, interpretations, and reflexivity; and also implicit organisational acceptance of such limitations and low aspirations.

Nonetheless, untapped opportunities existed to enable change including: latent practitioner knowledge and innovative management champions, the desire for improvement and raised aspirations within learning networks, and the development potential of alterative learning approaches.

It was concluded that more holistic evidence-based understanding was possible, but required new learning approaches beyond those then in use in both local government or academia.   

Recommendations are made to utilise and develop improved organisational learning approaches trialed and reported in the case study.

It is argued that the case study findings, conclusions, and recommendations may be applicable to other similar local governance organisations and partnerships that seek to better understand local populations, services and interventions.

The work was also submitted for, and awarded, an MPhil (at Newcastle University, supervised by Prof. Patsy Healy)

Considering the complexity of today"s service environment, Small-to-Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs) cannot afford to accept the status quo of service operations and therefore must have some clear business analytics objective to reach. Without clear metric objectives, organisations are almost destined for disaster since the allocation of resources may not have responded to the demand exerted from outside of the organisation. This is particularly true within a complex and rapidly changing cloud computing environment. The cloud dynamic ecosystem is moving towards a collection of services which interoperate across the Internet. This chapter offers a discussion on an approach to assessing cloud capabilities through Cloud Service Capability Assessment Framework (CSCAF). Service metrics plays a critical role in CSCAF and presents managers with a practical framework to carry out cloud capability assessments. The process may be simply described as publishing, retrieving, and managing cloud service descriptions, service publications which are matched with descriptions of consumer"s requirements and service matching.

Chapter 9 relates to process management with a focus on widely fluctuating demand and how to balance the level and timing of customer demand against available productive capacity. Well-managed demand and capacity lead to smooth processes with less waiting time for customers. Marketing strategies for managing demand involve smoothing demand fluctuations and inventorying demand through reservation systems and formalized queuing. Understanding customer motivations in different segments is also important for successful demand management.

Although it is probably the best-known Prospective Hazard Analysis (PHA) tool, Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is far from the only option available. This paper introduces one of the alternatives: The Structured What-If Technique (SWIFT). SWIFT is a flexible, high-level risk identification technique that can be used on a standalone basis, or as part of a staged approach to make more efficient use of bottom-up methods like FMEA.

In this paper we describe the method, assess the evidence related to its use in healthcare using a systematic literature review, and suggest ways in which it could be better adapted for use in the healthcare industry. Based on the limited
evidence available, it appears that healthcare workers find it easy to learn, easy to use, and credible. Especially when used as part of a staged approach, SWIFT appears capable of playing a useful role as component of the PHA
armamentarium.

Chapter 11 introduces people as a defining element of many services. Many services require direct interaction between customers and service employees. The nature of these interactions strongly influences how customers perceive service quality. Hence, service firms devote a significant amount of effort to recruiting, training, and motivating their employees. Satisfied and engaged employees who perform well are often a source of competitive advantage.

Chapter 4 discusses what exactly is a service product, its benefits, components, and the Flower of Service model. A service concept includes both the core and supplementary elements. The supplementary elements both facilitate and enhance the core service offering. This chapter also covers branding, tiered service products, and explains how service firms can build brand equity.

Both productivity and quality are necessary and related to financial success in services. Chapter 14 discusses how to diagnose quality shortfalls using the Gaps Model and reviews strategies to close quality gaps. Customer feedback systems are introduced as an effective tool for systematically listening to and learning from customers. Productivity is concerned with bringing down costs, and key approaches for increasing productivity are discussed.

