Celebrating SERVSIG’s 25th Year and 10th SERVSIG Conference: A History and a Future Perspective
by Raymond P. Fisk, Texas State University
In 2018, SERVSIG celebrates its 25th birthday as an American Marketing Association (AMA) Special Interest Group (SIG) and the 10th SERVSIG International Research Conference in Paris. As the founder of SERVSIG in 1993 and the Co-Founder (with Liam Glynn-deceased) of the SERVSIG International Research Conference in 1997, I write this history as a well-informed participant observer. Part of this history is my personal background, so that I can explain why I started SERVSIG. Most of this history describes what SERVSIG is and what it does. The last part contains the future I recommend for SERVSIG.
My Unusual Background
Many people have asked me why I decided to start SERVSIG. My reasons for starting SERVSIG are rooted in my experiences fifty years ago as a teenager in 1968. That year was an astoundingly turbulent year. I was about to enter high school and just barely old enough to understand how complicated the world was in 1968! I read the local newspaper and watched the nightly television news avidly. I followed the many stories about civil rights protests and anti-war protests with great interest and empathy. I knew I was eligible to be drafted and sent to the Vietnam War when I turned 18. It was strange and quite frustrating to realize that our species was remarkably good at mistreating each other. My purpose in life emerged from that frustration. I became obsessed with fairness and with finding ways to make changes happen that increased fairness. Despite the starry-eyed innocence of my quest, I have never regretted it.
While anyone alive in 1968 was able to learn about the many horror stories of that year, there is also an unusual aspect of my teenage years. I went to Ed W. Clark High School in Las Vegas, Nevada. My high school friends and I hung out in the Vegas casinos on the Strip. Watching people gamble did not improve my opinion of our species. Nonetheless, I became a human behavior researcher then. My friends and I would play games trying to predict the behavior of the many people we were watching. The loser would have to buy a 49 cent (all you could eat) breakfast for the four of us. I almost never bought breakfast.
In 1971, I enrolled at Arizona State University because of their law school. I intended to become a lawyer who would make the world a better place. My hero then was Ralph Nader. Arizona State put all pre-law students in the business school. Even though I got to meet Ralph Nader during those early years, I quickly realized that law was not the right choice for someone as impatient as me. It is hard to change laws and no fairness law can make people believe in fairness or act fairly if no one is watching.
So, I went searching for a new career path that fit my passion. After trying the introductory class of all the other business disciplines, my first marketing class (taught by Ken Rowe) was so exciting that I quickly enrolled in another marketing class as an elective (taught by Ken Coney). Coney’s class was the hardest college class I had taken; and halfway through that class, I decided to become a marketing major. In the many years since that decision, I have never once regretted my choice. Marketing focuses on voluntary exchanges between customers and exchanges. I was home.
During my marketing degree, Steve Brown taught a summer marketing research class. We formed into teams and did marketing research for real clients. My teammate, Steve Opp, and I were so enchanted with doing marketing research that we asked Steve Brown if we could do another research project.
Coney and Brown each suggested to me that my obsession with marketing research made me a great candidate for a doctorate in marketing. It was then that I fully realized that educators are in the remarkable position of helping students change their minds. I quickly signed up for the ASU Marketing doctoral program.
SERVSIG History
In the summer of 1993, I received the AMA’s Marketing Educator Newsletter and read an announcement that Special Interest Groups were now being created in the AMA to better serve the needs of academic members. A few special interest group topics were listed as being started, but not services marketing. I called two service scholar friends who were also former AMA Presidents – Len Berry and Steve Brown. I was sure they were so well connected in the AMA and in service that they would know if anyone in the service research field was already creating a SIG for services marketing.
