Purpose

This paper aims to emphasize a research priority on the understanding of service products and how services can be productized. Furthermore, it provides perspectives on the contribution of service research to management practice and who should be the main target audience of service research.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper is based on the personal reflections of an author of two leading services marketing textbooks.

Findings

This paper develops three propositions related to service research. First, it advances that academic service research has neglected the important topic of productizing services and that service products should be treated as concrete units of deliverables to customers rather than something fuzzy of unspecified quantity. That is, service products should be developed, designed, specified, configured, modularized, bundled, tiered, branded, priced sold and delivered to customers. More research is needed on how organizations can do this. Second, this paper argues that academics frequently underestimate the significant contributions service research has made to management practice and details important contributions that originated from the service research community. Third, it is proposed that the main target audience of service research should not be the marketing, sales and service departments. Rather, it should be decision makers (especially C-level executives) across all functions who should develop a service perspective and service mindset.

Research limitations/implications

This paper urges service researchers to focus on what are service products and how firm can create, manage and deliver them. Furthermore, it suggests that service researchers should be more confident and proud of the significant progress and contributions they have made to management practice over the past few decades. Finally, service researchers should tailor their messages for decisions makers of all organizational functions and departments in service organizations.

Originality/value

As a writer of five editions of a services marketing textbook, the author has sifted through three decades of service research. The reflections in this paper originate from this unique perspective.

中文翻译：

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观点：服务产品、服务知识的发展和我们社区的目标受众

目的

本文旨在强调对服务产品的理解以及服务如何产品化的研究重点。此外，它还提供了关于服务研究对管理实践的贡献以及谁应该成为服务研究的主要目标受众的观点。

设计/方法/方法

本文基于两本领先的服务营销教科书作者的个人反思。

发现

本文提出了与服务研究相关的三个命题。首先，它提出学术服务研究忽视了服务产品化这一重要课题，服务产品应被视为交付给客户的具体单位，而不是不确定数量的模糊事物。也就是说，服务产品应该被开发、设计、指定、配置、模块化、捆绑、分层、品牌化、定价销售和交付给客户。需要对组织如何做到这一点进行更多研究。其次，本文认为，学术界经常低估服务研究对管理实践的重大贡献，并详细说明了源自服务研究社区的重要贡献。第三，建议服务研究的主要目标受众不应是营销、销售和服务部门。相反，应该由所有职能部门的决策者（尤其是 C 级高管）制定服务视角和服务心态。

研究限制/影响

本文敦促服务研究人员关注什么是服务产品以及公司如何创建、管理和交付它们。此外，它表明服务研究人员应该对他们在过去几十年中在管理实践中取得的重大进步和贡献更加自信和自豪。最后，服务研究人员应该为服务组织中所有组织职能和部门的决策者量身定制他们的信息。

原创性/价值

作为五版服务营销教科书的作者，作者在服务研究的三个十年中进行了筛选。本文的思考源于这种独特的视角。