Provocative Conference Presentation and Journal Article Propose New Way of Looking at Services

For 25 years, the academic field of services has been based on the paradigm that all services share four unique characteristics—intangibility, heterogeneity (or variability), inseparability of production and consumption (or simultaneity), and perishability—that make them distinctively different from goods. In an article entitled “Whither Services Marketing? In Search of New Paradigm and Fresh Perspectives” in the August 2004 issue of the Journal of Service Research, Professor Lovelock and his co-author, Professor Evert Gummesson of Stockholm University, challenge received wisdom and demonstrate that there are far too many exceptions to justify the continued existence of this paradigm. The distinguishing characteristic of services, they argue, is that no transfer of ownership takes place, but value is created through rental and access. Read More

In October 2004, Christopher Lovelock was invited to deliver 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!” Read More

Rebuilding a Company’s Orientation and Execution around Effective Service Marketing Planning

2004 was a busy and very rewarding year,” observes Christopher Lovelock. “This ‘news item’ captures the richness and satisfaction of one of the most stimulated professional assignments of my career. “For reasons of confidentiality, I cannot discuss many of my professional activities on behalf of corporate clients. But I can reveal that the year brought to a close a two-year project involving delivery of 11 training sessions, that I designed and helped teach for a large American corporation embarked on a cultural and strategic change that would use a marketing, customer-oriented, service focus to achieve profitable growth. Read More

Conference Presentation in Sweden Addresses Need to Focus on Services in Emerging Economies

Every two years, the Service Research Center at Karlstad University in south-central Sweden co-sponsors a conference on a theme broadly related to quality in service (QUIS). These conferences alternate between Karlstad and a North American site. In 2002, QUIS8 was held at the University of Victoria in BC, Canada. In June, 2004, when QUIS9 returned to Karlstad, Christopher Lovelock was an invited plenary presenter. He spoke about a new research project on which he is starting work with several collaborators on several continents, “Developing Services for the Bottom of the Economic Pyramid: A Management Challenge and Research Opportunity.”
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Teaching at Yale

MBA Course. As an adjunct professor at the Yale School of Management, Christopher Lovelock has developed an MBA elective course, “Services Marketing: Strategies for Nonprofits and For-profits.” This half-semester course, first introduced in Spring 2001, is offered annually. Key topics include developing and enhancing a marketing orientation, positioning strategy, marketing multi-site services, revenue management, evaluating new service initiatives, creating and maintaining customer loyalty, transitioning from start-up to a viable service business, and achieving service leadership.

The underlying goal of the course is to compare and contrast the application of service marketing strategies across different industries and to highlight key distinctions and parallels between managing not-for-profit and for-profit service organizations. Class sessions include discussion of cases (including some new materials developed specially for this course), lectures, guest speakers, and a variety of real-world exercises designed to link theory and practice. (2005 Course syllabus)

Participation in Yale SOM – The Goldman Sachs Foundation Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures.
For the past two years, Professor Lovelock has been invited to deliver a master class at the Annual Conference of the Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures, co-sponsored by the Yale School of Management and the Goldman Sachs Foundation. At the May 2004 conference in New York, his well-received class “What Do We Need to Know and How Do We Find Out? Conducting Marketing Research” addressed the efficient and effective use of marketing research in planning nonprofit marketing ventures.

Round-the-World Trip Includes Visits to Arizona, Australia, Singapore, Thailand, and India

On February 6, 2004, a good time to get away from a truly arctic New England winter—note photos taken near his home on Cape Cod—Christopher Lovelock set off from Boston for Phoenix on American Airlines on a the first leg of a six-week, round-the-world trip (Read Christopher’s observations on how Round the World Travel Can Be Easier on the Pocket—and the Body—than Round Trip.)

