The
service sector, worldwide, has emerged as one of the most
dynamic and profitable sectors in recent years. Services account
for nearly 60% of Gross National Product (GNP) across the
globe (Jackson, Neidell, and Lunsford, 1995). In Canada, services
represent 67% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which clearly
suggests the importance of the service sector in today's economy
(Lovelock, 2001). Although the service sector has traditionally
been dominated with the end users being individual consumers,
the industrial service sector is constantly growing. For example,
Business-to-Business (B2B) services account for over 30% of
all the service revenues in the US (Wilson, and Smith, 1996).
Therefore, the prominence of the service sector in any economy
is rather obvious.
Substantial
literature exists on the New Product Development (NPD) of
manufactured goods. However, much less research has been conducted
on the topic of New Service Development (NSD), especially
in the high growth industrial sector, even though it is well-established
that services differ significantly from physical/manufactured
goods (Berry, 1980; Jackson, Neidell, and Lunsford, 1995).
Thus, relatively little information is available to assist
managers in developing successful new services (Temll, 1992).
New
Service Development can be perceived as a generic of NPD.
In some respects, the approach to NPD is the same, regardless
of whether services or manufactured goods are being developed.
However, certain marketing concepts, models and tools appear
to be inappropriate when applied to service firms, which stresses
the need for service specific marketing frameworks (Gronroos,
1990). Research in services marketing has predominantly focused
on consumer markets, and extensive studies have been undertaken
to describe how services differ from physical goods in the
consumer market (Easingwood, 1986; Bowers 1989). |
