The impact of improvisation training on service employees in a European airline: A case study

European Journal of Marketing

Volumn 43, Issue 3-4, 2009, Pages 459-472

  Daly, Aidan ^a   Grove, Stephen J ^b   Dorsch, Michael J ^b   Fisk, Raymond P ^c  

^a NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF IRELAND   (Ireland)

^b CLEMSON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^c TEXAS STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Airlines; Role play; Service delivery; Services; Training

Indexed keywords

EID: 69849101096     PISSN: 03090566     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1108/03090560910935532     Document Type: Article

References (43)

1. Barlow, J. and Stewart, P. (2004), Branded Customer Service, Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, CA.
2. Baron, S., Harris, K. and Harris, R. (2001), Retailer theatre, Journal of Service Research, Vol. 4 No. 2, pp. 102-17.
3. Barton, R. (1992), Acting: Onstage and Off, 2nd ed., Harcourt Brace College Publishers, Fort Worth, TX.
4. Bergen, M., Cox, M. and Detmar, J. (2002), Improvise This!, Hyperion, New York, NY.
5. Berry, L.L. (1980), Services marketing is different, Business, Vol. 30, May/June, pp. 24-39.
6. Bowen, D.E. and Lawler, E.E. III (1992), The empowerment of service workers: what, why, how and when and how, Sloan Management Review, Vol. Spring, p. 31.
7. Campbell, D.T. and Stanley, J.C. (1966), Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Design in Research, Rand-McNally, Chicago, IL.
8. Carlzon, J. (1987), Moments of Truth, Ballinger Publishing Company, Cambridge, MA.
9. Daly, A. (2004), Let's improvise!", in Edvardsson, B., Gustafsson, A., Brown, S.W. and Johnson, R. (Eds), QUIS 9 - Service Excellence in Management: Interdisciplinary Contributions,Karlstad University Press, Karlstad, pp. 7-15.
10. Fisk, R.P., Grove, S.J. and John, J. (2004), Interactive Service Marketing, 2nd ed., Houghton Mifflin, Boston, MA.
11. Gold, M. and Hirshfield, S. (2005), The behaviours of jazz as a catalyst for strategic renewal and growth, Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 26 No. 5, pp. 40-7.
12. Grönroos, C. (1985), Internal marketing - theory and practice, in Block, T., Upah, G. and Zeithaml, V. (Eds), Services Marketing in a Changing Environment, American Marketing Association, Chicago, IL, pp. 41-7.
13. Grove, S.J. and Fisk, R.P. (1983), The dramaturgy of services exchange: an analytical framework for services marketing, in Berry, L.L., Shostack, G.L. and Upah, G.D. (Eds), Emerging Perspectives on Services Marketing, American Marketing Association, Chicago, IL, pp. 45-9.
14. Grove, S.J. and Fisk, R.P. (1992), The service experience as theatre, in Sherry, J.F. and Sternthal, B. (Eds), Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. XIX, Association for Consumer Research, Provo, UT, pp. 445-61.
15. Grove, S.J., Fisk, R.P. and Bitner, M.J. (1992), Dramatizing the service experience: a managerial approach, in Swartz, T.A., Brown, D.E. and Brown, S.W. (Eds), Advances in Services Marketing and Management, Vol. 1, JAI Press, Greenwich, CT.
16. Grove, S.J., Fisk, R.P. and Dorsch, M.J. (1998), Assessing the theatrical components of the service encounter: a cluster analysis examination, The Services Industries Journal, Vol. 18 No. 3, pp. 116-34.
17. Grove, S.J., Fisk, R.P. and John, J. (2000), Services as theatre: guidelines and implications, in Swartz, T. and Iacobucci, D. (Eds), Handbook of Services Marketing & Management, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 21-35.
18. Grove, S.J., Fisk, R.P. and Laforge, M.C. (2004), Developing the impression management skills of the service worker: an application of Stanislavsky's principles in a service context, The Service Industries Journal, Vol. 24 No. 2, pp. 1-14.
19. Gummesson, E. (1991), Qualitative Methods in Management Research, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.
20. Gwinner, K.P., Bitner, M.J., Brown, S.W. and Kumar, A. (2005), Service customization through employee adaptiveness, Journal of Service Research, Vol. 8 No. 2, pp. 131-48.
21. Hagen, U. (1991), A Challenge for the Actor, Charles Scribner & Sons, New York, NY.
22. Harris, R., Harris, K. and Baron, S. (2003), Theatrical experiences: dramatic script development with employees, International Journal of Service Industry Management, Vol. 14 No. 2, pp. 184-99.
23. Huberman, A.M. and Miles, M.B. (2002), The Qualitative Researcher's Companion, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.
24. Ind, N. (2004), Living the Brand, 2nd ed., Kogan Page, London.
25. Jennings, K. (2004), What jazz taught marketing (or should have)", Marketing Profs Newsletter, September 21, available at: www.marketingprofs.com
26. John, J. (1996), A dramaturgical view of the health care service encounter: cultural value-based impression management guidelines for medical professional behaviour, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 30 No. 9, pp. 69-74.
27. John, J., Grove, S.J. and Fisk, R.P. (2006), Improvisation in service performances: lessons from jazz, Managing Service Quality, Vol. 16 No. 3, pp. 247-68.
28. Kao, J. (1996), Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Corporate Creativity, HarperCollins, New York, NY.
29. Keefe, J.A. (2003), Improv Yourself: Business Spontaneity at the Speed of Thought, Wiley, Hoboken, NJ.
30. Lovelock, C.H. (1994), Product Plus, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY.
31. Lowe, R. (2000), Improvisation Inc.: Harnessing Spontaneity to Engage People and Groups, Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer, San Francisco, CA.
32. Marshall, C. and Rossman, G.B. (1989), Designing Qualitative Research, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.
33. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (2006), available at: http://webster.com
34. Mohr, L. and Bitner, M.J. (1991), Mutual understanding between customers and employees in service encounters, in Holman, R. and Solomon, M. (Eds), Advances in Consumer Research, Vol. 18, Association for Consumer Research, Provo, UT, pp. 611-6.
35. Parasuraman, A., Berry, L.L. and Zeithaml, V.A. (1988), SERVQUAL: a multi-item scale for measuring consumer perceptions of service quality, Journal of Retailing, Vol. 64, Spring, pp. 12-37.
36. Peplowski, K. (1998), The process of improvisation, Organisation Science, Vol. 9 No. 5, pp. 560-1
37. Rathmell, J. (1966), What is mean by services, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 30, October, pp. 32-6.
38. Spolin, V. (1963), Improvisation for Theater, Northwester University Press, Evanston, IL.
39. Tax, S.S. and Brown, S.W. (1998), Recovering and learning form service failure, Sloan Management Review, Vol. 40, Fall, pp. 75-88.
40. Tax, S.S. and Stuart, I. (2001), Designing service performances, Marketing Management, Vol. 10 No. 2, pp. 8-9.
41. Wilson, E. (2001), The Theater Experience, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY.
42. Art and Business Council of Americans for the Arts (n.d.), available at: www3.artusa.org
43. Lovelock, C. and Yip, G.S. (1996), Developing global strategies for service businesses, California Management Review, Vol. 39 No. 2, pp. 64-86.