Essentials of Services Marketing, 4th edition

Published by Pearson (June 22, 2022) © 2023

  • Jochen Wirtz National University of Singapore

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Title overview

For undergraduate courses in services marketing.

As economies across the world continue to transition toward services, skills in marketing and managing services have never been more important. Essentials of Services Marketing, 4e, captures the reality of today's world, incorporates recent academic and managerial thinking, and illustrates cutting-edge service concepts. Designed to provide a crisp introduction to key topics in the field, this book places marketing issues within a broader general management context and shows the relationships between the marketing, operations, IT, and human resources functions in service firms.

Key features

  • This text takes a strongly managerial perspective yet is rooted in solid academic research, complemented by memorable frameworks. The goal is to bridge the all-too-frequent gap between theory and the real world.
  • Opening vignettes and boxed inserts within the chapters are designed to capture student interest and provide opportunities for in-class discussions.
  • Each chapter provides a succinct chapter overview in pictorial form that maps how the concepts link with each other
  • The text has been designed to be clear, readable, and focused and to work hand-in-hand with visuals that make important concepts accessible.
  • A selection of 21 in-depth case studies appears after the chapters, allowing students to apply what they have learned to practical business scenarios from around the world.
  • Examples have been carefully selected from America, Europe, and Asia to provide a global perspective.
  • As part of its systematic learning approach, each chapter has clear learning objectives, an organising framework that that provides a quick overview of the chapter's contents and line of argument, and chapter summaries in bullet form that condense the core concepts and messages of each chapter.

New to this edition

  • Each of the 15 chapters has been revised. All chapters incorporate new examples and the latest academic research .
  • Chapter 3 'Positioning Services in Competitive Markets' has a new section on digital services and platform business models.
  • Chapter 4 'Developing Service Products and Brands' has now a tighter focus on productising services (i.e., 'bundles of output'), an expanded section on branding of services, and a new section on service design thinking.
  • Chapter 8, 'Designing Service Processes,' has a new a new in-depth coverage of service robots and AI-powered self-service technologies (SST).
  • Chapter 14, 'Improving Service Quality and Productivity,' features a heavily revised section on customer feedback systems and collection tools to reflect the rapid development of automated rating systems, user-generated content on review sites and third-party (social) media, and their analysis using natural language processing, image processing and other technologies.
  • Chapter 15, 'Building a Service Organization That Wins,' features a new section on the wallet allocation rule.

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Table of contents

  • PART I - UNDERSTANDING SERVICEPRODUCTS, CONSUMERS, AND MARKETS
  • Chapter 1: Introduction to Services Marketing
  • Chapter 2: Consumer Behavior in a Services Context
  • Chapter 3: Positioning Services in Competitive Markets
  • PART II - APPLYING THE 4Ps OF MARKETING TO SERVICES
  • Chapter 4: Developing Service Products and Brands
  • Chapter 5: Distributing Services through Physical and Electronic Channels
  • Chapter 6: Setting Prices and Implementing Revenue Management
  • Chapter 7: Promoting Services and Educating Customers
  • PART III - DESIGNING AND MANAGING THE CUSTOMER INTERFACE
  • Chapter 8: Designing Service Processes
  • Chapter 9: Balancing Demand and Capacity
  • Chapter 10: Crafting the Service Environment
  • Chapter 11: Managing People for Service Advantage
  • PART IV - DEVELOPING CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS
  • Chapter 12: Managing Relationships and Building Loyalty
  • Chapter 13: Complaint Handling and Service Recovery
  • PART V - STRIVING FOR SERVICE EXCELLENCE
  • Chapter 14: Improving Service Quality and Productivity
  • Chapter 15: Building a World-Class Service Organization
  • PART VI - CASE STUDIES
  • Case 1 Sullivan Ford Auto World
  • Case 2 Susan Munro, Service Consumer
  • Case 3 Dr. Beckett's Dental Office
  • Case 4 Uber's Unintended Burdens
  • Case 5 Kiwi Experience
  • Case 6 The Accra Beach Hotel: Block Booking of Capacity during a Peak Period
  • Case 7 Revenue Management at The View
  • Case 8 Aussie Pooch Mobile
  • Case 9 Service Robots in the Frontline: How Will Aarion Bank's Customers Respond?
  • Case 10 Digital Luxury Services: Tradition versus Innovation in Luxury Fashion
  • Case 11 National Library Board Singapore: Delivering Cost-Effective Service Excellence through Innovation and People
  • Case 12 Red Lobster
  • Case 13 Banyan Tree: Branding the Intangible
  • Case 14 Singapore Airlines: Managing Human Resources for Cost-Effective Service Excellence
  • Case 15 Menton Bank
  • Case 16 Dr. Mahalee Goes to London: Global Client Management
  • Case 17 Platform vs Pipeline Business Models: Are Airbnb and Marriott Right to Move into Each Other's Turf?
  • Case 18 The Royal Dining Membership Program Dilemma

Author bios

Jochen Wirtz is Vice Dean MBA Programmes and Professor of Marketing at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is also an international fellow of the Service Research Center at Karlstad University, Sweden, an Academic Scholar at the Cornell Institute for Healthy Futures (CIHF) at Cornell University, USA, and a Global Faculty of the Center for Services Leadership (CSL) at Arizona State University, USA.

Professor Wirtz holds a Ph.D. in services marketing from the London Business School and has worked in the field of services for over 25 years. His research focuses on service marketing and has been published in over 300 academic articles, book chapters and industry reports. He is an author of over 20 books, including Essentials of Services Marketing and Services Marketing - People, Technology, Strategy, which have become two of the world's leading services marketing textbook.

Professor Wirtz was a banker and took the banking exam at Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Munich. He has since been an active management consultant, working with international consulting firms, including Accenture, Arthur D. Little and KPMG, and major service firms in the areas of strategy, business development and customer feedback systems. He has been involved in a number of start-ups including Dataswift and Transcribe Me.

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