Presentation at American Marketing Association’s Winter Educator’s Conference. Among the sessions at this annual conference was one sponsored by the Service Special Interest Group (ServSIG) on teaching services marketing, which featured presentations by the authors of several leading textbooks. Christopher highlighted features of the newly published 5th edition of Services Marketing: People, Technology, Strategy, the first to feature his new co-author, Jochen Wirtz of the National University of Singapore, whom he had earlier invited to work with him on developing an Asian adaptation of the 4th edition in 2001. Although Jochen was unable to attend the conference, Christopher introduced him (by PowerPoint) at the beginning of his presentation.

Visit to Pearson Education and Australian Co-Author in Melbourne. From Phoenix, Christopher flew Southwest Airlines to Los Angeles. This cost a little extra, but continuing on a “oneworld”-alliance partner carrier would have entailed a time-consuming routing via Las Vegas (including change of flight) in advance of the 7,800 mile, 15-1/2 nonstop flight on Qantas to Melbourne. Safely arrived and rested in Australia’s second largest city, he met with his editors at Pearson Education Australia to discuss the upcoming third edition of Services Marketing: An Asia-Pacific and Australian Perspective. Afterwards, he stayed with his one of his two-co-authors on this book, Prof. Rhett Walker of LaTrobe U., Bendigo, Vic. Christopher had also hoped to visit his other co-author, Prof. Paul Patterson of the U. of New South Wales in Sydney, but the latter was on assignment in Thailand at the time (and by the time Christopher reached Bangkok a couple of weeks later, Paul was back in Australia).

This book not only provides detailed coverage of services marketing in Australian and New Zealand, but also includes numerous Asia-Pacific examples and offers a distinctive Australian perspective on this region. The structure of the text has been specially tailored to the needs of Australian and New Zealand business schools and to academic programs taught by ANZ faculty in Asian locations.

From Melbourne, Christopher traveled to Brisbane, where he stayed with his brother Jeremy and family for a long weekend, and visited Prof. Janet McColl-Kennedy of The University of Queensland (who had hosted his three-month visit in 1999) and Prof. Lorelle Frazer of Griffith University with whom he recently co-authored the popular case, “Aussie Pooch Mobile,” about the innovative, Queensland-based, dog-washing franchise. They are now working together on developing a new research project.

Activities at National University of Singapore. It was late February by the time Christopher arrived in Singapore, where he was the guest of NUS Business School at the National University of Singapore, where his co-author, Prof. Jochen Wirtz is based. A special event was organized to mark the publication of the 5th edition of their book, Services Marketing: People, Technology, Strategy. Following remarks by business school Dean Christopher Tan and senior executives of Pearson Education, Professors Lovelock and Wirtz both delivered short presentations to the sizeable audience and were subsequently interviewed by journalists. A reception and book signing followed.

While at NUS, Dr Lovelock also gave an invited research seminar presentation to faculty members and doctoral students, describing his research with Prof. Gummeson of Stockholm University on developing a new paradigm for services marketing. The visit also provided an opportunity for meetings with other researchers, including Prof. Lu Xiongwen of Fudan University, Shanghai, who is one of the co-authors of the second edition of Services Marketing in Asia (then nearing completion). In Singapore, Christopher was able to stay with his cousin, an engineer working for an international company, and his wife, who works for the British High Commission (Embassy). They were joined for a few days by Christopher’s sister, Rachel, a travel and lifestyle writer who lives in Bali.

Guest of Pearson Education IndoChina in Thailand. From Singapore, Christopher flew to Bangkok where he was the guest of Pearson Education IndoChina, which had recently published a Thai translation (ISBN 974-904-803-2) of Lovelock and Wright’s Principles of Service Marketing and Management 2/e. Professional highlights of the visit included a television interview with a leading business journalist, discussing the new book and the implications of services for the fast-developing Thai economy. An English-language discussion was punctuated by periodic summaries in Thai. On the tourism front, Christopher noted emerging opportunities in medical tourism, whereby foreign patients fly for elective treatment and surgery (often cosmetic) in modern western-style hospitals, commonly located in the capital or near a resort area, and are cared for by specialists trained in leading American, European, or Australian hospitals. The cost of the travel, treatment, and a period of supervised recuperation amounts to significantly less than the treatment alone in the patient’s home country. He also argued that the future tourist boom would come not from distant markets in Europe, North America, and Australasia but from increasingly affluent market segments in China and India, each only 3-4 hours travel away.

