Major website traffic for SERVSIG.org
The conference season just started again and colleagues from all around the world will meet again. I personally enjoy this time of the year as it shows us once again how diverse and international our service community is ! This is also nicely reflected by the website traffic of SERVSIG.org (see world map).
We at SERVSIG aim to be the best worldwide platform for service researchers to keep in touch with people, events, and ideas. To reflect this goal in our organizational structure, we introduced Regional Officers for all continents where the service research community is strongly represented (i.e. America, Europe, Australasian). The Regional Officer represents SERVSIG in local events, supports the service research community in their regional networks and acts as an additional local connection point for questions and requests in the area. (Of course, the rest of the board members are still available to help. Regional Officers are meant to offer additional local support and service if needed)
I’m happy to announce the first Regional SERVSIG Officers. In the following, I want to give them a chance to introduce themselves.
Linda Nasr – SERVSIG Officer for Europe
Working within the Service Research field, I believe in the importance of being of service to others. This idea struck me a few years ago when I was a PhD student attending my first international conference. On that occasion, I met one of my mentors whom to my question of: “how can PhD students improve their networking skills?” simply replied: “Be genuine and offer your help”.
Adopting this moto, I volunteered to help as Social Media Officer for JOSM, Electronic Media Officer for SERVSIG and now I am delighted to volunteer as SERVSIG officer for Europe. Throughout these activities, I met wonderful colleagues and co-authors, built friendships, and would like to believe that I helped in creating further awareness about our wonderful service research community. It was my way of saying “thank you” for the great help and support I received from the various members of our growing family.
Today, I want to extend my offer to help to our global Service Research community at large and in Europe in particular! Our service community is international like never before. We witness an incredible amount of collaborations between universities, research centers, and researchers. This diversity of ideas, schools of thoughts, modes of work, etc. have contributed to the advancement of our field. Our job, as SERVSIG officers, is to provide you with a platform that facilitates these collaborations and builds bridges between service researchers. I would like to encourage you to get in touch if you would like to promote your event under the SERVSIG umbrella or whether you would like us to help you with any aspect of your career, be it teaching, research or service.
Our service research community will prosper as we become more of service to each other, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us!
Martin Mende – SERVSIG Officer for the Americas
I’m an Associate Professor of Marketing at Florida State University. My research focuses on frontline service interactions, transformative service research, relationship marketing, and marketing strategy. My research has appeared in the Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Service Research, Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, Marketing Letters, and Journal of Business Research. Martin serves on the Editorial Review Boards for the Journal of Service Research and the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.
I began my work as a service scholar at Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt, in my native Germany. It was during my undergraduate studies at this university that I read the seminal papers of Mary Jo Bitner, Ruth Bolton, Parsu, Valarie Zeithaml, Kay Lemon, and many other leading service scholars and I was instantly taken – service research was my calling. Therefore, I then earned a Ph.D. with a dissertation on complaint management (supervised by Bernd Stauss, who – at the time – held the first Chair for Services Management in Germany). Subsequently, following my heart, I was able to earn a Ph.D. from Arizona State University, learning from some of the most wonderful scholars in the area of service marketing.
I have been serving as a Board Member (Program Officer) for SERVSIG since 2014. In my new role as a regional officer for the Americas of SERVSIG, I’m happy to be your initial point of contact. If you see me at any conference or meeting, please say ‘hello’ and we can talk about any questions, ideas, and suggestions you may have related to SERVSIG. If you want to talk about something else, I also loves sports (soccer, tennis, basketball), enjoy travelling with my wife and best friend Maura, playing with my dog, and trying to play the piano.
Tom Chen – SERVSIG Officer for Australasian/Asia
I’m a lecturer from the University of Newcastle, Australia. I’m originally from Taiwan, studied my master at the Lancaster University in the UK and completed my Ph.D. at the Queensland University of Technology in Australia. My first AMA SERVSIG encounter was back in 2011 AMA summer conference in San Francisco. I’m passionate about my research in co-creation and sharing economy, and have initiated the co-creation in service and customer engagement symposium in 2013. The third CCIS-CE symposium was held in Berlin, Germany this June. My first overseas travel destination was Riga, Latvia and I have travelled since then more than 30 countries. As I believe in sharing the experiences, I regularly attend all the marketing and service conferences to get in touch with my academic fellows with diverse background and research interests. I will be the Australasian regional officer for the next two years.
I thank Linda, Martin, Tom for their willingness to take over this important role for the service research community.
Werner Kunz
SERVSIG Co-Chair
