Introduction

Abstract

“…To encourage repeat purchases and build customer loyalty, companies must shift the focus of e-business from e-commerce — the transactions — to e-service — all cues and encounters that occur before and after transactions.”

(Zeithaml 2000, p. 8)

From 1992 to 1999, the contribution of the service industry in the German Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increased from 60 percent to approximately 64 percent. In the same period, the German service industry grew, in absolute numbers, from a 2.9 billion to a 3.6 billion industry. This represents a thirty percent growth, while the German GDP grew twenty-three percent. Currently, 63.8 percent of the German GDP is attributed to the service industry (Statistisches Jahrbuch 2000, p. 641). Moreover, in 1999, 66 percent of the German work-force was employed in service jobs (Statistisches Jahrbuch 2000, p. 111). While the German work-force decreased by 4.8 percent from 1991 to 1999, the service work-force increased by 7.9 percent in the same period. This resulted in an absolute increase of 7.5 percent in participation of the service industry in the German work-force, in less than ten years. Consistent with the statistics presented above, has been the growth and increased importance the service industry played in research. E.g., Iacobucci (1998) found more than 1,000 references in a search, at the ABI-Inform electronic database, for the words “services marketing”, referring to publications for the time period between 1986 and 1997.