This was Christopher’s first visit to Thailand and he was very appreciative of Pearson’s warm and gracious hospitality, including evening and weekend excursions that provided insights into the people, lifestyles, culture and architecture of this predominantly Buddhist country. He learned that Thailand’s historical roots include extended wars with Burma (now Myanmar) and interactions with southern China. Today, significant segments of the Thai population are recognizably of ethnic Burmese or Chinese descent. Much in the national news was the ongoing problem of violence in the southern peninsula of Thailand, where Muslims (who are ethnic Malays and account for some 5% of the national population) are seeking to assert their own identity and control their own future. As in so many parts of the world, arbitrarily-drawn 19th or 20th century frontiers continue to generate conflict decades downstream.

Involvement in Indian “Service Summit”. The next stop on the journey west was India, where Christopher’s visit was hosted by Thomas Cook (India) Ltd. (TCIL), a major travel services company, with additional involvement from the Indian branch of Pearson Education. Christopher worked closely with Professor V. S. Mahesh, formerly an executive of the famous Taj Hotels chain, and now heading the Centre for Research, Education, and Audit in the Management (CREAM) of Services at Britain’s University of Buckingham. Together, they delivered two “Service Management Summits,” one in Mumbai (Bombay) and the other in Chennai formerly Madras), located on India’s east and west coasts, respectively.

The participants were senior executives of TCIL’s clients and travel partners. The summits, invitation-only events, were hosted by TCIL’s dynamic CEO, Mr Ashwini Kakkar. They generated stimulating discussions with participants, received significant publicity, and resulted in a number of stories in the business media on the role of services in the fast-growing Indian economy. Christopher was featured in an interview with the well-known biweekly, Business India.

Christopher had time to explore Mumbai, both with his hosts and a guide, and agreed with the Lonely Planet guidebook that “It may come as a surprise to find that Mumbai is an easy city to enjoy.” This port city of 16 million is located on an island created by fill during the colonial era and contains some striking 19th century public buildings constructed by the British. On the east coast, Professor Mahesh, a naïve of Chennai, ensured that Christopher was exposed to the rich history of this coastline which was, sadly, subsequently badly hit by the devastating tsunami of the following December.

The last stop was in Delhi, where Christopher met with senior representatives of Pearson to plan a new Indian adaptation of his book. Old Delhi and New Delhi are side by side, with the spacious modern capital (again, built during the Raj) forming a remarkable contrast to the noise, bustle, color, and congestion of the old city. From Delhi, he flew to London for a family reunion—he and his three siblings live on four different continents but remain close—and finally back to Boston, his starting point.

French and Spanish-language Books Break New Ground

October 2004 saw publication of the 2nd (promoted as 5th) edition of Lovelock, Wirtz and Lapert, Marketing des Services (Paris: Pearson Education; ISBN 2-7440-7026). The previous edition, published in 1999, was well received and has been used in business schools across France and in several other countries. Based on the 5th edition of Services Marketing, this new French edition was a collaborative venture between Christopher and his long-time colleague Denis Lapert of Reims Management School in France. Denis has added numerous examples from France and other francophone countries, as well as relevant statistics, articles previously published in French journals, and several cases set in France.

The French book follows hard on the heels of a Spanish-language adaptation —Lovelock, Reynoso, D’Andrea, Huete, Administración de Servicios (Mexico City: Pearson Educación de México; ISBN 970-26-0388-9). Christopher says that he deplores the practice of direct translations of American texts. For the Spanish-language book, he recruited three leading service marketing academics, each of whom he had known for years and had international reputations in their own right: Javier Reynoso of Tec de Monterrey, often described as the “MIT of Mexico”; Guillermo D’Andrea of IAE, Universidad Austral in Buenos Aires, arguably Argentina’s leading business school; and Luis Huete of IESE, the well-known international business school in Barcelona, Spain. With Javier as the project coordinator and Christopher as advisor, they worked to create a “global” Spanish-language text, offering relevant local and regional examples and statistics.