Each of them said they didn’t know anyone who was working on a Services SIG. I decided to launch my efforts to create a Services Marketing SIG on that day. I called Stan Madden who was the AMA Academic Council Officer helping the SIGs form to tell him that I was going to create Services Marketing SIG. Mary Jo Bitner, Steve Brown, and I had just published an extensive history of the services marketing field in the Journal of Retailing. In collecting the literature for that history, I had also collected addresses, phone numbers, and even e-mail addresses (which were just starting to catch-on in 1993) for a large number of the service scholars we had cited.
On October 14, 1993, I sent the first e-mail communication for SERVSIG. The next week was the first organizational meeting of SERVSIG at the Frontiers in Service Conference (Oct. 21-23). There was significant enthusiasm for SERVSIG at this meeting. Shortly afterward, I was able to notify everyone (via e-mail on November 10, 1993) that the proposal to create SERVSIG that I had submitted (with the help of numerous volunteers) was now the first SIG formally approved by the AMA.
There are two key decisions that I made in 1993, which have stood the test of time. For branding purposes, I shortened the new AMA Services Marketing Special Interest Group name to just SERVSIG. I was trying to coin a short and memorable brand name. We recently shortened the long form of our name to the AMA Services Special Interest Group, but we are still SERVSIG.
My second key decision was to write three goals that I hoped would help SERVSIG succeed in just three words – open, flexible, and fun. First, SERVSIG should strive to be open to new people, new ideas, global contributions, interdisciplinary contributions, practitioner contributions, and to new ways of doing things. Second, SERVSIG should strive for the maximum of organizational flexibility. Third, SERVSIG should be a fun organization that strives to be light-hearted and intellectually nourishing. These goals are still at the heart of SERVSIG’s thinking and decision making. We have demonstrated openness, flexibility, and fun in many ways.
SERVSIG International Research Conference History
Liam Glynn and I began talking about starting a SERVSIG conference of our own at the Loews Vanderbilt Hotel Lobby Bar in 1997. We were there for the Sixth Frontiers in Service Conference, which had been held in Nashville, Tennessee every year for five years. Christian Grönroos came walking along as Liam and I were talking. Christian told us he wasn’t coming back to Nashville again because it was boring to keep returning to the same location again and again. Our brand promise for the SERVSIG Conference that we would never repeat a city was born during that conversation to ensure novel and fun experiences
The founding concept for the SERVSIG Conference was that a different school in a different country would host the conference every two years. We thought we might start our conference in 1998, but then we realized that would be competing against the QUIS conference in 1998, which was held every other year. We thought QUIS was a great independent service conference, so we didn’t want to compete against QUIS. We decided to alternate our conference in the years that QUIS wasn’t being held, so we started our first conference in 1999.
The first SERVSIG International Research Conference was held in 1999 in New Orleans and hosted by the University of New Orleans. The second SERVSIG International Research Conference was held in 2001 in Sydney, Australia and hosted by Macquarie University. The third SERVSIG Research Conference was held in 2003 in Reims, France and hosted by the Reims Management School. The Fourth SERVSIG conference was held in 2005 in Singapore and hosted by the National University of Singapore.
We skipped an extra year from 2005 to 2008 because QUIS skipped a year in 2006. QUIS was scheduled to be hosted in New Orleans but Hurricane Katrina caused the conference to be delayed a year to 2007 in Orlando. At SERVSIG, we delayed our conference a year, too, to stay on alternate years with QUIS. So, Hurricane Katrina disrupted two conferences.
The Fifth SERVSIG International Research Conference was held in 2008 in Liverpool, UK and hosted by the University of Liverpool. The Sixth SERVSIG International Research Conference was held in 2010 in Porto, Portugal and hosted by the University of Porto. The Seventh SERVSIG International Research Conference was held in 2012 in Helsinki, Finland and hosted by the Hanken School of Economics. The Eighth SERVSIG International Research Conference was held in 2014 in Thessaloniki, Greece and hosted by the University of Macedonia. The Ninth SERVSIG International Research Conference was held in 2016 in Maastricht, Netherlands and hosted by Maastricht University. Of course, that brings us to the present with the Tenth SERVSIG International Research Conference in Paris, France and hosted by the IÉSEG School of Management in 2018.
