The object of Service Design

Design Issues

Volumn 27, Issue 3, 2011, Pages 20-34

  Secomandi, Fernando ^a   Snelders, Dirk ^b  

^a DELFT UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY   (Netherlands)

^b EINDHOVEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 79960736684     PISSN: 07479360     EISSN: 15314790     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/DESI_a_00088     Document Type: Article

References (106)

1. Any attempt to provide an accurate portrayal of a rapidly evolving field is bound to suffer from incompleteness.
2. Still, as formative of the field of service design, the following advances originating within the design community should be mentioned.
3. Articles published in academic journals: e.g., Nicola Morelli, "Designing Product/Service Systems: A Methodological Exploration," Design Issues 18:3 (Summer 2002): 3-17
4. Carla Cipolla and Ezio Manzini, "Relational Services," Knowledge, Technology & Policy 22:1 (2009): 45-50
5. Claudio Pinhanez, "Services as Customerintensive Systems," Design Issues 25:2 (Spring 2009): 3-13.
6. Specialized research groups: e.g., SEDES research, led by Prof.
7. Birgit Mager, at the Köln International School of Design (Germany). PhD theses of Pacenti, Sangiorgi, and Cipolla, under guidance of Prof.
8. Ezio Manzini, at the Politecnico di Milano (Italy).
9. Networks bringing together practitioners and academic institutions; e.g., Service Design Network.
10. Service design consultancies; e.g., live{norm of matrix}work and Engine (Great Britain).
11. Dedicated conferences in North America (Emergence 2007, USA
12. Europe (Service Design Network Conference 2008, The Netherlands)
13. and Asia (International Service Innovation Design Conference 2008, South Korea).
14. Books and chapters in edited books: e.g., Gillian Hollins and Bill Hollins, Total Design: Managing the Design Process in the Service Sector (London: Pitman, 1991)
15. And Bill Moggridge, Designing Interactions (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007).
16. And other Internet-based resources: e.g., Jeff Howard's "Design for Service," available from: http://designforservice.wordpress.com/(accessed June 19, 2010).
17. Cf. Birgit Mager's entry on service design in Michael Erlhoff and Tim Marshall, eds., Design Dictionary: Perspectives on Design Terminology (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2008).
18. G. Lynn Shostack, "Breaking Free from Product Marketing," Journal of Marketing 41:2 (1977): 73-80.
19. Ibid., 75.
20. In the complete molecular model, Shostack later included three outer layers representing strategic marketing decisions in terms of distribution, price and cost, and advertising and promotion.
21. See G. Lynn Shostack, "How to Design a Service," European Journal of Marketing 16:1 (1982): 49-63.
22. Along similar lines, Booms and Bitner sought to expand the traditional 4P marketing framework (product, place, promotion, and price), by incorporating three novel elements (people, process, and physical environment) into an upgraded 7P marketing mix for services.
23. See Bernard H. Booms and Mary J. Bitner, "Marketing Strategies and Organization Structures for Service Firms," in Marketing of Services, ed. James H. Donnelly and William R. George (Chicago: American Marketing Association, 1981), 47-51.
24. Also consider Lovelock and Wright's addition of an eighth "p" representing service productivity and quality).
25. See Christopher Lovelock and Lauren Wright, Principles of Service Marketing and Management (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999).
26. Shostack, "Breaking Free from Product Marketing," 77.
27. Shostack, "How to Design a Service," 53.
28. Ibid., 52.
29. Ibid., 51-2.
30. Ibid., 52.
31. The service blueprint initially was presented in Shostack, "How to Design a Service,"
32. And later again in G. Lynn Shostack, "Designing Services That Deliver," Harvard Business Review 62:1 (1984): 133-9.
33. Ibid., 138.
34. G. Lynn Shostack, "Service Positioning through Structural Change," Journal of Marketing 51:1 (1987): 34.
35. Shostack, "Designing Services That Deliver," 136.
36. Several scholars later adopted service evidence in their own service models.
37. Worth briefly mentioning are Berry and Parasuraman's identification of physical environment, communications, and price as crucial kinds of evidence
38. And Bitner's similar reference to people, process, and physical evidence.
39. See Leonard L. Berry and A. Parasuraman, Marketing Services: Competing through Quality (New York: The Free Press, 1991)
40. And Mary Jo Bitner, "Managing the Evidence of Service," in The Service Quality Handbook, ed. Eberhard E. Scheuing and William F. Christopher (New York: AMACOM, 1993), 358-70.
