Service Management and Marketing: Managing the Service Profit Logic, 4th Edition

PREFACE

This book is about the service perspective in business, that is, how to adopt service logic in management, regardless of whether the core of the offering is a service or a physical product. It is a how-to-think rather than a how-to-do book. Therefore, it is not a traditional textbook with all the usual chapters. It is intended to help readers – students and practitioners alike – to realize the importance of service in today’s competitive environment, and to see the opportunities for creating and maintaining a sustainable competitive advantage in any kind of market.

The text takes a unique approach to management and marketing from a service logic perspective. Previous editions have served well in academic education, especially on masters and doctoral levels. The book has also been used successfully by top- and middle-level managers, at board level, and in executive education to introduce the service perspective on business as well as service management and marketing in service competition for service firms and manufacturing firms alike.

Services exist alongside goods and other types of resources of course, but following the research on service as logic rather than as a category of products only, here service is first and foremost considered a way of approaching customers and facilitating their life and business processes by supporting their everyday practices rather than only delivering products and services as resources for their use.

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