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A small group of pioneering founders led the creation and early evolution of the service research field. Decades later, this article shares timeless service wisdom from ten of those pioneering founders.

Bowen and Fisk specified three criteria by which to identify a pioneering founder. In total, 11 founders met the criteria (Bateson, Berry, Bitner, Brown, Chase, Edvardsson, Grönroos, Gummesson, Parasuraman, Schneider and Zeithaml) and were invited to join Bowen and Fisk – founders that also met the criteria as coauthors. Ten founders then answered a set of questions regarding their careers as service scholars and the state of the field.

Insightful reflections were provided by each of the ten pioneering founders. In addition, based on their synthesis of the reflections, Bowen and Fisk developed nine wisdom themes for service researchers to consider and to possibly act upon.

The service research field is in its fifth decade. This article offers a unique way to learn directly from the pioneering founders about the still-relevant history of the field, the founders' lives and contributions as service scholars and the founders' hopes and concerns for the service research field.

Offers the personal interpretations of authors as participant‐observers together with a data‐based analysis of the evolution of the services marketing literature. Bibliographic analysis of more than 1,000 English language, general services marketing publications, spanning four decades, provides an additional resource. Using an evolutionary metaphor as the framework, traces the literature through three stages: Crawling Out (1953‐79): Scurrying About (1980‐85); and Walking Erect (1986‐present). Shows how the literature has evolved from the early services‐marketing‐is‐different debate to the maturation of specific topics (e.g. service quality, service encounters) and the legitimization of the services marketing literature by major journals. Presents a classification and summary of publications and authors. Closes with discussion and speculation on the future of the services marketing literature.

Research on perceived risk and multiattribute models with uncertain attributes has shown that consumers are familiar with unit‐to‐unit variability of products and services, and can expect some kind of performance level distribution. This has led to the modelling of expectations along two dimensions – expected mean performance and some measure of its variance. This perspective is in accordance with theories on decision making in economics, finance and decision science. Satisfaction models, however, implicitly assume that expectations are unidimensional, and so far, no research has examined the impact of expected performance heterogeneity on the satisfaction processes. This is surprising, particularly in services marketing, as a high degree of performance heterogeneity is a frequently cited feature of service encounters. In this study, different levels of expected performance heterogeneity were manipulated using a unique laboratory simulator. The results clearly show that expected performance heterogeneity can have impact on the satisfaction process. In particular, at small levels of actual disconfirmation the presence of uncertainty in expectations improves the level of disconfirmation, shifting it towards “better than expected”, and improving overall satisfaction. At higher levels of disconfirmation, uncertainty in expectations did not show any effect on disconfirmation levels.

Many service firms measure satisfaction or quality on an attribute level. Halo effects between attributes have been shown to exist in many contexts mainly in social psychology and human resource management. In marketing, halo effects have been examined nearly exclusively in consumer decision making. Examines for the first time the existence of halo effects in consumer satisfaction. Employs a true experimental design. Expectations and performance of a single service attribute were manipulated and all other attribute levels were held constant. Finds the existence of strong halo effects which could have led to wrong conclusions and managerial actions in an applied context.

Describes how customers potentially influence the satisfaction and dissatisfaction of other customers in many service environments. Explains why service marketers and operations marketers should be aware of the impact of such customer‐to‐customer relations. Examines the issues of customer compatibility and customer behaviour, finding that the classification of compatible and incompatible behaviours is often situation‐specific. Explores how the way customers affect each other can be positively influenced.

Service employees in subordinate service roles are crucial for operational efficiency and service quality. However, the stressful nature of these roles, inappropriate hire selection, and the proliferation of job boards have created massive recruitment problems for HR departments. The purpose of this paper is to highlights the growing costs of recruiting the right candidates for service roles while offering an alternative approach to recruitment that is more efficient and effective than the traditional approach.

The study offers empirical evidence of five instances in which the use of psychometric sifting procedures reduced recruitment costs, while improving the quality of the resultant hires.

By standing the traditional recruitment process “on its head” and using psychometric tests at the start of the selection process, the recruitment process can be significantly improved. Such tests efficiently weed out unsuitable candidates before they even enter the recruitment process, leaving a smaller, better-qualified pool for possible recruitment.

Firms can safely use the psychometric sifts to select applicants according to their operational efficiency, customer orientation, and overall performance. This paper illustrates the use of both traditional questionnaire measures and situational judgment tests to remove unsuitable applicants at the start of the selection process. A real-life case study suggests that such an approach increases the hiring success rate from 6:1 to 2:1. In the opening of a new supermarket by a UK group, this process saved 73,000 hours of managers’ time, representing $1.8 million savings in opening costs.

The paper offers a viable cost-saving alternative to a growing problem for HR departments in service firms and provides directions for further research.

Provides insight into the concept of quality in the service market by investigating possible influences on consumer expectations of quality and how these expectations may be better met. Reports on a study examining the effects of certain stimuli on expectations regarding different types of service. Discovers that significant differences were found regarding the nature of the expectations as the stimuli werevaried, differences which remained after involvement and the removal of personal need effects. Offers recommendations to service providers and includes an explanation of the methodology used in the study.

Offers a fresh outlook for managing the delicate interaction between the customer and the contact employee in the service environment. Emphasizes that the quality of the customer‐employee interfacehas a great effect on customers′ perceptions of the quality and value of the service, as well as on their satisfaction. Suggests a model of how companies can improve this interface by treating employees ascustomers and customers as employees, thus developing lower cost and higher quality services and also higher levels of satisfaction on the part of both customers and employees. Recommends various steps for management to take.

Highlights the need for services advertising to receive more attention from marketing practitioners.Adapts a previously‐developed classification scheme of services for advertising. Assesses service characteristics of relevance in advertising. Develops a series of guidelines for managers seeking to develop effective services advertising.

The study addresses the effect of product usage, satisfaction derived out of the same and the brand switching behaviour in several product categories while looking at the product involvement level in the Indian marketplace. A fair amount of work has been done in the area of customer satisfaction and loyalty and many customer satisfaction indexes are available in the market using different variables and characteristics. The study attempts to understand the brand switching behaviour of the customers and its relation not with just satisfaction derived out of the product but also connects to the usage pattern of the customers and product involvement. Five categories (vehicles, television, soap, hair oil, and ice cream), involving varying levels of involvement were chosen. Cluster analysis was used to understand the grouping of the characteristics across the categories and their effect on brand switching behaviour in correlation with satisfaction and involvement level. It was observed that product usage and related level of satisfaction fail to explain the brand switching behaviour. Product involvement was found to have moderate impact on readiness to switch. The study emphasises that marketers will have to keep a constant eye to understand the usage pattern associated with their products and the satisfaction derived out of it and also at how customers involve themselves with the product to lessen the brand switching behaviour among their customers.