Journal of Services Marketing

Emerald Article: A quarter of a century: reflections of the first 25 years

of the <IT>Journal of Services Marketing</IT>
Charles L. Martin

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To cite this document: Charles L. Martin, (2012),"A quarter of a century: reflections of the first 25 years of the <IT>Journal of
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A quarter of a century: reflections of the first

25 years of the Journal of Services Marketing
Charles L. Martin
W. Frank Barton School of Business, Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas, USA and
CALIMT Learning and Innovation Research Center, Newport Beach, California, USA
Abstract
Purpose This viewpoint article aims to chronicle the history and evolution of the Journal of Services Marketing from 1987 through 2011, from the
vantage point of Professor Charles L. Martin, who served on the journals Editorial Advisory Board from 1987-1990 and as Editor from 1990 to the
present day.
Design/methodology/approach The article summarizes the events and publishers philosophy leading up to the founding of the journal, and
discusses the policies/practices and content of the journal from 1987 through 2011.
Findings The journal has evolved as the field of services marketing has evolved from many conceptual, how to and idea articles to those more
empirically-based and theory-driven. However, the journals commitment to managerial implications or other implications continues.
Practical implications Understanding the history and evolution of the journal promises to help service researchers better understand the fields
archives, identify gaps in the literature and position their research for the future. The paper promises to help service researchers and business
practitioners alike to understand that the field of services marketing is not static; rather it has evolved and developed over the years and will continue to
do so in the future.
Originality/value It is useful for any organization including journals to periodically document and reflect on its history in order to set its sights
on the future.
Keywords Services marketing, Service, Customer service, Service research, History of service, Anniversaries, Journals
Paper type Viewpoint

have contributed to its success, and, while reflecting on the

past, to contemplate the future.
And so it is only fitting that I should seize the moment to
remind the Journal of Services Marketing (JSM) family of
readers, authors, reviewers and members of the Editorial
Advisory Board that the Journals 25th anniversary has
arrived 25 years of thought-provoking, cutting-edge articles
that have shaped service and marketing theory and improved
practice in countless organizations. Accordingly, in this
editorial I would like to reflect on the first 25 years of
JSMs history and brag a bit about what the JSM family has
accomplished.

An executive summary for managers and executive

readers can be found at the end of this article.

About anniversaries
Marketers are quite cognizant of the potency of anniversaries
temporal milestones set aside to remember and recognize
meaningful personal events such as birthdays and weddings
that accentuate our individuality, as well as shared historical
events and traditions (often couched in terms of holidays)
that help preserve a cultures heritage or reinforce a groups
bonds. Of course, we can validate, celebrate or otherwise
observe significant points in the past whenever we choose, but
the ebb and flow of lifes normal daily routines leave too little
time for most of us to observe the past as frequently and as
thoughtfully as it might deserve. Thus the emergence of
anniversaries periods set aside to properly focus attention
on featured events.
Perhaps because people appreciate being recognized for
their own personal anniversaries, they seem to be a bit more
tolerant of marketers who seize opportunities to tout an
organizations anniversaries to tell the organizations story,
to celebrate its achievements, to say thank you to all who

In the beginning
The Journal of Services Marketing was conceived in the mid1980s at a time when there were very few publications
dedicated solely to services or services marketing. In the USA,
the American Marketing Associations (AMA) periodic
services marketing conference had published about five or
six proceedings by that time and attendance at the
conferences provided convincing evidence that there was a
strong and growing body of researchers interested in services
marketing. In the UK, a series of annual services marketing
workshops were born at about the same time hosted by a
sponsoring university for two or three years before moving to
another sponsoring university. These conferences were
valuable mechanisms that brought together well over 300
service researchers to share ideas and legitimize the emerging
area (not yet a field) of services marketing. Despite the
thought-provoking contributions to the conferences and the
AMAs published proceedings, services marketing needed its
own journal.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0887-6045.htm

Journal of Services Marketing

26/1 (2012) 38
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited [ISSN 0887-6045]
[DOI 10.1108/08876041211199670]