Says Christopher: “This new book, while recognizably a derivative of Services Marketing, stands in stark contrast to its predecessor, Mercadotecnia de Servicios, which was a word-for-word translation of the 3rd edition. The first book did well, but it was an export, lacking any customization to the economic and cultural contexts in which most students and faculty would be working. In addition to incorporation of examples, statistics, cases, and readings from Spain and across Latin America, I insisted that that the chapter text of Administración de Servicios should also break ground in another area, attempting to employ language that would be accessible to a “global” Spanish-speaking audience. As in English and French, there are transatlantic and even regional variations in Spanish. Mercadotecnia was well received in Mexico but not in Spain, where it was viewed as “too Mexican” (even the word “Mercadotecnia” is a problem—everywhere else in the Spanish-speaking world, people speak of “el Marketing”!)

“We agreed upfront that although standard Latin- American conventions would trump those of Spain when the two differed and no neutral alternative could be found, we would avoid use of regional words and idioms. In the final round I, a native English-speaker with only limited command of Spanish, was called upon to arbitrate between a series of alternative words and phrases. I solved the problem as best I could with the aid of a very good dictionary. A linguistic expert would doubtless find some flaws—in particular, some materials were translated and edited through the offices of the Mexican publisher. But the result, we hope, is a more accessible, relevant, and user-friendly book. Perhaps it will start a trend.”

Publication of 5th Edition of Services Marketing

Late November saw publication by Prentice Hall of the fifth edition of Services Marketing: People, Technology, Strategy (see brochure). The new edition comprises 15 chapters, eight readings, and 15 cases. Joining Christopher Lovelock as co-author of this highly regarded text is Professor Jochen Wirtz of the National University of Singapore.

Lovelock has this to say about his co-author and the new edition. “Jochen Wirtz and I have been friends since we first met at a service management conference in France in 1992. Like myself, Jochen has a very international perspective, having grown up in Germany and then spending seven years in the UK, during which time he obtained a PhD at the London Business School. Married to a Malaysian, he now makes his home in Singapore, where he is a tenured associate professor of marketing at the National University of Singapore. Over the years, we have collaborated on a variety of projects, including cases, articles, and conference papers. In 2000, I invited Jochen to undertake an adaptation of Services Marketing (4th edition) for the Asian market. This project worked so well, that I then asked him to join me in preparing the 5th US edition. We’re very excited about this new book, which represents a major restructuring of the content and significant updating.

Highlights of 2002-2003

Helping to Organize Service Research Conference in France

The Service Special Interest Group (ServSIG) of the American Marketing Association organizes a biennial service research conference, moving from one continent to another to reach a global audience. Dr. Lovelock served on the committee for the 2003 conference. More than 100 participants from 20 countries on five continents attended the conference, held in June in the historic city of Reims, France, on the campus of the Reims Management School. He organized and participated in a plenary session on new developments in services marketing and, with Professor Evert Gummesson of Stockholm University, presented a session on “Services as ‘Rentals”: Exploring the Characteristics of Non-Ownership.” One of the highlights of the conference, which participants still talk about, was the Gala Dinner, an optional extra that almost everyone chose to attend. At Christopher’s suggestion, it was held in the champagne cellars of the famous firm of Möet et Chandon, whose origins lie with the monk, Dom Perignon, who first created this famous sparkling wine. Many participants will probably remember this evening, which included the service of four different types of champagne, three white and one pink, long after they have retired from teaching and researching services marketing!

A Thought-Provoking Visit to Egypt

Not long after returning home to Cape Cod from giving two management seminars in Cairo, his first visit to Egypt, Christopher Lovelock ran into a local acquaintance from church, an educated man of around 60. “Where have your travels taken you to, lately?” he asked. “Egypt,” was the response. The man’s draw dropped and, with a penetrating look, he asked in a tone of surprise bordering on disapproval “Why-ever would you want to go there? Christopher takes up the story: Read More

Recent Book Translations

Reflecting growing interest around the world in learning how to market and manage service businesses, four new translations of Service Marketing and Management by Christopher Lovelock and Lauren Wright were published during 2002-2003.

