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Services Marketing: People, Technology, Strategy, 5th ed. Christopher Lovelock andjochen Wirtz Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs, NJ 2004 652 pp.
Keywords Services marketing, Technology led strategy
Review DOI 10.1108/09564230510587186
As a new academic field, services marketing has come a long way since crawling out in the mid/late 1970s. Today more authors are spending time integrating services into standard marketing textbooks than are spending time carving out the new field of services. Whereas academic articles and journals reflecting services have mushroomed in the same period, the number of leading textbooks within the field has been fairly stable over the years. Today there are three services marketing textbooks on the market which have stood the test of time -one with an operations perspective and two with a marketing management perspective. One of the forefathers and titans within the field, Christopher Lovelock, has in his latest edition of the textbook Service Marketing: People, Technology, Strategy, teamed up with Jochen Wirtz - a rising star within the field. Together they have managed to bring the fifth edition close to the forefront of academic research. Whereas the framework of the first edition was reflecting Professor Lovelock's experience in teaching courses in service management, the fifth edition reflects the authors' collective skills in teaching, consulting and research, i.e. a more crafted, thought-through and tested perspective on services marketing.
Service Marketing takes a managerial, integrative as well as international perspective. The text is rooted in academic research, complemented by memorable concepts, cases and frameworks. The book is designed to bridge the gap between the real world and academic theory, and the authors have done a good job when it comes to approaching this challenge. Practical management applications...