A quarter of a century: reflections of the first 25 years of the JSM

Journal of Services Marketing

Charles L. Martin

Volume 26 Number 1 2012 3 8

To his credit, the founding publisher, Robert A. Grayson

(The Marketing Journals Publishing Company) saw and
seized the opportunity to launch a services marketing journal.
He perceived the need for a high-level, conceptually rich
journal to publish articles that practicing services marketers
could read, understand and apply in their organizations.
According to Graysons analysis, too many journals at that
time were overly theoretical, minutely focused, and so heavily
laden with esoteric jargon, confusing models and statistical
gymnastics that the typical services marketing manager
could not derive much value from them. Grayson wanted
JSM to be different, so he positioned JSM as an academic
journal written for practitioners.
In August 1986, Grayson announced the soon-to-belaunched Journal and began recruiting an initial cohort of
reviewers and advisors that swelled to about 100 scholars and
businesspeople within two years. Unlike todays Editorial
Advisory Board (EAB), almost everyone in this early group
worked for universities or firms in the USA. That initial
cohort of reviewers included myself and five other scholars
who continue to serve on the Journals EAB Raj Arora
(University of Missouri Kansas City), John T. Bowen
(University of Houston), Stephen Grove (Clemson
University), Elaine Sherman (Hofstra University) and Jeff
Totten (McNeese State University). Within about the next
three years, several other scholars and business leaders joined
the EAB who continue to serve today: Emin Babakus
(Memphis State University), Blaise J. Bergiel (University of
West Georgia), John R. Rusty Brooks, Jr (Houston Baptist
University), David P. Campbell (Campbell Mediations), Dale
Fodness (University of Dallas), Eugene H. Fram (Rochester
Institute of Technology), Douglas L. Fugate (Western
Kentucky University), Myron Gable (Shippensburg State
University), Lester W. Johnson (Melbourne Business School),
Geoffrey Lantos (Stonehill College), Glynn Mangold
(Murray State University), Laura M. Milner (Central
Washington University), Beheruz N. Sethna (University of
West Georgia), and Jan Hendrik A. Vroom (California State
University Long Beach). Amazingly many of these EAB
members have reviewed more than 200 manuscripts over the
years and have been instrumental in shaping the direction of
the Journal. I am thankful for the commitment and
contributions of all of our EAB members and reviewers.

2
3
4
5
6
7

Distinguish between the marketing department and the

marketing function.
Leverage the freedom factor.
Market to employees.
Market to existing customers.
Be great at problem resolution.
Think high tech and high touch.
Be a power brander.

Still relevant today, the article was idea-rich and very readable
with no esoteric tables or overwhelming statistics, which is
precisely what JSM sought to publish at that time when the
services marketing literature was more about observing,
classifying, and thinking than about data analysis, theorydevelopment, or a quest for esotericism.

Commitment to implications
In those very early years (late 1980s), Grayson was involved
heavily in the day-to-day business of the Journal. Not only was
he the publisher, but he also played an active editorial role
reading manuscripts, assigning reviewers and deciding which
papers to publish. He also wrote a brief commentary for many
issues. Although Grayson had a doctorate, it was in education
not in marketing or business so one of his early
publication heuristics was that he would publish only
manuscripts that he could understand. Further, he insisted
that each paper include a strong Managerial implications
and recommendations, Practical applications or similarlytitled section. For Grayson, vague assertions saying little more
than the findings will help to improve service in
organizations were red flags that prevented publication, as
were overly commonsensical conclusions such as customer
satisfaction is a good thing. He wanted marketers and
managers of service firms to read each issue of JSM and
immediately feel compelled to write an action list of ideas to
be implemented right away. To help enforce his commitment
to managerial implications, Grayson included several
practicing business managers on the advisory board.
Although JSM has evolved over the years reflecting the
evolution of service research in general and services marketing
in particular the insistence on a substantial and meaningful
implications section in each article has remained. Beginning
with volume 10 (1996), an additional executive summary
and implications for the practitioner section for each article
was prepared by independent consultants and published
alongside the article. This bonus section helped to make JSM
articles more relevant and accessible to more readers, but also
provided a strong point of differentiation to distinguish JSM
from many other marketing journals. Today, authors who
expect to have their work published in JSM can not avoid a
discussion of implications implications that may be relevant
for business managers or practicing service marketers, and/or
depending on the specific article, relevant for other audiences
such as social marketers, public policy-makers, consumers, or
society at large.

