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"This text is for students and business people who recognize the vital role that services play in the economy and its future. The advanced economies of the world are now dominated by services, and virtually all companies view service as critical to retaining their customers today and in the future. Manufacturing and product-dominant companies that, in the past, have depended on their physical products for their livelihood now recognize that service provides one of their few sustainable competitive advantages"--

Smart interactive services, in contrast with other technology-based services, require significant human-to-human interaction and collaboration in addition to the service provided by the embedded technology itself. The authors' foundational Delphi study confirms smart interactive services (e.g., remote diagnosis, remote repair of equipment, and telemedicine) are a rapidly growing innovation category across industries. Yet, gaining user acceptance of these types of services presents a significant challenge for managers. To address this challenge, the authors employ a grounded theory approach, drawing on depth interviews, to develop a framework of barriers and facilitators to users' attitudinal and behavioral responses to smart interactive services. The findings reveal a new set of beliefs that are critical in this context. These beliefs are tied to the human element and specifically pertain to beliefs about the "service counterpart (SC)," who is the provider's employee controlling the technology. Control, trustworthiness, and collaboration beliefs emerge jointly as important and interrelated influencers tied to the SC. Contrary to conventional wisdom that focuses on features of the technology itself to gain user acceptance, this research encourages providers to emphasize the interpersonal elements of the service by providing control cues, raising social presence, and enhancing human trust mechanisms.

Customization strategies aimed at providing customers with individually tailored products and services are growing in popularity. In a service context, the responsibility for customization frequently falls on the shoulders of front-line customer contact employees. Few marketing scholars, however, have considered what it means to be adaptive in these roles and how customization behaviors can be encouraged. Drawing on marketing, organizational behavior, and psychology literatures, the authors define and empirically test antecedents of two distinct dimensions of employee adaptive behavior: interpersonal adaptive behavior and service-offering adaptive behavior. Results indicate that an employee's level of customer knowledge, certain personality predispositions, and intrinsic motivation positively influence the propensity to adapt both their interpersonal style and the actual service offering. Implications for market segmentation, employee selection, training, and motivation are offered.

Given the significant, sustained growth in services experienced worldwide, Arizona State University's Center for Services Leadership embarked on an 18-month effort to identify and articulate a set of global, interdisciplinary research priorities focused on the science of service. Diverse participation from academics in a variety of disciplines working in institutions around the world—in collaboration with business executives who lead organizations ranging from small startups to Global 1000 companies—formed the basis for development of the priorities. The process led to the identification of the following 10 overarching research priorities: • Fostering service infusion and growth • Improving well-being through transformative service • Creating and maintaining a service culture • Stimulating service innovation • Enhancing service design • Optimizing service networks and value chains • Effectively branding and selling services • Enhancing the service experience through cocreation • Measuring and optimizing the value of service • Leveraging technology to advance service For each priority, several important and more specific topic areas for service research emerged from the process. The intent is that the priorities will spur service research by shedding light on the areas of greatest value and potential return to academia, business, and government. Through academic, business, and government collaboration, we can enhance our understanding of service and create new knowledge to help tackle the most important opportunities and challenges we face today.