Abstract
Within the past two decades a number of seminal articles and textbooks have been published that established service operations management as a field of study embracing all service industries. A marketing professor from Harvard (Levitt, 1972) is credited with the observation that service operations could be viewed from a manufacturing perspective. Using McDonald’s as an example of “manufacturing in the field” he proposed that services could adopt manufacturing concepts to insure the delivery of consistent service. The “customer contact model” (Chase, 1978) was the first and still most useful theory of service operations. More than a classification scheme, this theory with its “front and back office dichotomy” unlike manufacturing recognizes the customer as a participant in the delivery system. The implications for marketing and human resource management now became apparent.
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© 1993 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Fitzsimmons, J.A. (1993). Strategic Role of Information in Services. In: Sarin, R.K. (eds) Perspectives in Operations Management. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-3166-1_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-3166-1_6
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