41. More recently, the terms "clues," used by Pullman and Gross, and "touchpoints," by Zomerdijk and Voss, were intended to convey Shostack's notion of evidence from an experience design perspective.
42. See Madeleine E. Pullman and Michael A. Gross, "Ability of Experience Design Elements to Elicit Emotions and Loyalty Behaviors," Decision Sciences 35:3 (Summer 2004): 551-78
43. And Leonieke G. Zomerdijk and Christopher A. Voss, "Service Design for Experience-Centric Services," Journal of Service Research 13:1 (February 2010): 67-82.
44. Bo Edvardsson and Jan Olsson, "Key Concepts for New Service Development," The Service Industries Journal 16:2 (April 1996): 140-64.
45. Other researchers have also regarded higher levels of customer involvement in production processes to be the most important variable in characterizing service operations and in setting strategic directions for the design of service systems.
46. See R.B. Chase, "Where Does the Customer Fit in a Service Operation?" Harvard Business Review 56:6 (1978): 137-42
47. Urban Wemmerlöv, "A Taxonomy for Service Processes and its Implications for System Design," International Journal of Service Industry Management 1: 3 (1990): 20-40
48. Scott E. Sampson and Craig M. Froehle, "Foundations and Implications of a Proposed Unified Services Theory," Production and Operations Management 15:2 (Summer 2006): 329-43
49. Pinhanez, "Services as Customer-intensive Systems"
50. Edvardsson and Olsson, "Key Concepts for New Service Development," 145.
51. Ibid., 147.
52. Elsewhere, Edvardsson named the service process and system components the servuction process and system, respectively.
53. See Bo Edvardsson, "The Role of Service Design in Achieving Quality," in The Service Quality Handbook, ed. Eberhard E. Scheuing and William F. Christopher (New York: AMACOM, 1995), 331-46.
54. Servuction is a neologism combining the words "service" and "production" to denote the simultaneity of production and consumption in services.
55. In line with the original servuction system, customers interact with the "visible" part of a service organization, which consists of the physical environment, contact personnel, other customers, and customers in person.
56. See E. Langeard et al., Services Marketing: New Insights from Consumers and Managers, vol. 81 (Cambridge, MA: Marketing Science Institute, 1981).
57. The service concept is a term commonly encountered in the literature.
58. Clark et al. presented an elaboration of the service concept in terms of value, form and function, experience, and outcomes.
59. See Graham Clark, Robert Johnston, and Michael Shulver, "Exploiting the Service Concept for Service Design and Development," in New Service Development: Creating Memorable Experiences, ed. James A. Fitzsimmons and Mona J. Fitzsimmons (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, Inc, 1999), 71-91.
60. See also Susan Meyer Goldstein et al., "The Service Concept: The Missing Link in Service Design Research?" Journal of Operations Management 20:2 (April 2002): 121-34.
61. The service package, sometimes called bundle, or offering, is a multifaceted concept.
62. Lovelock proposed a basic separation between core and supplementary services, to which Lovelock and Wirtz later added delivery processes.
63. See Christopher H. Lovelock, "A Basic Toolkit for Service Managers," in Managing Services: Marketing, Operations, and Human Resources, ed. Christopher H. Lovelock, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall International, 1992), 17-30
64. And Christopher Lovelock and Jochen Wirtz, Services Marketing: People, Technology, Strategy, 6th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall, 2006), 22-5.
65. Grönroos departed from this conception of a basic package and described an augmented service offering.
66. See Christian Grönroos, Service Management and Marketing: Managing the Moments of Truth in Service Competition (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1990).
67. In a second line of thought, Sasser et al. and Fitzsimmons and Sullivan defined the package as comprising Physical items and facilities, sensual benefits (or explicit services), and psychological benefits (or implicit services).
68. See W. Earl Sasser, R. Paul Olsen, and D. Daryl Wyckoff, Management of Service Operations: Text, Cases, and Readings (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1978)
69. And James A. Fitzsimmons and R. S. Sullivan, Service Operations Management (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, 1982).
70. Normann further synthesized these latter insights with the previous separation between core and supplementary services.
71. See Richard Normann, Service Management: Strategy and Leadership in Service Business, 3rd ed. (Chichester, NY: Wiley, 2001).
