Alan Wilson is Professor of Marketing and Head of the Marketing Department within the University of Strathclyde Business School. Before joining the university, he was a senior consultant and executive trainer within the services division of a London-based marketing consultancy practice and prior to that an Associate Director of a leading London-based marketing research agency. He specializes in the marketing of services, has a PhD in the subject, and was previously the Chief Examiner in Marketing for the Chartered Institute of Bankers in Scotland. He is currently a member of the Governing Council of the Market Research Society and chairs the Society’s Professional Development Advisory Board. His book, Marketing Research: An Integrated Approach, is in its second edition and he has published in a wide range of marketing and service management journals, for which he has won a number of awards and prizes.

Valarie A. Zeithaml is the David S. Van Pelt Distinguished Professor of Marketing at the Kenan-Flagler Business School of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Since receiving her MBA and PhD in marketing from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland in 1980, Professor Zeithaml has devoted her career to researching and teaching the topics of service quality and services management. She is the co-author of Delivering Quality Service: Balancing Customer Perceptions and Expectations (Free Press, 1990), now in its thirteenth printing; and Driving Customer Equity: How Customer Lifetime Value Is Reshaping Corporate Strategy (with Roland Rust and Katherine Lemon, Free Press, 2000).

Mary Jo Bitner is the PETsMART Chair in Services Leadership in the Marketing Department at the W.P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University (ASU). She also serves as Academic Director for the Center for Services Leadership at ASU. Dr Bitner was a founding faculty member of the Center for Services Leadership and has been a leader in its emergence as a premier university-based center for the study of services marketing and management. In the mid-1990s she led the development of the W.P. Carey MBA Services Marketing and Management specialization.

Alumni of this programme now work in companies across the United States, leading the implementation of services and customer-focused strategies. Dr Bitner has published more than 50 articles and has received a number of awards for her research in leading journals, including the Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Retailing, International Journal of Service Industry Management and Academy of Management Executive. She has consulted with and presented seminars and workshops for numerous businesses, including Yellow Roadway Corporation, Ford Motor Company, Caremark, IBM Global Services, and RR Donnelley. In 2003, Dr Bitner was honoured with the Career Contributions to the Services Discipline Award by the American Marketing Association’s Services Marketing Special Interest Group.

Dwayne D. Gremler is Associate Professor of Marketing at Bowling Green State University (BGSU). He received his MBA and PhD degrees from the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. Throughout his academic career, Dr Gremler has been a passionate advocate for the research and instruction of services marketing issues. He has served as Chair of the American Marketing Association’s Services Marketing Special Interest Group and has helped organize services marketing conferences in Australia, The Netherlands, France, and the United States. Dr Gremler’s research addresses customer loyalty in service businesses, customer–employee interactions in service delivery, service guarantees, and word-of- mouth communication. He has published articles in the Journal of Service Research, International Journal of Service Industry Management, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science and Journal of Marketing Education.