A Brazilian-Portuguese adaptation, Serviços: Marketing e Gestão, was published in 2003 by Editora Saraiva of São Paulo
(ISBN 85-02-03278-X).

A Chinese Traditional Language edition was published in 2003 by Pearson Education Taiwan and Yeh Yeh Book Gallery Co. of Taipei
(ISBN 957-8555-70-9).

Pearson Education Indochina Ltd. Of Bangkok published a Thai translation in 2003
(ISBN 974-904-803-2)

Hakutou Shobo of Tokyo published a Japanese translation in 2002
(ISBN 4-561-65127-6)

Lecturing on Services Marketing in China, Sept. 2002

To mark the recent publication of the Chinese translation of Services Marketing , Dr Lovelock was invited to China in mid-September to give a series of lectures at several major business schools.  Although he had been to Hong Kong on several previous occasions, this was his first visit to the People's Republic. Business education is booming in China and as the economy develops, there is growing interest in service management. In Shanghai, he was the guest of Fudan University, where the book's translator, Professor Lu Xiongwen, is chair of marketing and associate dean of the School of Management. In Beijing, he was hosted by Renmin University Press, the book's publishers, and gave lectures at both Renmin University of China and at Peking University. He was very appreciative of the warm hospitality he received in both cities and was amazed and delighted to be greeted by at the main entrance to Renmin's campus by a 50-foot banner erected in his honor.   

Although Christopher had been to Hong Kong on several previous occasions, this was his first visit to the People's Republic.  He comments: "I was struck by the scale of the investment in infrastructure in both of these enormous cities, which have populations in excess of 13 million.  Each boasts huge new airports, with the one in Shanghai being linked to the city center by a new German-designed MAGLEV line whose trains, when operational, will be capable of speeds of up to 420 km/h (260 mph).  However, the two city  centers are very different in character.

"Shanghai is bisected by the wide Huangpu River, which is tidal and carries an immense volume of shipping. The contrast between the north and south banks of the river is striking. On the north bank lies the Bund,  whose many early 20th century buildings reflect the influence of the American, British, and French businesses that dominated trade during that period. The south bank remained agricultural land until the 1990s, when development began on a modern financial and commercial center, now dominated by a giant telecom tower. 

"Little remains of historic Beijing, except for the carefully preserved "Forbidden City" (known today as the Palace Museum) which fronts on Tiananmen Square, and a few other fascinating imperial sites, such as the Summer Palace and the Temple of Heaven. Modern Beijing features wide boulevards, paralleled by bicycle paths wide enough for four people to ride abreast, but the buildings either side have no distinctive character.  A highlight of the visit was an extended hike up a very steep section of the Great Wall, located about an hour's drive north of Beijing."

Visit to South Africa

Following his visit to China, Christopher flew from Hong Kong to Johannesburg, where he was the guest of Professor Roger Sinclair of the University of The Witwatersrand.  In addition to teaching some classes at "Wits", he gave a number of presentations for the Marketing Federation of Southern Africa in both Jo'burg and Cape Town.  "South Africa defies easy characterization," he says.  "As the largest economy in Africa it displays many of the characteristics of a first world country, with freeways, highrises, and sprawling suburbs reminiscent of those in Southern California or Australia.  Yet the third world is very evident in the poverty of the African townships. 

"However, despite the daunting problems it faces, the country has made extraordinary progress during the past decade and is becoming a dynamic multiracial society.  I had some firsthand exposure to the tourism industry through visits to a game park, the "Cradle of Humankind" World Heritage site at Sterkfontein, the beautiful wine country of Western Cape province, and Cape Town harbor's very attractive Victoria & Alfred waterfront development, which claims to be the single most widely visited site in the southern hemisphere (eat your heart out, Sydney!).  The University of Cape Town must have the world's most unusual business school campus, being located in a brilliant renovation of a nineteenth century prison. While in Cape Town, it was a thrill to climb to the flat summit of Table Mountain, from which one can see not only the city but also the Cape of Good Hope and both the Indian and Atlantic Oceans." 
    