The first issue

Summer 1987 was the official publication date of the first of
two issues included in volume no. 1. It included thoughtful
articles from high-level business executives such as Carl
R. Williams (Federal Express Corp.) and Robin R. Glackin
(First Texas Savings Association) and from well-known
marketing scholars such as Leonard L. Berry, Betsy D. Gelb,
Evert Gummesson, and A. Parsu Parasuraman, to name a
few.
The lead article in that first issue was penned by one of the
most distinguished services marketing scholars of all time
Professor Leonard L. Berry who also served as one of my
mentors in the doctoral program at Texas A&M University.
The article, Big ideas in services marketing, presented and
discussed seven fundamental recommendations and provided
examples of service firms that were successfully implementing
them. Below are listed these original seven big ideas (Berry,
1987):

The late 1980s and early 1990s

Grayson continued to publish JSM for six years (1987-1992)
typically four issues per year and six to nine full-length
articles per issue, plus a few book/software reviews and short
commentaries. Only paper copies of the Journal were available
in those early days. Subscribers were mostly libraries and the
4

A quarter of a century: reflections of the first 25 years of the JSM

Journal of Services Marketing

Charles L. Martin

Volume 26 Number 1 2012 3 8

Impact of differences

total circulation hovered around 2,000. Interestingly, for the

first six issues of JSM (volumes 1 and 2, 1987 and 1988), the
53 full-length articles were written by an average (mean) of
1.53 authors, in contrast to 2.35 authors for the 46 articles
published in volume 25 (2011).
In 1990, Grayson appealed to the EAB for someone to step
forward to serve as editor. Not sure what sort of journey I was
about to embark on, I naively raised my hand and apparently
was the only person to volunteer for the job. Despite my
limited qualifications as a fledgling Assistant Professor at the
time, I began my editorial duties with enthusiasm on
November 15, 1990, and immediately began growing into
the job and revamping the Journals editorial policies and
practices. In particular, one change that was welcomed by
many (most?) contributors was limiting the number of
reviewers involved in the review process. In the 1980s
submissions were initially sent to one set of reviewers, while
second drafts were sent to another set of reviewers, the third
draft sent to a third set of reviewers, and so on. For several
years after assuming the role of editor, I included a statement
in most revise and resubmit letters that if I sent the revised
manuscript out for review, I would send it to the same set of
reviewers that critiqued the initial submission. With few
exceptions, that policy remains in effect today.
In the early 1990s the number of service researchers was
only a fraction of the number of scholars active in the field
today perhaps only one-fifth as many, and quite possibly
even fewer than that. Consequently, the acceptance rate
tended to be as high as 55 percent during some of those years.
As quarterly deadlines approached, I recall many telephone
conversations (in the days before the popularity of e-mail)
coaching newer authors to help them get their papers in
publishable form and asking established scholars if they had
any manuscripts they could submit right away. In contrast,
we received a record number of submissions in 2010 298
and published less than 16 percent.

