amj Australasian Marketing Journal - ANZMAC

The second edition of Services Marketing: Australia and
New Zealand (1998) has a new title, Services Marketing:
An Asia-Pacific Perspective , reflecting its Asian content in
addition to the Australian and New Zealand applications. The
first thing that strikes the reader when s/he opens the 2001
book is its internal design. The new design is crisp, stylish and
visually appealing. The layout appears less cluttered than the
previous edition and the two colour scheme, the new font, and
the better quality paper further enhance its appeal — a most
welcome improvement on the old book.
Apart from the pleasing physical design, the topics covered
remain largely unchanged with almost all headings and
subheadings being identical to the 1998 edition. The new
book has exactly the same number of chapters (fifteen) as the
previous book, and only one chapter title has been changed,
that is, chapter 8. It is now called The place and manner of
service delivery rather than Service Delivery . The chapters
are as follows:
Distinctive aspects of services marketing
Customer involvement in service processes
Customer behaviour in service settings
Customer satisfaction and service quality
Relationship marketing and management
Target market definition and positioning
Developing a service product strategy
The place and manner of service delivery
Understanding costs and developing pricing strategy
Managing capacity and demand
Communicating and promoting services
Managing the customer-service function
Handling customer complaints and managing service
recovery
International services marketing
Services Marketing: An Asia-Pacific Perspective
The strategic impact of information technology
(2nd Edition), Prentice Hall Australia
Christopher H. Lovelock, Paul G. Patterson, & Rhett H. Walker (2001)
Book Reviews
Notwithstanding, the new edition has been revised and updated
with real life examples and illustrations being replaced or
updated and new references added. As such, the book offers
instructors and students a very good coverage of the fundamental
topics of services marketing written in an engaging
style, with updated local examples and some good case studies.
In my view, the case studies are a key strength of the
book. In this edition, there are seven new cases and seven
cases remaining from the first edition. Two of the new cases
are Asian reflecting the authors intention to incorporate Asian
examples and illustrations in this edition. In the new edition
the cases and readings are placed at the end of the book. This
is another improvement over the previous book as it allows
instructors greater flexibility when selecting cases to illustrate
lecture/tutorial topics.
The book contains eleven readings, ranging from academic
articles to more popular press readings. The authors claim that
these readings are of two types: (a) state of the art concepts
and strategic insights ; and (b) descriptions of innovative
practices adopted by successful service firms . However,
positioning them as such exposes them to being quickly dated
and thus devaluing their usefulness. Today, with easy access
to articles through electronic data-bases why include a very
limited number which quickly date in hard copy?
Furthermore, in MBA classes many instructors expect their
students to have read something in the order of 20-30 academic
articles. Wouldn t the recommended readings at the end
of each of each chapter serve this purpose as they provide
instructors and students with a very good source of relevant
academic articles? Further, couldn t the innovative practices
be incorporated into the text through mini-cases or
examples?
The hot web sites located at the end of each chapter is a new
feature of the book. These web sites are useful in that they
further illustrate important topics from the respective chapters.
Typically, at least one new application question has been
added to each chapter and in some chapters old questions
have been dropped and/or replaced .
Some attempt has been made to develop certain topics from
the previous edition. One example of this is the service recovery
section which now incorporates recent literature on justice
Australasian Marketing Journal 9 (1), 2001 81