This Handbook brings together 49 international specialists to address an issue of increasing importance for the world’s post-industrial economies; innovation as it relates to services.

The literature on how customers make their service-provider choices largely distinguishes between private and business customers, and companies’ offerings have been separated accordingly. This study takes a closer look at the possible differences between these two customer categories. The...

Although brands are acknowledged as significant assets in a firm's value creation and differentiation process, branding literature often describes opposing perspectives and contradictory demands. This article develops a framework of three strategic brand management archetypes that provide new...

When we visit a retail outlet, we go there to complete some type of shopping goal. These goals may be very specific and precisely planned prior to entering the store, or more abstract, and something we think of on the spur of the moment. The stores may display tens of thousands of different...

This commentary is about the article, "Satisfaction with Service Recovery: Perceived Justice and Emotional Responses" (Rio-Lanza, Vázquez-Casielles, and Diaz-Martin, this issue). Never before have so many services been bought, sold, and consumed as they are today. Competition today is fierce....

This paper examines the relationship among the complexity of customer needs, customer centricity, innovativeness, service differentiation, and business performance within the context of companies that have made a service transition from pure goods providers to service providers. A survey of 332...

Customers and employees can co-create a resolution following a service failure through integrating their resources. Their activities and interactions during resource-integration shape the customers' service recovery experiences. Prior research overlooks resource integration between all involved...

Views on industrial service have conceptually progressed from the output of the provider’s production process to the result of an interaction process in which the customer also is involved. Although there are attempts to be customer-oriented, especially when the focus is on solutions, an...

Purpose –This paper explores and expands the roles of customers and companies in creating value by introducing a new a customer-based approach to service. The customer’s logic is examined as being the foundation of a customer-based marketing and business logic. Design/methodology/approach...