Perhaps differences were the most common themes for

JSM articles of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Many
industry- or company-specific articles (including case studies)
were published in those days. Although often very thoughtful,
these papers were typically very thin on theory but suggested
that marketing in industry X or in company Y was somehow
different than marketing elsewhere. Many went on to
elaborate on the unique challenges these industries or firms
faced, including their different products, their different
environments, and their different customers followed by
the creative (i.e., different) marketing solutions pursued to
tame these differences.
Moving a bit more in the direction of theory development,
many of the papers that developed the differences theme
suggested that there are important differences between
services and tangible goods and therefore important
differences between marketing for services and marketing
for tangible goods. The conceptual justification and
apparently the inspiration for most of these differences
articles stemmed from the frequently touted quasi-unique
characteristics of services that emerged in the 1970s and
gained considerable momentum in the 1980s. Briefly
summarized below, these characteristics and the challenges
they pose for marketing, human resources and operations
were typically described in terms of intangibility,
heterogeneity, inseparability, simultaneity, perishability, and
competitive dynamics:
.
Services are intangible, meaning they cannot be seen,
touched, tasted or displayed on ones mantelpiece. The
intangible nature of services makes them difficult to show
in advertisements and more difficult for buyers to
understand, remember and value.
.
Services tend to be heterogeneous. Largely due to the
human element involved in the production of services,
service outputs are likely to vary from location to location,
service provider to service provider and even from minute
to minute for the same service provider. Such variability
can play havoc with service quality, cost control and
customers expectations.
.
Inseparability also poses challenges for service
organizations. That is, many service products cannot be
separated from the service providers who perform them.
Further, in many instances service providers and
customers are inseparable in that the service cannot be
performed unless the two parties directly interact and
often share the same physical proximity. From my
perspective as a customer, when I buy a haircut, my
barber, Ralph, is not only the service provider, but he is
also the service. My perceptions of Ralphs haircuts are
inseparably intertwined with Ralph himself, and it is
impossible for Ralph to cut my hair unless the two of us
meet for that purpose. Thus the inseparability
characteristic of services poses challenges for growth and
distribution (Ralph cant use traditional intermediaries
such as wholesalers and retailers to distribute haircuts)
and leverages the importance of interpersonal
relationships (what Ralph says and does in my presence
influences my perceptions of the haircut and my
willingness to return to Ralphs shop for future haircuts).
.
Closely related to the inseparability characteristic is
simultaneity the tendency for services to be produced

Change of ownership
Citing personal reasons and an interest in moving on to other
challenges, Robert Grayson sold JSM to the British
publisher MCB University Press (now Emerald Group
Publishing Ltd) in 1993, along with three other wellregarded Grayson journals: Journal of Consumer
Marketing, Journal of Product & Brand Management, and
Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing.
The new publisher was committed to making the Journal
more international in content and readership and otherwise
increasing the Journals exposure. Almost immediately steps
were taken to increase the number of reviewers and authors
from around the world. Given Emeralds British roots, the
initial results of these internationalization efforts were
observed most notably in the UK. Increased exposure in
Canada, Western Europe, and Australia soon followed.
Unquestionably, JSM is an international journal today; for
example, 27 countries were represented by authors of
articles published in 2010 and 2011. Further, in addition
to our paper subscribers, worldwide 372,000 JSM articles
were downloaded from our web site in 2010
(www.emeraldinsight.com/jsm.htm).
5

A quarter of a century: reflections of the first 25 years of the JSM

Journal of Services Marketing

Charles L. Martin

Volume 26 Number 1 2012 3 8

and consumed simultaneously (e.g. I receive a haircut as

Ralph produces it). Consequently, service customers are
often limited in their ability to fully evaluate services
before they receive them which could leave to mismatches
between what customers expected to receive and what
they believe they actually receive setting the stage for
potentially dissatisfied customers and service providers
who can not resell dissatisfying services to other
customers. Further, the simultaneity and inseparability
characteristics mean that service customers often have a
unique vantage point and may experience service mishaps
immediately before the service provider can correct
them.
Services are highly perishable in that they cannot be
inventoried in the same sense that manufactured items can
be set aside to sell in the future. With no buffer inventories
to mediate short-term fluctuations in supply and demand,
service providers are challenged to carefully monitor and
manage the timing of supply (capacity) and demand to
ensure that the organization can provide desired services
when customers want them. So, the perishability
characteristic heightens the importance of forecasting
demand and flexibly manipulating both capacity and
demand.
Finally, for at least a couple of inter-related reasons, the
nature of service competition is cited as a somewhat
unique characteristic of many services. First, entry and
exit barriers are relatively low in many service industries
meaning that firms enter and leave the market frequently.
Accordingly, service entrepreneurs may vary considerably
in terms of their competences and commitment to the
market. Second, competitors may not be obvious in that
they may represent different product forms or different
industries. So, for example, a physician may compete
against bookstores that sell home remedy books.
A jewelers watch repair business may be threatened by
discount stores that sell disposable watches. A fitness
center may compete against a local park with a jogging
trail or a department store that sells personal gym
equipment. And so on. Further, customers themselves
often represent a somewhat unique form of competition in
that they may have the option of self-providing the service
instead of hiring a service firm. For example, a crosscountry traveler may book an airline ticket or choose to
drive her automobile to the destination. Tax preparation,
home maintenance, meal preparation and childcare are
other obvious examples. With competitors continually
entering and leaving the market and representing a variety
of forms, it can be difficult for service firms to know who
their competitors are or how best to compete for
customers who may not trust service providers, may not
know what to expect from service providers, or may prefer
to provide the service for themselves.

