Service Quality: New Directions in Theory and Practice

The importance of service and service quality has been growing in the world economy since the late 1970s. Establishing new levels of sophistication and rigor, as well as a broad set of approaches, Service Quality presents the latest research and theory in customer satisfaction and services marketing. Designed to advance the practice of delivering superior service, the field′s leading scholars and practitioners present a wealth of ideas that include measuring the managerial impact of service quality improvement, new methods of assessing the various elements of service quality, and philosophies about the nature of customer value. Presenting diverse points of view and revealing a variety of emerging ideas, the editors conclude with a look toward the future of service quality. An exhilarating--and sometimes demanding--change of pace, Service Quality is essential for professionals, researchers, scholars, and students in marketing studies.

Roland T. Rust holds the David Bruce Smith Chair in Marketing at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, where he is Chair of the Marketing Department and directs the Center for e-Service. His lifetime achievement honors include the American Marketing Association’s Gilbert A. Churchill Award for contributions to marketing research, the Outstanding Contributions to Research in Advertising award from the American Academy of Advertising, the AMA’s Career Contributions to the Services Discipline Award, Fellow of the American Statistical Association, and the Henry Latané Distinguished Doctoral Alumnus Award from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  He has won best article awards for articles in Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing (twice), Journal of Advertising, and Journal of Retailing, as well as MSI’s Robert D. Buzzell Best Paper Award (twice).  His book, Driving Customer Equity (written with Valarie Zeithaml and Katherine Lemon) won the 2002 Berry-AMA Book Prize for the best marketing book of the previous three years.  His work has received extensive media coverage, including a Business Week cover story and an appearance on ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.  He is the founder and Chair of the AMA Frontiers in Services Conference, and serves as founding Editor of the Journal of Service Research.   Professor Rust also is an Area Editor at Marketing Science, and serves on the editorial review boards of the Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, and the Journal of Interactive Marketing.  He has consulted with many leading companies worldwide, including such companies as American Airlines, AT&T, Chase Manhattan Bank, Dow Chemical, DuPont, FedEx, IBM, Nortel, Procter & Gamble, Sears, Unilever, and USAA. 

Professor Oliver, a distinguished researcher in the field of consumer psychology, joined the Owen faculty in 1990, after more than a decade of teaching at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and the Graduate School of Business Administration at Washington University. Within the field of consumer psychology, Professor Oliver has a special focus on customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and post-purchase processes generally. He holds the position of Fellow of the American Psychological Association for his extensive writings on the psychology of the satisfaction response. Richard L. Oliver′s teaching interests include consumer behavior, customer satisfaction psychology including CRM, and marketing research. At Owen he has been honored with the James A. Webb Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Dean′s Teaching Excellence Award, and the Dean′s Award for Research Productivity. Professor Oliver is the author of Satisfaction: A Behavioral Perspective on the Consumer (Irwin/McGraw-Hill) and co-editor of Service Quality: new Directions in Theory and Practice (Sage). Among his many professional activities, Professor Oliver has served on the boards of the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, and Journal of Retailing. He has published articles in the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Service Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Applied Psychology, Psychology & Marketing, Behavioral Science, Journal of Economic Psychology, Applied Psychological Measurement, Psychometrika, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Advances in Consumer Research, Journal of Retailing, Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, Journal of Consumer Satisfaction/Dissatisfaction & Complaining Behavior, Journal of Advertising, Journal of Consumer Affairs, and others.