Purpose: The customer contact approach to service has been at the core of service theory since the 1970s. It suggests that the potential operating efficiency of a service is inversely related to the extent of customer contact with the provider's operations and that various service design issues...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a retrospective look at the search for deep indicators that explain service performance as well as an illustrative example of this kind of work. Design/methodology/approach – The work described involved constructing a complex model, using it...

Purpose – In their seminal book, The Experience Economy , Pine and Gilmore point out that customers buy experiences and are willing to pay a steep premium for them and hence service organizations should try to make them more fun. The purpose of this paper (and the premise of the recent book)...