In recent years, the perspective of some service researchers

seems to have swung in the opposite direction as they
interpret the often-cited service dominant logic (SDL)
perspective to mean that there are no meaningful differences
between services and tangible goods or between service firms
and manufacturers; they seem to advocate unification by
suggesting that all firms are actually service firms and all
successful products are ultimately services, because all firms
are in business to serve customers and regardless of
products tangibility buyers are interested only in the
intangible services they provide. For example, the SDL
perspective reminds us that consumers buy automobiles and
toasters not for the goods sake, but for the transportation and
toast-making services that result from their use. It will be
interesting to see what long-term impact the service dominant
logic perspective has on services marketing research.
Still, the differences perspective has played an undeniable
role in the history and evolution of service research in general
and of JSM in particular. And, in my opinion, it remains a
useful starting point in newcomers study of services.

Shifting profile
As we marched through the 1990s, I believe the profile of
services marketing researchers began to shift, as reflected in
the nature of the manuscripts submitted to JSM. Marketing
scholars previously niched in other areas began joining the
ranks of services marketing researchers. Perhaps most notable
in this regard were traditional consumer researchers who
began to view services as a new territory to extend their
research. Some of these consumer researchers took a
differences perspective to explore, for example, the extent
to which consumer information processing differs across
goods and services. We received dozens of information
processing manuscripts during the decade and published
several.
Other consumer researchers who developed an interest in
services in the 1990s took a fresh look at the characteristics of
their favorite demographic market segments (e.g. seniors,
children, yuppies, Hispanics) and explored the possible
implications for service marketers. Still others made
significant contributions pertaining to interpersonal
communications and behaviors, often couched in terms of
highly-relevant service topics such as word-of-mouth
communications, complaint-handling and service recovery,
and more generally, service encounters. Although many of
these consumer researchers were not well-versed in the
services literature, per se, that may have been a good thing as
they introduced new literature to the field including many rich
concepts, insights and theoretical bases that often had been
noticeably absent. On balance, I believe the 1990s influx of
consumer researchers into the services field helped change the
culture of the services marketing literature.

Although still referenced in some manuscripts and mentioned

in most service-related textbooks, today the differences
perspective seems to be much less popular among service
researchers and more likely to be criticized for the broad
generalizations that dont always apply for all services.
Further, the perspective seems to be less relevant today as
an increasing number of service organizations have become
savvy in dealing with or working around the service challenges
implied by the characteristics.

Bandwagon research
Another services marketing phenomenon that gained
momentum in the 1990s is what might be described as a
bandwagon research effect. That is, as some topics and
specific articles began to exert a clear influence on the field,
they became magnets that seemed to attract other researchers
interested in replicating, extending, challenging, or applying
the original topic. At center-stage of this phenomenon was the
6

A quarter of a century: reflections of the first 25 years of the JSM

Journal of Services Marketing

Charles L. Martin

Volume 26 Number 1 2012 3 8

Concluding thoughts: JSM today and tomorrow

SERVQUAL work begun a few years earlier by the team of

Zeithaml, Parasuraman and Berry. By the end of the 1990s
I had lost count of the number of SERVQUAL-related
manuscripts that purported to discover the service quality
dimension(s) that the original SERVQUAL team had
omitted, or the number of papers that showed one more
SERVQUAL correlate. Even today, an average of two or three
manuscripts submitted each month demonstrate still another
context for SERVQUAL application, e.g. Variation in
SERVQUAL scores across electric utility companies in
Blahblahstan. Unfortunately after 27 years of SERVQUALrelated research, these sorts of papers tend to make little if any
incremental contribution to the services marketing literature
outside of the electrical industry in Blahblahstan.
Accordingly, they are usually among the 35-40 percent of
manuscripts that are rejected without being sent to reviewers.
While I certainly would not describe service quality or
SERVQUAL as fad topics and I do not mean to suggest
that there are no more opportunities for service quality
research, budding services marketing researchers should be
mindful of the reality that all hot topics are destined to cool
eventually.
On a more optimistic note, apparently there seems to be
plenty of room for passengers on the technology-related
bandwagon that began to roll with increased momentum in
the mid-1990s and continues to move forward today.
Consumer adoption of technology, e-service quality, social
media marketing, and mobile marketing apps are some of the
areas of interest in this broad category that seem to be fertile
areas for service research. Not surprisingly, I have seen dozens
of manuscripts submitted to JSM in the last couple of years
that include one or more IT scholars on the research team.
Researchers in Taiwan, China and South Korea, in particular,
appear to be most interested in these and other technologyrelated topics.