72. The service package was also considered in other hybrid conceptualizations, such as Lehtinen's service consumption process and Grönroos's service production system.
73. See J. R. Lehtinen, Quality Oriented Services Marketing (Tampere, FI: Tampereen Yliopisto, 1986)
74. And Grönroos, Service Management and Marketing: Managing the Moments of Truth in Service Competition 25 Service culture was later added by Edvardsson et al. as a fifth component of the service system.
75. See Bo Edvardsson et al., New Service Development and Innovation in the New Economy (Lund, Sweden: Studentlitteratur, 2000).
76. Another version of the service system briefly contemplated some external influencing factors.
77. See Bo Edvardsson, "Quality in New Service Development: Key Concepts and a Frame of Reference," International Journal of Production Economics 52:1 (October 1997): 31-46.
78. Rohit Ramaswamy, Design and Management of Service Processes: Keeping Customers for Life (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1996).
79. Although notable differences hold true, other researchers also took process, or activity, as the main building block of their service models, often drawing on knowledge from such areas as mechanical engineering, systems engineering, and computer science, and progressing toward more consistent notation, mathematical formalization, and computational modeling.
80. See, for example, Qinhai Ma, Mitchell M. Tseng, and Benjamin Yen, "A Generic Model and Design Representation Technique of Service Products," Technovation 22:1 (January 2002): 15-39
81. T. Arai and Y. Shimomura, "Proposal of Service CAD System: A Tool for Service Engineering," CIRP Annals-Manufacturing Technology 53:1 (2004): 397-400
82. Robin G. Qiu, "Computational Thinking of Service Systems: Dynamics and Adaptiveness Modeling," Service Science 1:1 (Spring 2009): 42-55.
83. Ramaswamy, Design and Management of Service Processes: Keeping Customers for Life, 13.
84. Ibid., 128.
85. Ibid., 173.
86. Ibid., 251.
87. Ibid., 258.
88. Kaner and Karni also conceptualized services as hierarchical systems ultimately defined by the values given to their lowest-layer components.
89. Their capstone model is a comprehensive, five-tiered service representation, consisting of 9 major classes (including process), 75 main classes, 351 minor classes, and potentially thousands of attributes and values.
90. See Maya Kaner and Reuven Karni, "Design of Service Systems Using a Knowledge-Based Approach," Knowledge and Process Management 14:4 (2007): 260-74.
91. Faïz Gallouj and Olivier Weinstein, "Innovation in Services," Research Policy 26 (1997): 537-56.
92. Ibid., 540.
93. Gallouj also briefly considered the inclusion into the same set of spatial and geographical organization characteristics (e.g., restaurant décor, proximity of service establishment, etc.).
94. See Faiz Gallouj, Innovation in the Service Economy: The New Wealth of Nations (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2002), 53.
95. Based on the model, the authors were also able to describe self-service situations, where service characteristics are created through the client's engagement with technical characteristics alone, without the participation of the provider competence characteristics {[C'], [X], [Y]}.
96. In another publication, Gallouj also identified "pure goods" situations, where there is no involvement of competences embodied in humans {[X], [Y]}.
97. See Ibid., 59.
98. Ibid., 56.
99. Gallouj and Weinstein, "Innovation in Services," 547.
100. In recent years, other authors have elaborated on the characteristics approach to service innovation.
101. De Vries noted how Gallouj & Weinstein's model falls short when representing innovation in a network of organizations, where clients co-produce a service by using their own technologies.
102. He reformulated both the technical and competence characteristics sets to account for multiple organizations, and added the novel client technical characteristics set.
103. See Erik J. de Vries, "Innovation in Services in Networks of Organizations and in the Distribution of Services," Research Policy 35:7 (September 2006): 1037-51.
104. Windrum and García-Goñi, writing in the context of health care, also pointed to the need for representing innovation in a multi-agent environment, and included policy-makers as new stakeholders alongside providers and users.
105. They further diminished the importance of technical characteristics, proposing instead that innovation in knowledgeintensive services is better captured as the negotiation over competence and (newly-added) preference characteristics, which are possessed by all agents.
106. See Paul Windrum and Manuel García-Goñi, "A Neo-Schumpeterian Model of Health Services Innovation," Research Policy 37:4 (May 2008): 649-72