European economies are now dominated by services, and virtually all companies view service as critical to retaining their customers today and in the future. At the heart of this textbook is the recognition that services present unique challenges, and that building customer relationships through quality service is fundamental to marketing success in every organization. This comprehensive text helps students recognize the vital role that services play in the economy, and to understand and address the special challenges of services marketing.

Key features of this new European edition are:

• Cross-functional treatment of issues through integration of marketing with other disciplines such as operations and
human resource management.
• A focus on understanding the foundations of services marketing and the customer before introducing the conceptual framework of the book based on the Gaps Model.
• Greater emphasis on the topic of service quality than existing marketing and service marketing texts, with increased focus on customer expectations and perceptions and what they imply for marketers.
• Chapters on key topics including service recovery, listening to customers through research, customer-defined service standards, integrated services marketing communications, human resource challenges for delivering customer-focused services and a chapter on the financial impact of service quality.
• All topics are supported with European content, cases and examples, including frequent “Service Spotlights” providing examples of services marketing in action and longer cases on Tesco, Call Centre Europe, Telecom Italia, and Disneyland
Paris among others.
• Discussion Questions and exercises appropriate to the European context are contained in each chapter, alongside
European references and further reading and short revision lists of Key Concepts.