About 900 articles have been published in JSMs 25-year

history. Given that 372,000 articles are now downloaded
from our web site annually (based on 2010 data), that works
out to be an average of more than one download for each of
the 900 articles every day an amazing statistic that speaks
well for the growth in the interest in service research and for
JSMs role in that growth. As for me, working with the JSM
family of well over 1,000 authors, EAB members and
reviewers has been an exciting, educational and otherwise
gratifying experience. I am truly honored to be part of the
JSM story.
What lies ahead for JSMs next 25 years? That is difficult to
say with certainty, but citation-conscious readers will
appreciate our inclusion in the Social Sciences Citation
Index and the publication of our first impact factor about
mid-way through 2012. Technology will continue to play an
important role in JSM both in terms of article content,
manuscript submission and review processes, and the
worldwide dissemination of published articles. Surely the
internationalization trend will continue as the growth of the
service sector spreads around the globe; I predict that in
volume 50 (2036) no more than 10 percent of the authors of
articles published in JSM will come from any single country.
In the future I suspect that articles will continue to reflect
ever-increasing degrees of methodological rigor, but I hope
that I and the editors that follow me during the next 25 years
will not confuse research elegance with substance. Further, I
hope that we will have the insight to recognize and the
courage to publish manuscripts that reflect thought-provoking
new ideas and fresh thinking about not-so-new ideas without
letting the lack of methodological rigor be too much of a
barrier to block their dissemination. To a large extent, it was
ideas we started with 25 years ago including the seven big
ideas suggested by Len Berry in JSMs inaugural issue. It
was these and other ideas that stirred our thought processes
and energized many of us to pursue services marketing
research agendas. I doubt that we have run out of ideas.
Indeed, we have many ideas left to think and, accordingly,
much work to do.
Thank you.

Recent history
Fortunately for readers interested in JSMs more recent
history, we can thank Professor Deon Nel (from Flinders
University in Adelaide, Australia) and his research associates
for their tireless work in analyzing the full-length articles
published in JSM for the 11-year period ending in 2008.
Their findings were published as the lead article in JSM
volume 25 (2011), issue no. 1, pp. 4-13 (Eleven years of
scholarly research in The Journal of Services Marketing). The
research team found an increase in the percentage of
empirical papers published over the years, which is probably
what one would expect in a maturing discipline such as
services marketing. However, some conceptual papers, case
studies and viewpoint articles were published as well (p. 8). In
terms of topics, the team found that more articles pertaining
to service quality and customer service were published than
in any other broad category, followed by customer retention
and relationship marketing, customer acquisition,
advertising
and
communication
and
strategy,
performance, and management (p. 9). Readers interested
in learning more about the content of JSM articles published
during this period are encouraged to read the Nel et al. (2011)
article in its entirety, as well as my response that follows their
article.

References
Berry, L. (1987), Big ideas in services marketing, Journal of
Services Marketing, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 5-9.
Nel, D., van Heerden, G., Chan, A., Ghazisaeedi, M.,
Halvorsen, W. and Steyn, P. (2011), Eleven years of
scholarly research in the Journal of Services Marketing,
Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 4-13.

Corresponding author
Charles L. Martin can be contacted at: charles.martin@
wichita.edu

Executive summary and implications for

managers and executives
This summary has been provided to allow managers and executives
a rapid appreciation of the content of the article. Those with a
particular interest in the topic covered may then read the article in
toto to take advantage of the more comprehensive description of the
7

A quarter of a century: reflections of the first 25 years of the JSM

Journal of Services Marketing

Charles L. Martin

Volume 26 Number 1 2012 3 8

research undertaken and its results to get the full benefit of the
material present.

