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guest article by\u00a0Leonard Berry, We are all familiar with marketing\u2019s traditional framework of the 4 P\u2019s: product, place, promotion, and price. I would like to briefly share with you the \u201c3 P\u2019s\u201d that have helped me in my career.\u00a0 They are passion, perseverance, and proximity.<\/p>\n Passion<\/strong><\/p>\n published my first general services article titled \u201cServices Marketing Is Different.\u201d\u00a0 I knew then that services marketing would be the core of my life\u2019s work.\u00a0 I had found my academic \u201creason for being\u201d and in 1982 I found the perfect academic home at Texas A&M University for pursuing this work.\u00a0 Waiting for me at Texas A&M were my collaborators-to-be, Parsu Parasuraman and Valarie Zeithaml.<\/p>\n Valarie, Parsu, and I became services marketing soul mates.\u00a0 We connected with the Marketing Science Institute (MSI), which sponsored our program of research in service quality spanning 15 years.<\/p>\n But it wasn\u2019t just the three of us in the early 1980\u2019s who sensed the need to create a new sub-discipline of marketing focused on services.\u00a0 There was a core of people \u2013 about 15-20 of us from the U.S. and Europe, including some executives \u2013 who banded together to share ideas, convene conferences, write articles, and defend this fledgling new field against the pushback that \u201cmarketing was marketing.\u201d Many of us met at the first-ever services marketing conference held in the United States which was sponsored by the AMA.\u00a0 I was so fortunate. \u00a0I was in the right place at the right time with the right people; I was passionate about service research then \u2013 and still am 35 years later.<\/p>\n Perseverance<\/strong><\/p>\n At Mayo Clinic, I interviewed patients, physicians, nurses, allied health staff, and administrators, and observed numerous surgeries and doctor-patient interactions in examination and hospital rooms.\u00a0 I stayed in the hospital as a patient and flew on the emergency response helicopter.<\/p>\n I became hooked on healthcare during my time at Mayo Clinic.\u00a0 I was fascinated.\u00a0 I was learning about a service that was fundamentally different from the commercial services I had been studying for years.\u00a0 I felt that I could merge my life\u2019s work in services marketing and quality with healthcare and eventually contribute to improving healthcare service quality.<\/p>\n My re-entry to Texas A&M from Mayo Clinic was a struggle that required perseverance.\u00a0 I wanted to \u201churry up and do something,\u201d but I didn\u2019t know what to do or how to do it.\u00a0 The medical journals, the medical service literature, and the culture of medical publishing were unfamiliar territory.\u00a0 I felt like a rookie. I was frustrated and wondered if I was on a fool\u2019s errand.<\/p>\n I persevered and eventually regained some self-confidence.\u00a0 I realized that to contribute to the medical literature, I had to do three things: 1) learn a lot more about healthcare; 2) fully exploit my knowledge of business, services marketing and quality; and 3) build a network of collaborators who had healthcare backgrounds.<\/p>\n In October 2003, about 1 \u00bd years after returning from Mayo Clinic, I co-authored my first medical journal article.\u00a0 Collaborating with a physician and Kathleen Seiders of Boston College, we published \u201cInnovations in Access to Care: A Patient-Centered Approach\u201d in Annals of Internal Medicine<\/em>, a top-tier medical journal.\u00a0 It was a challenge but we did it and I knew then that I could do it again.<\/p>\n For the last 17 years I have been immersed in studying and writing about improving service quality in healthcare.\u00a0 During the last four years I\u2019ve focused on service improvement in cancer care, work that has inspired me in a way words cannot capture.<\/p>\n Proximity<\/strong><\/p>\n I, too, believe in the power of proximity and spend much of my research time in the field, to learn what I can\u2019t learn from a distance.\u00a0 Being a field researcher means being away from family, friends, and the comforts of home and I recall one evening when I was away and feeling sorry for myself.\u00a0 It was a Friday night in 1990 and Parsu Parasuraman and I was in Rochester, New York.\u00a0 It was nearly 10:00 p.m. and we had just finished customer focus group interviews at Eastman Kodak for our service quality research program.<\/p>\n Parsu and I had an important conversation during our late-evening meal.\u00a0 I asked him: \u201cWhy are we here?\u00a0 Why aren\u2019t we home with our families?\u201d\u00a0 He looked across the table and said, \u201cLen, we are here because the data are here.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019ll never forget that conversation with Parsu.\u00a0 The data were in Rochester on that Friday and so were we.<\/p>\n My research in cancer care has included field research visits to 10 innovative cancer centers in the U.S., and, most recently, a one-week visit to the leading cancer hospital in Denmark.<\/p>\n Some of my best interviews have been with patients while they were in the chemo chair receiving treatment.\u00a0 They had time to talk to me and I could also interview family who often was present.\u00a0 Some of the oncologists and nurses I\u2019ve interviewed have had cancer themselves.\u00a0 I always ask if having cancer changed the way they deliver care.\u00a0 The answer is always \u201cyes.\u201d<\/p>\n I need to be on the front lines of cancer care to really understand how to improve service and ease what is inherently a frightening, emotionally intense journey.\u00a0 Proximity enables me to learn what I could not otherwise learn.\u00a0 Proximity feeds my passion for service research and it propels the research.<\/p>\n In closing, the poet Tagore wrote:\u00a0 \u201cI slept and dreamt that life was joy.\u00a0 I awoke and saw that life was service.\u00a0 I acted and behold, service was joy.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nthe\u00a0 Acceptance Remarks for 2018 American Marketing Association Willliam Wilkie \u201cMarketing for a Better World\u201d Award<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/download-2.jpg\")
When I was a doctoral student in the late 1960\u2019s, no professor ever uttered the words \u201cservices marketing.\u201d\u00a0 The field did not exist and it did not occur to me until the 1970\u2019s when I was learning about financial services that marketing a service requires different ideas than marketing a manufactured good.\u00a0 I was fascinated by the idea of marketing services and in 1980<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/perseverance-roughstrength-1.jpg\")
Passion alone is not enough, but passion coupled with perseverance is powerful. When I shifted my career focus to healthcare, perseverance played a major role. My career-long commitment to service research prepared me well for my sabbatical leave study at Mayo Clinic during the 2001-2002 academic year.\u00a0 I knew little about one of our most important services, healthcare, and it was time to learn.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.servsig.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/download-1.png\")
The third \u201cP,\u201d proximity, has long been a principle in my research. I recently heard a remarkable speech by Brian Stevenson, a law professor who founded the Equal Justice Initiative.\u00a0 Stevenson stressed the importance of being proximate to the poor to effectively advocate for them.\u00a0 \u201cThere is power in proximity,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cWe see things you can\u2019t see from a distance.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/a>Leonard Berry<\/em><\/p>\n