Toward a deeper understanding of service marketing: The past, the present, and the future

The authors investigate the intellectual pillars of service marketing and its evolution through key subareas during 1992–2009 using a citation-based approach. They derive insights for the most promising research directions. The results reveal the dynamic influences of different research topics on service marketing. In a graphical representation, the authors further show that the main topics have changed their research orientations over time. For example, the literature on online service & technology infusion reveals an increasingly operational and customer-focused orientation. A citation-based measure of the significance of research opportunities and a comparison with the topics found in recent literature reviews indicate that research on managing business-to-business services & service infusion, complaint handling & service recovery, and enhancing and managing the service value chain are promising topics. These results assist academics and practitioners by revealing what we know about service research and what we need to know in the future.

► We provide a ranking of the influence of service articles based on citation data.
► We reveal links among research clusters, such that we illustrate which streams derive from others.
► We employ a measure to detect upcoming articles and promising research fields.
► Technology infusion becomes increasingly operational and customer focused.
► Service infusion, recovery, and enhancing the value chain are promising topics.