1.1. Definition of Service
Services are abundantly experienced in daily life, and they occur in an array of styles and outcomes. Services can be provided directly to the customer (e.g., spa treatments) or for the customer (e.g., food deliveries). Services can be delivered by personnel (e.g., luggage delivered to hotel rooms by bellmen) or via technology (e.g., restaurant reservations made online by guests themselves). Generally, a service is the action, performance, or process that takes place between a customer and a service provider: a service is the intangible part of the transaction relationship, whereas a product is the tangible component. For example, at Dunkin coffee shops, guests experience the intangible service (e.g., ordering the coffee, interacting with the staff) and receive the tangible, physical product (e.g., a cup of coffee, a doughnut). Likewise, when a guest stays at a hotel, they experience the intangible service (e.g., checking in at the front desk) and engage with a tangible, physical product (e.g., the hotel room they occupy during the visit). Services surround virtually every part of consumers’ lives, and they are especially pronounced in the human-centric hospitality industry.
1.2. Dimensions of Services
In his book Service Science: Concepts, Technology, Management, Katzan (2008) outlines five dimensions on which services can be classified:
Each of these dimensions offers a spectrum on which businesses can determine and distinguish operations strategies. Collectively, the dimensions help to define the overall service model for a business.
The dimension of service process captures the relationships between the labor intensity of a service and how much the service is customized. Schmenner (1986) developed the service process matrix (Fig. 1) to visualize the relationships.
The Y-axis represents the degree of labor intensity, or the significance of labor costs relative to capital (e.g., equipment, software) costs. The X-axis reflects the degree to which each service interaction is customized for the guest. Service factories are businesses like airlines or cruise lines that employ heavily standardized processes (often driven by technology) to deliver generic services to many guests. Professional services, like spas or fine dining restaurants, are at the opposite end of the spectrum: these businesses offer highly customized services to guests, and the services require the devotion of significant time by trained professionals in order to create the experiences. Service shops may not require as much labor (relative to capital costs), but they still achieve high personalization; think about the way luxury hotels customize the stays of large numbers of guests staying each evening. Mass services, finally, offer little customization but still require heavy labor: this is especially common in foodservice, where large volumes of standard food items might need to be prepared for large numbers of guests. The four quadrants of the matrix ultimately represent the four dominant schemes for service processes.
Fig. 1. The Service Process Matrix. Source: Adapted from Schmenner (1986, p. 25). Copyright 1986 by the Sloan Management Review Association.
The service nature dimension characterizes how a service acts upon an object to achieve a result. A service object is the person or thing upon which the service is enacted. The service result is the tangible or intangible outcome of the service. The service nature matrix (Fig. 2) maps these dimensions.
In hospitality businesses, it is most common that the service objects are people. Service results, however, can vary between being tangible or intangible. While many services involve tangible items (e.g., printed h...
