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ESMT 614: Services Management Report a Broken Link

Services lie at the hub of economic activity in many societies. In our society, and in that of other industrialized economies, the service sector employs a large and growing proportion of the workforce. As a result, managers must learn how a service strategy can contribute to a competitive advantage for their organizations. This course focuses on the marketing and operations components required to develop and implement a service-oriented strategy. Topics include the following:

  • the nature of services and their distinctive characteristics
  • service quality issues and approaches for measuring service quality
  • managing service operations including forecasting demand for services
  • managing capacity and demand

Suggested Readings

Week 1

Reading 1: Katzan Jr, H. (2009). Cloud software service: Concepts, technology, economics. Service Science, 1(4), 256–269.
Reading 2: Baines, T. S., Lightfoot, H. W., Benedettini, O., & Kay, J. M. (2009). The servitization of manufacturing: A review of literature and reflection on future challenges. Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management, 20(5), 547–567.
Reading 3: Industry Canada. (2014, October 1). Canadian service industries.
Reading 4: Industry Canada. (2019, July 31). Research and business intelligence. 
Reading 5: Greenwood, J. (2015, April 1). The services industry: Canada’s secret economic playground? Maclean’s.
Reading 6: Loungani, P., Mishra, S., Papageorgiou, C., & Wang, K. (2017). World trade in services: Evidence from a new dataset [Working paper]. International Monetary Fund. 
Reading 7: Dooe, M., & Nickisch, C. (Producers). (2018, August 28). Understanding digital strategy [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/ideacast/2018/08/understanding-digital-strategy.html

Reading 8: Pine, B. J., & Gilmore, J. H. (2011). The experience economy: Work is theatre & every business a stage. Harvard Business Press.
Reading 9: Zomerdijk, L. G., & Voss, C. A. (2010). Service design for experience-centric services. Journal of Service Research, 13(1), 67-82.

Week 2

Reading 10: Bitner, M. J., Ostrom, A. L., & Morgan, F. N. (2008). Service blueprinting: A practical technique for service innovation. California Management Review, 50(3), 66–94.
Reading 11: Barrett, M., Davidson, E., Prabhu, J., & Vargo, S. L. (2015). Service innovation in the digital age: Key contributions and future directions. MIS Quarterly, 39(1), 135–154.
Reading 12: D’Emidio, T., Dorton, D., & Duncan, E. (2014). Service innovation in a digital world. Mckinsey Quarterly, (4), 54–62.
Reading 13: Vondrasek, M. R. (2014). Redefining service innovation at Starwood. Mckinsey Quarterly, (4), 63–67.
Reading 14: Prange, C., & Schlegelmilch, B. B. (2018). Managing innovation dilemmas: The cube solution. Business Horizons, 61(2), 309–322. 
Reading 15: Van der Aa, W., & Elfring, T. (2002). Realizing innovation in services. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 18(2), 155–171. 
Reading 16: Patrício, L., & Fisk, R. P. (2013). Creating new services. In R. P. Fisk, L. C. Harris, & R. Bennett (Eds.), Serving customers: Global services marketing perspective (185–207). Tilde University Press.

Week 3

Reading 17: Ghobadian, A., Speller, S., & Jones, M. (1994). Service quality: Concepts and models. International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, 11(9), 43–66.
Reading 18: Ding, D. X., Hu, P. J., & Sheng, O. L. (2011). e-SELFQUAL: A scale for measuring online self-service quality. Journal of Business Research, 64, 508–515.
Reading 19: McKie, M. (2013, November 20). IKEA—servicescape [Video]. YouTube.
Reading 20: Hanks, L., & Line, N. D. (2018). The restaurant social servicescape: Establishing a nomological framework. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 74, 13–21. 

Week 4

Reading 21: International Labour Organization (n.d.). Sectoral country profiles. 
Reading 22: Chuang, P. T. (2007). Combining service blueprint and FMEA for service design. The Service Industries Journal, 27(2), 91–104.
Reading 23: Hutchins, B. (2016). “We don’t need no stinking smartphones!” Live stadium sports events, mediatization, and the non-use of mobile media. Media, Culture & Society, 38(3), 420–436.
Reading 24: Hummel, E., & Murphy, K. S. (2011). Using service blueprinting to analyze restaurant service efficiency. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 52(3), 265–272.
Reading 25: Szende, P., & Dalton, A. (2015). Service blueprinting: Shifting from a storyboard to a scorecard. Journal of Foodservice Business Research, 18(3), 207–225.

Week 5

Reading 26: Kietzmann, J. H., Hermkens, K., McCarthy, I. P., & Silvestre, B. S. (2011). Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media. Business Horizons, 54(3), 241–251.
Reading 27: Gallaugher, J., & Ransbotham, S. (2010). Social media and customer dialog management at Starbucks. MIS Quarterly Executive, 9(4), 197–212.
Reading 28: Forman, A. M., Thelen, S., & Shapiro, T. (2015). Domestic versus offshore service providers: The impact of cost, time, and quality sacrifices on consumer choice. Journal of Service Management, 26(4), 608–624.
Reading 29: DINTEC. (2016, February 25). Mega trends in the professional services industry [Video]. YouTube.

