Services Marketing (Mcgraw-Hill Series in Marketing) [Hardcover]

Valarie A. Zeithaml (Author), Mary Jo Bitner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1996 | ISBN-10: 0070782504 | ISBN-13: 978-0070782501

This title introduces a ground-breaking approach to the services marketing course. It replaces the 4Ps with the Gaps model of service quality. The Gaps service quality model makes explicit the difference between the marketing of goods and the marketing of services, as well as the differences between the way the principles of marketing course handles the marketing mix and the way the service marketing course does. Written by extremely well-respected people in services marketing, this book is the first integrated services marketing text in the field. It covers topics of critical importance for the 1990s, such as service quality, links between marketing and other disciplines (e.g. production and operations management and human resources management), and transforming a product firm into a service firm. The text ends with six comprehensive cases.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

VALARIE ZEITHAML, University of North Carolina, received her MBA and PhD in marketing from the University of Maryland. She is the co-author of Delivering Quality Service: Balancing Customer Perceptions and Expectations (Free Press, 1990); and Driving Customer Equity: How Customer Lifetime Value Is Reshaping Corporate Strategy (with Roland Rust and Katherine Lemon, Free Press, 2000). In 2002, Driving Customer Equity won the first Berry - AMA Book Prize for the best marketing book of the past three years. Professor Zeithaml has won five teaching awards and is also the recipient of numerous research awards, including awards from the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and the Journal of Marketing Research. She has consulted with more than 50 service and product companies.

MARY JO BITNER serves as Academic Director for the Center for Services Leadership at Arizona State University. Dr. Bitner was a founding faculty member of the Center for Services Leadership created for the study of services marketing and management. Dr. Bitner has published more than 50 articles and has received a number of awards for her research in leading journals, including the Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Retailing, International Journal of Service Industry Management, and Academy of Management Executive. She has consulted with and presented seminars and workshops for numerous businesses. In 2003, Dr. Bitner was honored with the Career Contributions to the Services Discipline award by the American Marketing Association’s Services Special Interest Group.

DWAYNE D. GREMLER, Bowling Green State University, received his MBA and PhD degrees from Arizona State University. He is a passionate advocate for the research and instruction of services marketing issues. He has served as Chair of the American Marketing Association’s Services Marketing Special Interest Group and has helped organize services marketing conferences in Australia, The Netherlands, France, and the United States. He has been the recipient of several research awards and while a professor at the University of Idaho, Dr. Gremler received the First Interstate Bank Student Excellence in Award for teaching, an award determined by students in the College of Business and Economics.

TOM MAHAFFEY has degrees from St. Francis Xavier University, the University of Alberta, the Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario and Queen's University. While studying at Queen's, he was first introduced to the seminal work of Valarie Zeithaml, A. Parasuraman and Leonard Berry and relied heavily on the SERVQUAL scale for his dissertation. He immediately adopted the first U.S. edition of Services Marketing. Besides his teaching, he is engaged in research and consulting activities related to retailing and the marketing of services, and is the president of Xavier Consulting Group, Inc.

BOBBI HILTZ has degrees from the University of Prince Edward Island and Dalhousie University. She began her career with a national retailer before joining the faculty of St. Francis Xavier. She is involved in business education through both her teaching and her consulting activities. Besides her work in retailing, she is actively engaged in a research program related to customer relationship management.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 700 pages
• Publisher: Mcgraw-Hill College (January 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0070782504
• ISBN-13: 978-0070782501
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,202,809 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An important book for electronic marketers, June 28, 2001

By 

Edward E. Rigdon (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Services Marketing (Hardcover)

Essentially everything that marketers do over the Internet, from the ASP to the online retailer, is a service. Services marketers face unique challenges. Today's electronic marketer will find useful lessons in the services marketing literature. You will find either Valarie Zeithaml or Mary Jo Bitner in the byline of almost every important piece of research on services marketing published in the 1990s. Together, they have produced a textbook that is very much worthy of their reputations.

This book is fairly comprehensive, although it does not include Bitner's most recent work on consumer response to self-service technologies. Still, as an electronic marketer reads through this book, they cannot help but find themselves asking new questions about their business and how they can make it better. The book is a relatively easy read, and it is not overly academic--the theories and frameworks presented are simply tools that lead to practical solutions to real problems. There are many examples in the text; often, the company is familiar but the business practices described here are not so well known.

I strongly recommend this book to e-marketers.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, December 26, 2002

By 

"scmatasu" (NY/NJ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Services Marketing (Hardcover)

As a former student of Dr. Bitner, her course and this book made up the foundation that the Services Marketing and Management MBA program at Arizona State Uni. built from. It's an extensive review of how customers are the most important part to a service oriented business, and to neglect them at any touch point is a service failure.
This book will outline the process by which any company, be it real or virtual, can develop world class service.
This book and the SMM program at Arizona State University are highly recommended.

5.0 out of 5 stars Fundamental text to know about Services Marketing, November 25, 2009

By 

Subrata Chattopadhyay - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Services Marketing (Hardcover)

This is a wonderful text to know the fundamentals of Services Marketing. Everywhere we see mess ups in service delivery. Awareness of the basic concepts presented herein will help avoid many a pitfall and also help pave the way for a win-win situation in services marketing.
This book presents the GAPS model very lucidly and provides many case studies to clarify the concepts.
A great investment to learn about this important component of the economy.