Background

1. LKM Chapter 5 (Product) & Chapter 11 (Strategy).  In addition, Marketing Science 24 (1), 2005, focused on the topic of competitive responsiveness.

2. Bolton, Ruth N. (2006), “Chapter 5:  Services,” in Essential Marketing Knowledge and Wisdom, Rajiv Grover (ed.), New York: McGraw Hill, forthcoming.

3. Rust, Roland T. and Tuck Siong Chung (2006), “Marketing Models of Service and Relationships,” Marketing Science.  [Note:  This literature review encompasses models of relationships; our class will focus on papers focused on services. You may also wish to read my commentary (and others) that are published in the same issue.]

4. Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (1988), “SERQUAL:  A Multiple Item Scale for Measuring Consumer Perceptions of Service Quality and Its Implications for Future Reseasrch,” Journal of Retailing, 64 (1), 12-40.  [You may wish to read PZB’s (1985), JM 49, (4), 41-50 as background.]

Perceptions

5. Bolton, Ruth N. and James H. Drew (1991), "A Longitudinal Analysis of the Impact of Service Changes on Customer Attitudes," Journal of Marketing, 55 (1), 1991, 1-10.

6. Bolton, Ruth N. and James H. Drew (1991), "A Multi-Stage Model of Customers' Assessments of Service Quality and Value" Journal of Consumer Research, 17 (4), 1991, 375-384.

7. Bolton, Ruth N. and Matthew B. Myers (2003), “Price-Based Global Market Segmentation for Services,” Journal of Marketing, 67 (3), 2003, 108-128.

Dynamic Models of Individual Customer Purchase Behavior

8. Bolton, Ruth N. (1998), “A Dynamic Model of the Duration of the Customer’s Relationship with a Continuous Service Provider: The Role of Satisfaction.” Marketing Science, 17 (1), 45-65.  [In Summer 2005, the Editor reported that this article has largest number of total cites of all articles published in Marketing Science in the last ten years, 1995-2005).]

9. Bolton, Ruth N. and Katherine N. Lemon (1999), “A Dynamic Model of Customers’ Usage of Services: Usage as an Antecedent and Consequence of Satisfaction,” (with Katherine N. Lemon). Journal of Marketing Research, 36 (2), 1999, 171-86.

10. Bolton, Ruth N., Katherine N. Lemon and Peter C. Verhoef “Expanding Business-to-Business Customer Relationships: Modeling the Customer’s Upgrade Decision,”Journal of Marketing, 72 (1).

1. This week has focused on theory-based models of customer behavior (repeat purchase, usage, upgrading) with respect to services.  Select a customer behavior with respect to services (i.e., a focal dependent variable) that has not been studied extensively (e.g., information sharing with employees or other service providers, recommendations, co-production, participation in extended hedonic services).  How would you develop a theory-based model?  What are some useful explanatory theoretical constructs?  What are the challenges of developing and testing your model empirically?

2. MSI hasn’t created a separate category for papers on the topic of services.  However, service has been a research priority for MSI in the past, as evidenced by Valarie Zeithaml’s MSI monograph.  In particular, Service quality is the most widely studied construct in the services literature. (Marketers have typically studied perceptions of service quality whereas operations researchers have studied objective measures of service quality.)  Are there still fertile areas for exploration?  If so, what are they?  Describe your ideas for how you would extend the services quality literature (e.g., by linking service quality to other important constructs).

3. There is a vast stream of literature that is often ignored by services researchers.  Many of these studies are modeling articles, articles that focus on a single industry, or articles based in other disciplines.  For example:

   Hauser, John R. and Kenneth J. Wisniewski (1982), “Application, Predictive Test, and Strategy Implications of a Dynamic Model of Consumer Response,” Marketing Science, 1 (2), 143-79.  1982 [John D. C. Little] Best Paper Award.  [This article is an example of the extensive literature on transportation services.  There are similar literature streams for telecommunications and other industries, typically found in the economics or quantitative methods literature.]

   How would you employ a multi-disciplinary approach to studying a services industry (e.g., information services, medical services)?  Why does this industry interest you?  What constructs would you study?  What theories could you draw upon to generate new intellectual insights regarding this industry and/or its participants (customers, firms, employees, or other stakeholders)?

1. Write a critical review of two articles.

2. Write a two or three page (double-spaced) answer to one of the discussion questions.