T his study aims to investigate wine tourism from a strategic point of view in an attempt to understand how service orientation is perceived in Italian offers. Service-dominant logic (SDL) is a key approach to investigate the integration of activities involving various actors and customers/tourists, considering that value cocreation is fundamental for the success of wine tourism offers and is based on the exchange of knowledge. Methodologically, by following a mainstream literature review that assists in understanding the roles of both service and SDL in wine tourism, we attempt first to use the annual reports of the "Città del Vino" (Italy's most important association of wine territories) to show that there is an absence of a service-based perspective on the part of the majority of Italian wine tourism operators. Next, we propose an explanatory interpretation applying the 10 foundational premises of SDL to the general system of a territorial offer of wine tourism, which is considered key to a strategic analysis of wine tourism. The aim of this application is essentially threefold: first, to potentially help wine tourism operators to organize their service offers; second, to promote collaboration among wine producers; and third, to improve the institutional governance of wine territories in terms of planning and promoting wine tourism systems more efficiently and effectively.

Chapter 3 discusses how to develop a customer-driven services marketing strategy and how a value proposition should be positioned in a way that creates competitive advantage for the firm. This chapter first links the customer, competitor, and company (commonly referred to as “3 Cs”) analysis to a firm’s positioning strategy. The core of the chapter is then organized around the three key elements of positioning — segmentation, targeting, and positioning (commonly referred to as “STP”) — and shows how firms can segment a service market, position their value proposition, and finally focus on attracting their target segment.

Chapter 13 examines how effective complaint handling and professional service recovery can be implemented. It starts with a review of consumer complaining behavior and the principles of effective service recovery. Service guarantees are discussed as a powerful way of institutionalizing effective service recovery and an effective marketing tool that signals high-quality service. The chapter also explains how to deal with jaycustomers who take advantage of service recovery policies and abuse the service in other ways.

Chapter 2 provides a foundation for understanding consumer needs and behaviors related to services. The chapter is organized around the three-stage model of service consumption. This model explores how customers search for and evaluate alternative services, make purchase decisions, experience and respond to service encounters, evaluate service performance, and finally, develop loyalty.

Chapter 15 starts with a discussion on the impact of customer satisfaction on a firm’s financial performance and shareholder value. It covers next the characteristics of world-class service organizations and introduces four levels of service performance — service loser, nonentity, professional, and service leader.  An audit tool that helps to assess the performance level of an organization is provided. The chapter closes with a discussion of three strategic pathways for service organizations to achieve cost-effective service excellence.

We live in a hyper-competitive world, where whole industries either shift towards services or become obsolete due to new market entrants, technologies or even social practices. A world, where permanent interactions with customers, fast time-to-market, and the ability to innovate »right« (e.g. the right thing or value) are the key to corporate success. On that score the business sphere isn't getting tired of emphasizing the need for strategic innovation (which means »creating superior customer value«, business model innovations or even the disruption and creation of new markets).

This paper uncovers some of the often overlooked links of design (design thinking, design- driven innovation and service design) to strategic innovation through the lens of »customer value«. It will do so by ...

1) Disenchanting the big corporate rhetoric on above claims by showing that prevailing and too one-sided understandings of strategy and innovation, rather reinforce than escape old industry paradigms.

2) Examining designs still undervalued contributions to strategy-making by approaching business challenges with a user/value-centric and radical service logic.

3) Showing that every dimension of strategic innovation culminates in the concept of perceived user value and meaning, which gets reviewed in detail (dimensions, forms, proper- ties), especially with regards to constructing value propositions.

4) Arguing that the current service design and business model innovation discourses cannot be negotiated separately, as they may be good methodological complements.

So when speaking about the innovation of value for the customer, the paper argues, the above stated and seemingly separated fields intersect. Therefore their most apparent systemic connections and the facilitation of value creation by design are outlined and discussed.

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ABSTRACT

To have an effective customer relationship management, it is essential to have information about the different segments of the customers and predict the future profit of them. For this reason companies can use customer lifetime value that consists of three factors-current value of customers, potential value, and customer churn. Potential value of customers focuses on the cross-selling opportunities for current customers. Therefore, cross selling models are built on the total customers of the database that is not interesting. To overcome this, we presented a framework that estimates the current value and churn probability for the customers and then segmented them base on these two elements and select the most profitable segment for the cross-selling models. In this study we predict the customer churn base on logistic regression as a case study on the insurance database.