Week 6

Reading 30: Bustinza, O. F., Parry, G. C., & Vendrell-Herrero, F. (2013). Supply and demand chain management: The effect of adding services to product offerings. Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, 18(6), 618–629.
Reading 31: Engineerguy. (2010, December 20). Why the other line is likely to move faster [Video]. YouTube.
Reading 32: Kimes, S. E. (1989). The basics of yield management. Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, 30(3), 14–19.
Reading 33: McMahon-Beattie, U. (2011). Trust, fairness and justice in revenue management: Creating value for the consumer. Journal of Revenue & Pricing Management, 10(1), 44-46. 
Reading 34: Da Silva, K. C. N. (2012, August 3). The impact of yield management in the airline industry on customers’ feelings of price fairness. Aerlines Magazine, (53), 1–6.
Reading 35: Sahut, J. M., & Hikkerova, L. (2009). The impact of internet on pricing strategies in the tourism industry. Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce, 14(1), 1–8.
Reading 36: Varini, K., & Sirsi, P. (2012). Social media and revenue management; where should the two meet? Journal of Technology Management for Growing Economies, 3(1), 33–46.

Week 7

Reading 37: Lee, S., Cho, C., Hong, E. K., & Yoon, B. (2016). Forecasting mobile broadband traffic: Application of scenario analysis and Delphi method. Expert Systems with Applications, 44, 126–137.
Reading 38: Chen, H., Chiang, R. H., & Storey, V. C. (2012). Business intelligence and analytics: From big data to big impact. MIS Quarterly, 36(4), 1165–1188.
Reading 39: Chambers, J. C., Mullick, S. K., & Smith, D. D. (1971). How to choose the right forecasting technique. Harvard Business Review, 49(4), 45–70. 
Reading 40: Bitner, M. J. (1992). Servicescapes: The impact of physical surroundings on customers and employees. The Journal of Marketing, 56(2), 57–71. 
Reading 41: Stewart, D. M. (2003). Piecing together service quality: A framework for robust service. Production and Operations Management, 12(2), 246–265.

Week 8

Reading 42: Chopra, S., & Lariviere, M. A. (2005). Managing service inventory to improve performance. MIT Sloan Management Review, 47(1), 56.
You will be able to find PDFs of the following readings using Google Scholar.

Reading 43: Adam, M., Wessel, M., & Benlian, A. (2021). AI-based chatbots in customer service and their effects on user compliance. Electronic Markets, 31(2), 427–445.

Reading 44: Arsenijevic, U., & Jovic, M. (2019, September). Artificial intelligence marketing: Chatbots. In 2019 international conference on artificial intelligence: applications and innovations (IC-AIAI) (pp. 19–193). IEEE.

Reading 45: Chong, T., Yu, T., Keeling, D. I., & de Ruyter, K. (2021). AI-chatbots on the services frontline addressing the challenges and opportunities of agency. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 63, 102735.

Reading 46: Gupta, A., Hathwar, D., & Vijayakumar, A. (2020). Introduction to AI chatbots. International Journal of Engineering Research and Technology, 9(7), 255–258.

Reading 47: Nicolescu, L., & Tudorache, M. T. (2022). Human-computer interaction in customer service: The experience with AI chatbots—a systematic literature review. Electronics, 11(10), 1579.

Reading 48: Przegalinska, A., Ciechanowski, L., Stroz, A., Gloor, P., & Mazurek, G. (2019). In bot we trust: A new methodology of chatbot performance measures. Business Horizons, 62(6), 785–797.

Reading 49: Stoilova, E. (2021). AI chatbots as a customer service and support tool. ROBONOMICS: The Journal of the Automated Economy, 2, 21–21.

Selected COVID-19 articles/post-pandemic articles

Greeven, M. J., Yu, H., & Shan, J. (2020, June 29). Why some retailers are thriving amid disruption. MIT Sloan Management Review. https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/why-some-retailers-are-thriving-amid-disruption/
D’Auria, G., De Smet, A., Gagnon, C., Goran, J., Maor, D., & Steele, R. (2020, May 15). Reimagining the post-pandemic organization. McKinsey Quarterly Online. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/reimagining-the-post-pandemic-organization
Permanent Equity. (2020, April 23). Owner/operator COVID-19 impact survey. https://www.permanentequity.com/writings/owner-operator-covid-19-impact-survey-results (Note: Please review the charts at the bottom of the post.)
Agur, I., Martinez Peria, S., & Rochon, C. (2020). Digital financial services and the pandemic: Opportunities and risks for emerging and developing economies (Special Series on COVID-19). International Monetary Fund.
Hobbs, J. E. (2020). Food supply chains during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, 68(2), 171–176.
Isautier, J. M., Copp, T., Ayre, J., Cvejic, E., Meyerowitz-Katz, G., Batcup, C., Bonner, C., Dodd, R., Nickel, B., Pickles, K., Cornell, S., Dakin, T., & McCaffery, K. J. (2020). People’s experiences and satisfaction with telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia: Cross-sectional survey study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 22(12), e24531.
Babapour Chafi, M., Hultberg, A., & Bozic Yams, N. (2022). Post-pandemic office work: Perceived challenges and opportunities for a sustainable work environment. Sustainability, 14(1), 294. https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/su14010294
Salvietti, G., Ziliani, C., Teller, C., Ieva, M., & Ranfagni, S. (2022). Omnichannel retailing and post-pandemic recovery: building a research agenda. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJRDM-10-2021-0485/full/html
de Souza, T. S. P., Miyahira, R. F., Matheus, J. R. V., de Brito Nogueira, T. B., Maragoni-Santos, C., Barros, F. F. C., Costa Antunes, A. E., & Fai, A. E. C. (2022). Food services in times of uncertainty: Remodeling operations, changing trends, and looking into perspectives after the COVID-19 pandemic. Trends in Food Science & Technology. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8746399/