{"id":10914,"date":"2021-05-26T22:16:07","date_gmt":"2021-05-27T02:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/?p=10914"},"modified":"2021-05-26T22:16:07","modified_gmt":"2021-05-27T02:16:07","slug":"the-benefits-of-conducting-a-systematic-literature-review-for-a-doctoral-dissertation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/2021\/05\/the-benefits-of-conducting-a-systematic-literature-review-for-a-doctoral-dissertation\/","title":{"rendered":"The benefits of conducting a systematic literature review for a doctoral dissertation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Guest article by Larissa Becker, finalist of the 2021 SERVSIG Best Dissertation Award<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I feel honoured to be among the finalists of SERVSIG Best Dissertation Award. Although a great dissertation depends on a combination of factors (e.g., theoretical and practical contributions, novelty, methodological rigor, supervision\u2014big thanks to Dr. Elina Jaakkola and Dr. Aino Halinen-Kaila), I decided to talk about one thing that I believe made a difference when I was writing my dissertation: a systematic literature review. For the first article of my dissertation, my first supervisor, Dr. Elina Jaakkola, and I wrote a paper based on a combination of systematic literature review and metatheoretical analysis that organized the conceptual domain of customer experience through the development of four fundamental premises (Becker & Jaakkola, 2020).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The literature already mentions the many contributions a systematic literature can offer to a theory or conceptual domain (e.g., a research agenda, solving theoretical conflicts). In this article, I want to talk about those unseen contributions for the writer, especially doctoral students, and their future work. I want to focus on this topic because I have been asked more than once whether I recommend that doctoral students conduct a systematic literature review. I always answer that conducting one was very beneficial to me for many reasons that I list next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A systematic literature review allowed me to know the literature in breadth and depth<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though I had been reading many articles about customer experience (also, service experience, brand experience, experiential marketing, and many other labels) when I started my doctoral studies, I was still confused about what customer experience was. Elina was the one who suggested to conduct a systematic literature review that maybe could be an article. I am so glad she suggested that! The review allowed me to know the literature in breadth because I ended up reading many articles that I would not have if conducting a non-systematic review. The final number of articles included in the review was 136. But, maybe more important than that, I was not just reading these articles. I was coding and analyzing information that allowed me to obtain an in-depth understanding of the topic. The data analysis procedure forced me to scrutinize these articles in a way that I might not have done if I were just reading them and taking some notes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The systematic literature review was the basis for other articles and the dissertation as a whole<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

 I have to say that writing the second article of my dissertation was somewhat easy because I used the systematic literature as a basis for the problematization presented there. Having this big picture of the literature, I could identify the trends to a more broadened, consumer-centric perspective. This move of the customer experience literature then guided my two other articles (Becker, 2018; Becker et al., 2020) and the dissertation overall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The systematic literature review gave me confidence<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After carefully analyzing 136 articles for a few years, I felt confident of my knowledge of the customer experience literature (of course, I continued my search for customer experience literature beyond the review). I believe this is an important benefit for an early-career academic considering that we are very susceptible to impostor-syndrome. Confidence allowed me to aim high (the paper was published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science) and to argue for the contribution of my research more convincingly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lastly, I would like to make a caveat. Even though I experienced these benefits, I do not think this is the best path for every and any doctoral dissertation. I see a systematic literature review as a method and not as a type of contribution by itself. Depending on the topic (e.g., very new topic with few previous articles), another avenue might be the best. So, if you, early doctoral student, identify a problem in your topic of research that should be solved with a systematic literature review, go ahead! I hope you can experience these benefits as well!
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Larissa Becker
Postdoctoral research fellow in Marketing
Tampere University, Finland





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– Becker, L. (2018). Methodological proposals for the study of consumer experience. Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal<\/em>, 22<\/em>(4), 465-490.
– Becker, L. & Jaakkola. E. (2020). Customer experience: Fundamental premises and implications for research. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science<\/em>, 48<\/em>, 630-648. 
– Becker, L., Jaakkola, E., & Halinen, A. (2020). Toward a goal-oriented view of customer journeys. Journal of Service Management<\/em>, 31<\/em>(4), 767-790.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo credit: Freestocks<\/a>.<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guest article by Larissa Becker, finalist of the 2021 SERVSIG Best Dissertation Award. I feel honoured to be among the finalists of SERVSIG Best Dissertation Award. Although a great dissertation depends on a combination of factors (e.g., theoretical and practical contributions, novelty, methodological rigor, supervision\u2014big thanks to Dr. Elina Jaakkola and Dr. Aino Halinen-Kaila), I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":10918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,8],"tags":[855,854],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10914"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10914"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10971,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10914\/revisions\/10971"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}