guest article by Nathalie Demoulin
Impressions of the event: click here
From June 14-16, 2018 IESEG School of Management hosted one of the world’s largest service research conferences with 273 participants from 34 countries. It was a festive conference in the heart of Paris celebrating both the 25th anniversary of SERVSIG and the 10th SERVSIG conference. The program includes 170 presentations over 63 parallel sessions. It also included 6 special sessions, a SERVSIG Best Dissertation Award session and two plenary sessions. Among hot topics, we find Customer Experience, Consumer Behavior, Business-to-Business Services, Big Data Enabled Services, New Analytical Approaches in Service Research and Branding and Service Communications.
The conference started on the 14th of June, with a welcome reception at IÉSEG’s modern campus in Paris, located in the iconic Grande Arche building, at the heart of the business district of La Défense.
On the 15th, the conference started with a warm welcome of participants by Nathalie Demoulin, the chair of the SERVSIG conference and Jean-Philippe Ammeux, the General Director of IESEG School of Management. Raymond Fisk, Professor and Chair of the Department of Marketing, at Texas State University, founder of the SERVSIG presented the history of the SERVSIG research community and SERVSIG conference. He explained the activities organized by SERVSIG and reminded us the three goals of SERVSIG that are to be Open, Flexible and Fun.
It has been followed by the first plenary session about “Improving service experiences through digitalization and big data” moderated by Werner Kunz, Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Massachusetts Boston and SERVSIG board member. There were three keynote speakers, Peter Ruchatz, MeteoGroup’s Chief product and marketing officer, Arne De Keyser, Assistant Professor of Marketing at EDHEC Business School and Marianna Sigala, Professor of Tourism and Director of the Centre for Tourism & Leisure Management at the University of South Australia, co-editor of the Journal of Service Theory & Practice and the Editor-In-Chief of the Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Management. Companies collect massive amount of data along the customers’ journey at every touchpoint but also external data such as social, market and environmental data. Smart devices combined with machine learning create personalized and seamless customer experiences but they may also lead to sustainable and responsible concerns. The right data should be collected, extracted and analyzed while understanding customers as being human and ensuring transparency.
In the evening, the award dinner took place at the ‘Musée des Arts Forains’ (the Fairground Arts Museum). Participants felt like a child in a marvelous world of roundabouts and other fairground amusements and they enjoyed fine French food. Many awards were distributed: the SERVSIG Best Dissertation Award, the SERVSIG Best Conference Paper Award and several Journal awards such as Journal of Service Theory and Practice; Journal of Service Management and Journal of Service Marketing. It was Steve Baron’s last conference because it is time for him to get retired and he has been rewarded by the Journal of Services marketing with “The Inaugural Journal of Services Marketing Steve Baron Award” as a recognition of his service to the service research community.
On the 16th in the afternoon, the second plenary session was dedicated to “Priorities in service research”. It was moderated by Lerzan Aksoy, Professor of Marketing at Fordham University and co-Chair of SERVSIG. Keynote speakers were Hélène Duneigre, an independent consultant & facilitator in Customer Experience, Innovation and Marketing; Loïc Guilloux, General Manager Digital Marketing France at Arvato CRM, Sikaar Keita, Presales Consultant for Oracle Marketing Cloud; Michael (Mike) Brady, the Carl DeSantis Professor and chair, Department of Marketing, at Florida State University and Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Service Research and Rebekah Russell-Bennett, Professor at QUT Business School, co-editor for the Journal of Services Marketing. Technologies were the focus of this plenary session and namely the usage of artificial intelligence, big data, digitalization of services to improve the customer service experience through personalization of services, co-creation of service solutions, while considering data privacy and the right balance between human and technologies. A clear need of alignment of industry problems and researchers’ interests has been emphasized.
On Saturday night, the closing dinner took place at the first floor of the Eiffel Tower where participants enjoyed a wonderful view of Paris, the city of lights, the city of love, while drinking Champaign, French wines and eating finest cheeses. The co-chair of SERVSIG, Bart Larivière and Lerzan Aksoy have rewarded Raymond Fisk for the 25th anniversary of SERVSIG. In addition, the new co-chair, Linda Nasr, who will replace Lerzan Aksoy, has been introduced to the SERVSIG community.
Being the host of the 10th SERVSIG has been an incredible privilege, which deserves a lot of effort, but which was extremely rewarding due to the warm atmosphere created by the amazing service research community! SERVSIG 2018 was a lot of fun, and the chair, Nathalie Demoulin and co-chairs, Elke Cabooter, Ruben Chumpitaz and Mekhail Mustak want to thank all participants for attending the 10th SERVSIG and sharing their latest research and their enthusiasm!
Impressions of the event:
click on the collage or here
