INTRODUCTION TO EMERGING TRENDS AND CONCLUSIONS

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INTRODUCTION

Since the beginning of the 20th century, most economically advanced western societies have evolved from predominantly manufacturing-based to predominantly service-based economies (Bell 1973; Fitz- simmons and Fitzsimmons 1998; Heskett 1987; Mills 1986; Rust et al. 1996; Zeithaml and Bitner 2000). This transition has been especially dramatic in the United States (Ginsberg and Vojta 1981), where from 1948 to 1978 the service sector increased from 54% to 66% of GNP. A similar trend can be discerned in employment. From 1948 to 1977, employment in the service sector has risen from 27.2 million to 54.4 million, more than the total number of people employed in 1948. Currently, the services sector employs approximately 80% of the workforce and accounts for about 75% of GNP (Fitzsimmons and Fitzsimmons 1998; Zeithaml and Bitner 2000). Apart from national indica- tors, trade in services is growing globally. For the United States, the positive trade balance for services has helped to offset the negative trade balance for goods (Henkoff 1994; Zeithaml and Bitner 2000).

The increased importance of the service sector regarding both national economies and international trade has led to increased attention by marketers on the marketing of services during the last three decades (Swartz and Iacobucci 2000). The marketing field has moved quite rapidly beyond mere definitional issues to the development of models of service management and organization (Swartz et al. 1992). A major research topic in the marketing field currently is service quality (Parasuraman et al. 1985, 1988, 1991; Rust and Oliver 1994). This emphasis on service quality in marketing can be explained to a large extent by the fact that several authors have demonstrated a positive relationship between (service) quality and economic performance (Anderson and Fornell 1994; Buzzell and Gale 1987; Reichheld and Sasser 1990; Rust et al. 1995).

In Section 2, we will explore the nature of services. In Section 3, we will discuss the service encounter, which is at the heart of the majority of service organizations. During the service encounter, service quality is rendered to the customer in the interplay among customer, customer-contact service employee, and service organization. In Section 4, we will focus on defining service quality and discuss the conceptual model of service quality, a framework for the management of service quality. In Section 6, we will describe a measurement instrument, SERVQUAL, that has been derived from this model. In Section 7, we will present a critical review of the conceptual model of service quality and the SERVQUAL instrument.

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