General Reflections and Directions for Future Research

Abstract

Services have become increasingly international in recent decades. Due to reduced trade barriers and developments in information and communication technology, more and more service providers go international and provide their services to consumers in different countries (WTO 2006; 2008). The next century is predicted to be the “century of international services” (Clark and Rajaratnam 1999). At the end of the last century, Knight (1999) still considered international service marketing an upcoming and developing field. However, the literature review at the beginning of this thesis shows that ten years later, the field has developed, and several studies have contributed to a better understanding of cross-cultural differences in the cognitions and behavior of service customers. An analysis of cross-cultural service research also reveals though that academia still lags behind the quick and versatile internationalization process of services, leaving major research gaps that offer various avenues for research.