Conference Presentations

Christopher Lovelock attended the 8th annual Quality in Services (QUIS 8) conference at the University of Victoria, BC, Canada in early June, presenting a paper on "Shaping Service Strategy in a Downturn."  Later that month, he participated in the American Marketing Association's "Frontiers in Services" conference, held at Maastricht University in The Netherlands.  In his paper, "Do We Need to Rethink the Field of Service Management?" he critiqued some of the existing frameworks used by academics in service management, especially the notion of services as intangible products.  Instead, he urged development of new ways of looking at services and proposed an alternative paradigm of service purchases based on "rental" and "access" .  This presentation was enthusiastically received and led to a lively debate that continued among several dozen people for a half-hour after the formal end of the session.  Many participants described it as having been the highlight of the conference for them. 

While in Maastricht, Christopher was also a featured presenter at the Services Marketing Doctoral Consortium, where he spoke on the topic "Bungee Jumping from the Ivory Tower: The Case for Case Research, Writing, and Teaching." He urged doctoral students to undertake field research involving observation and analysis of real-world management situations in services and not to limit themselves to lab studies, modeling, and survey research.

Guest of  Leading Mexican Business School

In February 2002, Dr Lovelock was invited to visit EGADE, the business school at Tec de Monterrey, which is often described as the MIT of Mexico.  The city of Monterrey, in northeastern Mexico, is a thriving industrial center.  He participated in a course transmitted from the Institute's state-of-the art satellite broadcasting facility, delivered a faculty seminar on case research and teaching, was interviewed  for several news stories, and gave a public lecture to a large business audience on the topic, "Strategies for Service Businesses in Recessionary Times." 

During his visit, Lovelock was asked to join the Rector (president) of Tec de Monterrey, Dr Alberto Bustani, in cutting the ribbon to open a new classroom dedicated to courses in service management. Behind them in the photo is Dr Jaime Alonso Gomez, Dean of EGADE.

Christopher is currently working with Professors Javier Reynoso of EGADE; Guillermo D'Andrea of IAE, Universidad Austral, Argentina; and Luis Huete of IESE in Barcelona to develop a Spanish-language adaptation of his book, Services Marketing .  This new book, titled Administración de Empresas de Servicio, will be published by Prentice Hall Hispanoamerica in late 2003.

Highlights of 2000 and 2001

Father and Son at Yale Commencement

There were two Lovelocks at Yale University during 2000-01.  Christopher became a member of the adjunct faculty at the School of Management as his son, Tim, entered his senior year majoring in Russian and Eastern European Studies.  At Tim's request, his dad participated in the faculty procession at the Commencement Day ceremonies in May 2001 when Tim received his BA degree.

The photo shows Christopher (in Stanford PhD robes) and Tim together after the event, at which President George W. Bush received an honorary degree as part of the celebrations marking the Tercentenary of Yale's founding in 1701.

International Assignments

Executive teaching assignments took Christopher to both Spain and France in early 2001.  In October, he was the keynote speaker at a conference at the University of Buckingham, Britain's only private university, held as part of its 25th anniversary celebrations. His topic was "Exploring the Frontiers of Service Management." The following month, sponsored by the Australian Marketing Institute, he gave lectures to business audiences in Melbourne and Brisbane on the topic of "Services Marketing in a Recession".  He repeated the presentation in Perth to a large group at the Business Leaders Forum of Curtin University and again at the National University of Singapore in early December.  During his visit to Melbourne, Christopher spent several days at the School of Marketing of RMIT University, where he gave a presentation on case writing.  While Down Under, he also visited service marketing researchers and teachers at the University of Auckland, the Australian International Hotel School in Canberra, the University of Queensland and Griffith University in Brisbane, and several universities in Perth. 