SERVSIG Best Practices
There are four SERVSIG best practices that have served us well across our 25 years:
- Listening and Empowering – Lauren Wright was the first person who set us on this path. At the very first meeting of people interested in forming SERVSIG, she suggested creating a doctoral consortium to mentor scholars new to service. The idea was well received by others in the audience. So, I asked Lauren if she would be willing to create such a consortium and she did. SERVSIG benefitted tremendously from starting just as the Internet emerged as a powerful communications tool. We now have several technology platforms for disseminating service knowledge and for stimulating member-generated content. These include servsig.org, our Facebook page, Twitter handle @amaservsig, LinkedIn page, Youtube, our mobile SERVSIG app, and our electronic newsletter.
- Mentoring – As a result of Lauren Wright’s suggestion, our first SERVSIG Doctoral Consortium was in 1994. The consortium has been a huge success for building our brand. Many new scholars first encounter and experience SERVSIG because of our consortium. Our second major and much more recent mentoring effort is “Let’s Talk About Service (LTAS),” which is a 2-day workshop for Ph.D. students and young scholars. Both events are light-hearted, intellectually nourishing, and culture building.
- Generosity – Helping people is at the heart of any true service organization. We started giving recognition awards in our first year. This was a suggestion from Roland Rust. There were just two awards at first. We created a Career Contributions to the Service Field Award and the Best Article Award. In later years, we added the Liam Glynn Research Scholarship Award (after his untimely death in 2000), an Emerging Service Scholar Award, and a Best Service Dissertation Award. When Christopher Lovelock passed away in 2008, we changed our Career Contributions Award to the Christopher Lovelock Career Contributions Award.
- Collaborative Community – My favorite part of SERVSIG is the collaborative service research community that we built together. Our service research field is widely seen as a friendly and collegial field. Our members are remarkably helpful to each other. Across the 25 years, there have been many wonderful collaborations that are very global. These collaborations include conferences, especially international conferences. Our first conference home is the Frontiers in Service Conference where we have held our Doctoral Consortium each year and given our major awards. The 27th Frontiers in Service Conference will be held in September 2018 in Austin, Texas and hosted by Texas State University. Of course, our second conference home is our SERVSIG International Research Conference. Our brand promise of never repeating a city enables us to build the SERVSIG community at every new location. At the end of our SERVSIG 2016 Conference in Maastricht, Netherlands, our conference co-chair Martin Wetzel said that the SERVSIG Conference was “for the community, by the community.” That phrase describes SERVSIG well, too.
Future
It has been my great pleasure to observe and encourage the growth and success of the SERVSIG community across our first 25 years. It has been especially fun to make so many friends in the SERVSIG community. I’m confident that the SERVSIG community will continue to grow and prosper for many years to come.
Finally, After 25 years, what is next? My militant obsession with trying to make change happen must take over here! Human progress is always fragile!
As service researchers, I think we need to find ways to go beyond minor service improvements to major service improvements! This requires us to climb the ladder of complexity by thinking bigger and learning to solve bigger problems.
I have three recommendations for what SERVSIG and its members should do next:
- ServCollab.org – https://servcollab.org/
ServCollab is a service research collaborative for diagnosing and treating humanity’s service system problems. This is a new effort that I am starting. It will be a nonprofit group that is not affiliated with a specific university or country. I hope that SERVSIG and its members will be some of the first participants. Please consider getting involved!
- RRBM – https://www.rrbm.network/
A global initiative for Responsible Research in Business and Management for the greater good. As they say, “Imagine a world where business and management research is widely used in practice by business and other non-business organizations to improve the lives of people in our societies.”
- Global Citizens – https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/
Global Citizen is a community of people who want to learn about and take action on the world’s biggest challenges.
Each of these organizations is working on improving human well-being! I hope SERVSIG and its members will get involved with all three of these efforts.
You can find the slides for this presentation here.
