Provocative Conference Presentation Proposes New Way of Looking at Services
In
October 2004, Christopher Lovelock gave a plenary presentation at the
annual Frontiers in Services conference at the University of Miami and
co-sponsored by the American Marketing Association. His topic, whose tongue-in-cheek
title and seasonal graphics reflected the fact that it was being delivered
on the morning of Halloween, was “The
Future of Services Marketing: Trick or Treat for Practitioners, Customers,
Students, and Academics?” The presentation came two years after
he presented a competitive track paper, titled “Do We Need to Rethink
the Field of Services Marketing” at an earlier Frontiers conference
held at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. The answer to that earlier
question was now a resounding “yes!”
The Frontiers presentation, which summarized the Lovelock and Gummesson article and added new material on the implications of the proposed Rental/Access paradigm, aroused great interest among the audience, which included some of the field’s most prominent scholars as well as a multinational group of researchers, not all of whom had yet read the JSR article. The readiness of participants to explore new frameworks became clear when, after a few introductory slides, Christopher asked them to write down on paper, using a 5-point Likert scale, the extent of their agreement with the existing paradigm (see Slide 9). To prevent cheating, they then had to share their response with the person next to them. A show of hands, converted to estimated percentages by a moderator, revealed:
Strongly Agree (with existing paradigm) 0%
Somewhat agree 35
Neither agree nor disagree 15
Somewhat disagree 35
Disagree strongly 15
Following the presentation and positive observations by two respondents,
discussion was opened to the floor and a lively discussion ensued. It
would have been interesting, says Christopher, to have taken a poll at
the conclusion of the session to see what further shift had taken place
following presentation of the arguments for abandoning the old paradigm
and adoption of the new one.
This page maintained by Tim Lovelock webmaster@lovelock.com
Last Updated 2005-03-29