New 2nd Edition of Principles of Service Marketing and Management

Published in August, 2001, the second edition of Principles of Service Marketing and Management (Prentice Hall 2002) by Christopher Lovelock and his co-author, Lauren Wright of California State University, Chico, updates and expands this popular textbook which is being used in business schools around the world. A key innovation is the addition of a new service decision framework that provides a roadmap for the book and highlights the questions that service managers need to ask as they plan their strategies. 

The book includes two new chapters. Chapter 16, "The Impact of  Technology on Services," was written after the dot.com crash and illustrates both the potential and the limitations of the Internet as a distribution channel for services. Chapter 17, "Organizing for Service Leadership" highlights four levels of service performance, from "loser" to "leader", identifies distinctions between each of these categories within the spheres of marketing, operations, and human resources, and highlights some of the tasks involved in leading an organization to higher levels.  Many new examples have been added from the US, Canada, Europe, and other countries, together with insights from recent research findings.     Further information on Principles of Services Marketing and Management 2/E, including how to order on-line, is available under "Books."

Painful Field Research

Surgery in June 2000 to repair a damaged hip provided a patient's-eye view of the health care system.  "As I faced the prospect of surgery and recuperation," says Christopher, "family members consoled me with the thought that this provided a great opportunity to learn more about health services.  But I must confess that it was definitely the most painful field research I have ever undertaken!  After awakening from surgery in a Boston teaching hospital, surrounded by high-tech gadgetry, I wondered glumly if I would ever walk again, but physical therapy began the very next day. 

"I was soon transferred to the Rehabilitation Hospital of the Cape and Islands (RHCI) in Sandwich, Massachusetts, where a more intensive regime of physical therapy began. Following discharge from the hospital, I continued physical therapy for several months through one of RHCI's outpatient clinics.  After concluding the formal program, the therapists urged me to continue rebuilding strength in my hip by working out with a trainer in a local health club, which I continued for a year and found to be a good investment.  Now I am as active as I was before and can once again enjoy hiking in the mountains." (Pictures: left, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, July 2000; right, At the summit of Middle Sister in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, September 2001, with Mount Washington in the background.)

And what about service insights?  "I was very struck by the quality of service provided by RHCI," says Christopher, "particularly the personal quality of the care, which certainly lives up to the organization's motto, 'Expert Care, Exceptional Caring.'  Patients at this small, specialized hospital, are served by a team of individuals, representing different skills and tasks.  High tech enables health care providers to perform remarkable feats of medical evaluation and intervention, but the 'high touch' human side of care remains enormously important.  When I enquired at RHCI about how they achieved such quality, I learned that the organization of the hospital is structured on a team basis rather than the traditional hierarchy that prevails in so many medical establishments. Everyone on the team understands their role in helping a specific patient to recover his or her mobility and skills and shares relevant information with other team members. Recruiting for positions is highly selective, with an emphasis on hiring people who are committed to supporting the values of the institution and who will fit in well with its caring culture.  Despite a shortage of many health-related professionals in southeastern Massachusetts, RHCI's reputation as an outstanding place to work enables it to attract and retain good candidates." 

Interview in Dutch business magazine

New Chinese Translation of Services Marketing

There is also a newly published Chinese translation of the book available in the People's Republic of China for the Mandarin language market. Professor Lu Xiongwen and Dr. Victoria Lu, both of Fudan University in Shanghai, PRC, have prepared (Prentice Hall, Shanghai, 2001), a direct translation of Services Marketing.  Lovelock prepared a special preface for this book.

Overall Winner of Business Week European Case Award for 2000

In June 2000, Christopher Lovelock and co-author Jean-Claude Larréché were named the overall winners of Business Week’s European Case Awards for 2000. Their winning case, “First Direct: Branchless Banking” describes the challenges faced by First Direct, which has gained fame for its pioneering strategy as the world’s first virtual bank, operating initially entirely by telephone with no physical branches.

