With the rise in deregulated service-based economies in developed countries over the last 40 years, an understanding of the marketing of services is essential to the marketing student, researcher and practitioner. This four-volume collection is structured around the evolution of services marketing scholarship from 1970 to the present, giving an unprecedented, detailed account of the relationship between the theory and practice of services marketing and the changing social, economic and technical environments over time. Each volume takes a distinct time period and theme as its subject. Volumes One to Three offer the last word on services marketing research of the 20th century, with volume Four looking towards a unified marketing approach for the current century.
Volume One: The Development of Ideas for the Marketing of Services describes the evolutionary stages of research that established the credibility of services marketing.
Volume Two: The Creation of the Sub-Discipline of Services Marketing covers the period in which service marketing became recognised as a sub-discipline of marketing, with its own boundaries and debates.
Volume Three: A Focus on Customer Experience and the Changing Roles of Customers and Consumers discusses the scholarship of the late twentieth-century which started to foreshadow changing consumer experiences brought about by technology.
Volume Four: Towards a Unifying Marketing Approach through Service treats the service-dominant logic of marketing with a focus on the debates seeking to eliminate the division between business-to-business marketing and business-to-consumer marketing.