In those very early years Grayson was involved heavily in

the day-to-day business of the Journal. Not only was he the
publisher, but he also played an active editorial role reading
manuscripts, assigning reviewers and deciding which papers
to publish. Grayson had a doctorate in education, not in
marketing or business, and one of his early publication
heuristics was that he would publish only manuscripts that he
could understand. Further, he insisted that each paper
include a strong Managerial implications and
recommendations, Practical applications or similarlytitled section. For Grayson, vague assertions saying little
more than the findings will help to improve service in
organizations were red flags that prevented publication, as
were overly commonsensical conclusions such as customer
satisfaction is a good thing. He wanted marketers and
managers of service firms to read each issue of JSM and
immediately feel compelled to write an action list of ideas to
be implemented right away.
Robert Grayson sold JSM to the British publisher MCB
University Press (now Emerald Group Publishing Ltd.) in
1993. The new publisher was committed to making the
Journal more international in content and readership and
otherwise increasing the Journals exposure. Almost
immediately steps were taken to increase the number of
reviewers and authors from around the world.
Although JSM has evolved over the years reflecting the
evolution of service research in general and services marketing
in particular the insistence on a substantial and meaningful
implications section in each article has remained. Today,
authors who expect to have their work published in JSM
cannot avoid a discussion of implications implications that
may be relevant for business managers or practicing service
marketers, and/or depending on the specific article, relevant
for other audiences such as social marketers, public policymakers, consumers, or society at large.
Professor Martin says: In the future I suspect that articles
will continue to reflect ever-increasing degrees of
methodological rigor, but I hope that I and the editors that
follow me during the next 25 years will not confuse research
elegance with substance. Further, I hope that we will have the
insight to recognize and the courage to publish manuscripts
that reflect thought-provoking new ideas and fresh thinking
about not-so-new ideas without letting the lack of
methodological rigor be too much of a barrier to block their
dissemination.

About 900 articles have been published in the Journal of

Services Marketings 25-year history. Given that 372,000
articles are now downloaded from our web site annually, that
works out at an average of more than one download for each
of the 900 articles every day an amazing statistic that speaks
well for the growth in the interest in services research and for
JSMs role in that growth.
So what lies ahead for JSMs next 25 years? That is difficult
to say with certainty, but first lets go back to where it all
began. In A quarter of a century: reflections of the first
25 years of the Journal of Services Marketing Professor
Charles L. Martin, who served on the Editorial Advisory
Board (EAB) from 1987-1990 and as Editor from 1990 to the
present day, summarizes the events and publishers
philosophy leading to the Journals founding, and discusses
the policies/practices and content from 1987 through to 2011.
It was conceived at a time when there were very few
publications dedicated solely to services or services marketing.
In the USA, the American Marketing Associations (AMA)
periodic services marketing conference had published about
five or six proceedings by that time and attendance at the
conferences provided convincing evidence that there was a
strong and growing body of researchers interested in services
marketing. In the UK, a series of annual services marketing
workshops were born at about the same time hosted by a
sponsoring university. These conferences were valuable
mechanisms that brought together well over 300 service
researchers to share ideas and legitimize the emerging area
(not yet a field) of services marketing. Despite the thoughtprovoking contributions to the conferences and the AMAs
published proceedings, services marketing needed its own
journal.
Founding publisher Robert A. Grayson seized the
opportunity. He perceived the need for a high-level,
conceptually rich journal to publish articles that practicing
services marketers could read, understand and apply in their
organizations. He thought that too many journals at that time
were overly theoretical, minutely focused, and so heavily laden
with esoteric jargon, confusing models and statistical
gymnastics that the typical services marketing manager
could not derive much value from them. Grayson wanted
JSM to be different, so he positioned it as an academic
journal written for practitioners.
In 1986, he began recruiting an initial cohort of reviewers
and advisors that swelled to about 100 scholars and
businesspeople within two years. Unlike todays EAB,
almost everyone in this early group worked for universities
or firms in the USA.

(A precis of the article A quarter of a century: reflections of the

first 25 years of the Journal of Services Marketing. Supplied by
Marketing Consultants for Emerald.)

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