Recent Articles 

• "The Dot-Com Meltdown: What Does It Mean for Teaching and Research in Services?" Managing Service Quality 11, No. 5, 2001, 302-306
• "A Retrospective Commentary on the Article 'New Tools for Achieving Service Quality'," Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly 42,August-September 2001, 39-46
• "Functional Integration in Services: Understanding the Links Between Marketing, Operations, and Human Resources," in D. Iacobucci and T. Schwartz (eds.), Handbook of Services Marketing and Management. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000.
• "Developing Marketing Strategies For Transnational Service Operations," Journal of Services Marketing, Nos. 4/5, 1999, pp. 278-289.

Highlights of 1999

Visiting Professor at Major Australian University 

One of the highlights of the visit was helping to organize Australia’s first international services marketing conference, which attracted some 120 attendees from all six states of Australia, as well as from New Zealand and Singapore.  Dr Lovelock gave the opening keynote at the conference, held in early April.  He also presented at a Services Workshop in Melbourne, organized by Monash University, another leading Australian business school. 

There was a family side to this visit, too.  Lovelock took his daughter Liz, then 15, with him to Australia, where she spent a term as a student at Indooroopilly State High School in Brisbane.  They flew from Boston via Los Angeles to Auckland, New Zealand, where they spent several days with friends, before continuing on to Brisbane, home to Christopher's brother Jeremy. 

Trips within Australia included visits to Melbourne and Sydney, where they climbed to the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge as customers of Bridgeclimb, a unique service organization (see www. bridgeclimb.com).. The photo shows them at the bridge summit, high above the Sydney Opera House.  Liz's brother Tim (webmaster for this site) came out to Australia for his spring break from Yale and all went snorkeling together on the Great Barrier Reef (see www.heronisland.com). 

The return trip took Christopher and Liz from Brisbane to Singapore (where they lunched with his sister, Rachel, who lives in Bali, Indonesia) and on to London for a weekend with Christopher's other brother, Roger. Finally, it was back to Boston, thus completing Liz's first trip around the world and her father's sixth.   Footnote: Liz is now (2004) a senior at the University of Pennsylvania.

Visit to South America 

Christopher comments: “Chile is a dramatic and very beautiful country.  Some 2,700 miles (4,300km) long but never more than 150 miles (240km) wide, it snakes down the South Pacific coastline from Peru to the edge of Antarctica (roughly equivalent to going from Baja California in Mexico, up through California, the Pacific Northwest, and British Columbia, to Alaska).  For much of its length, the country is hemmed in to the east by the Andes mountain range.  Unfortunately, I only had a weekend to explore, so my travel was limited to 100 miles north and south of Santiago, the capital.  One of the places to which my hosts took me was a 400-year old ranch that has been occupied since 1660 by 18 consecutive generations of the same family, making it the longest, continuously occupied family home in all the Americas.  Santiago, which has a population of about five million, is an attractive modern city, notable for its tree-lined streets and many parks.  The foothills of the Andes form a striking backdrop when the air is clear--which, unfortunately, is not always the case.   Visiting the two key countries of the so-called “Southern Cone” of South America offers a very different perspective on the continent than is found by looking south from the United States through the lens of Mexico and Central America.  While still a long way behind the US, Canada, and most European countries, Chile is one of the more affluent of Latin American nations with a substantial middle class.” 

In an interview with La Segunda, a Santiago newspaper, Lovelock stressed the importance of investing in Chile's service infrastructure as the country emerged from recession.     
 

French Version of Services Marketing Published in Paris

 Marketing des Services (Paris: Publi Union, 1999). Coauthored with Denis Lapert of Groupe ESC Reims, this French-language adaptation and update of Services Marketing 3/E is intended for use in France, Canada, Switzerland, Belgium and other French-speaking countries. Reflecting Lovelock's own teaching experience in French and Swiss business schools, it includes text, cases, and readings, with many new examples. The book was launched with a press conference in Paris in May, 1999 and an interview with the two authors formed the cover story in a subsequent edition of the French business quarterly,  Marketing Magazine. 
 

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Last Updated 2005-03-29