Service Research in the Hospitality Literature

Abstract

This study applies a Delphi analysis regarding the level of integration of service topics in the hospitality literature, as found in 539 service-related papers published in four hospitality journals from 1998 to 2012. The journals in question are Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, International Journal of Hospitality Management, and Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research. The number of service-related studies account for 16 percent of the total pool of articles in the four journals over the fifteen-year period, and the analysis records an increase in the number of service-based articles published over this period. Since then, the number of articles dealing with service-related phenomena has ebbed somewhat. Theory-testing papers dominated the hospitality literature during the study period, accounting for more than half of the papers, while theory-building papers accounted for a quarter of all papers, and around 15 percent had a conceptual purpose. The most popular topic for papers in this sample was service experience, followed by operations management, human resource management, and accounting.

Keywords

hospitality education hotel management operations food and food service

The hospitality industry and service are inextricably linked phenomena, and therefore the hospitality context has for many years provided a vital context for service-related research. With service provision central to customer-perceived value and long-term business sustainability, hospitality researchers and practitioners have long looked to the service literature for guidance on how best to improve understanding on many concepts directly connected to service management and marketing, such as service design (Zehrer 2009), service recovery (Mack et al. 2000), emotional labor (Mattila and Enz 2002), service marketing (Line and Runyan 2012), and many others.

Despite the genetic connection that exists between hospitality and service, to date, there has been no prior research that systematically reviews the integration of service concepts, theories and principles in the hospitality literature. This study reports on a systematic review of the hospitality literature to better understand the way service¹ research has influenced knowledge, and to explore whether a specific service context (in this case, hospitality) can make a bottom–up contribution to our understanding of service and service phenomena.

The idea that the service research field could learn something from the hospitality context is not without precedent. An examination of the earliest service literature reveals that the discipline was looking to hospitality (and other service contexts) for insights into service (e.g., Ford and Heaton 2001; Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry 1985; Shostack 1977). We also make the observation that hospitality journals predate the recent service research revolution, with the oldest hospitality journal, Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, publishing and investigating service-related issues more than two decades before the first service journals appeared. It is noteworthy that a significant amount of service and non-service research continues to be published in this and other hospitality-focused journals.

Examining the relationship between phenomenon and context is a non-trivial contribution. It brings into question the very essence of theory development within the social sciences. Drawing on the work of Hunt (1983) and Rudner (1966), a theory can be described as a systematically related set of statements, including lawlike generalizations, that helps us to explain and predict phenomena. However, as observed by Seth and Zinkhan (1991), this exposes an intrinsic tension between the requirement that theoretical statements have “precise” explanatory and predictive power and that they be applicable to a “wide” range of circumstances. This tension typically translates, over time, into weak midrange theories as an effort is made to accommodate the complexity of vastly different operational settings. Accordingly, research in pursuit of theoretical development and understanding risks the mis-identification of context-rich insights.

This paper systematically reviews the hospitality literature over a fifteen-year period in an effort to gain an understanding into how service research has been conducted in the hospitality context. The systematic review approach was chosen because it is an established scientific tool designed to assist in appraising, summarizing, and communicating the results and implications of large and complex data sets (Petticrew and Roberts 2006). This is particularly important because there is often an unseen story that cannot be observed from the more myopic study of small cross-sections of related papers. Although there have been prior reviews in the service domain (e.g., Edvardsson, Gustafsson, and Roos 2005; Pilkington and Chai 2008), as well as some recent work centered around predicting future service research priorities (Ostrom et al. 2010), this paper represents the first comprehensive and systemic review of the hospitality literature in search of the influence of service theory.

The next section of the paper provides some background to the proposed review. This includes a definition of what we mean by service and hospitality, as well as brief summary of the key debates within the literature over recent years. This will be followed by a discussion of the method used to identify and classify the articles within the review, followed by an analysis of the body of literature.

Background

Our first challenge is to define the two foci of this research, service and hospitality. This presents a challenge in itself, as there is a lack of agreement and consensus on both. Although a detailed analysis of the discourse surrounding the evolving nature and definitions of service and hospitality is outside the scope of the present paper, we provide a brief summary of the key aspects of both to frame our contribution and the subsequent review.

Defining Service

Confusion about the term service has persisted for many years, since or even before the initial calls for greater distinction between services and goods (Judd 1964; Rathmell 1966; Shostack 1977). In addition, while much attention has been given to the definition and measurement of service phenomena (Cronin 2003; Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry 1985), and many accomplished scholars have devoted years of work in this area (e.g., Berry 1999; Berry and Parasuraman 1993; Fisk, Brown, and Bitner 1993; Grönroos 1993; Kandampully 2002; Lovelock 2001), a review of current debates suggests that there does not yet exist a commonly accepted simple definition of service. In particular, the widespread endorsement for service dominant-logic (Vargo and Lusch 2004, 2008) and the interdisciplinary support for services science (Chesbrough and Spohrer 2006; Spohrer and Maglio 2008) provide evidence of this continued discourse.

Recent research has sought to explain this lack of clarity and consensus regarding the term service. Edvardsson, Gustafsson, and Roos (2005) researched the phenomenon of service proposing a dynamic process approach rather than a static transactional approach, arguing that the study of service is more about perspective—customer, employee, firm, or researchers. They argue for two approaches within service research: service as a category of market offerings and service as a perspective on value creation—and that definitions of service are changing constantly because of many factors, for example, changing competitive situations that affect customer value. Their conclusions are that service is so difficult to define and capture because services are as different from each other as products are from each other, and that definitions are too constrained and dependent on who is portraying the service and on the purpose. This is aligned with Grönroos (1993) who referred to service (management) as “not a well-delineated concept” (p. 5), but more of a perspective, and a confusing concept for outsiders to understand.

Moeller (2008) declares the lack of clarity and consensus about defining service “incomprehensible, as a whole scientific community (has) based its capacity and accomplishments on this term” (Moeller 2008, 359). She offers an explanation and solution via a “facilities-transformation-usage” (FTU) framework, which posits that the dominant approach to characterizing service (i.e., intangibility, heterogeneity, inseparability, and perishability) fails to consider the stage of the service process, technology integration, and customer integration. The FTU framework offers a philosophical shift away from higher order theoretical descriptions of service phenomena, toward a more practical and useful understanding of service-as-practice. Moeller’s framework and its focus on service provision takes a bottom–up, context-sensitive approach to the study of service by considering how it is facilitated (machines, persons, humans, service assembly all provided by company), how it transforms (company-induced, customer-induced, or indirectly), and how services are used (co-creation, sold, consumed).

This work is well aligned with the recent philosophical debates within the discipline. For instance, Tronvoll et al. (2011) suggest that at least some of the difficulty in defining service comes from incommensurability of paradigms. They contend that paradigms should not restrict researchers from posing new questions and suggesting new frameworks for understanding service exchange, value co-creation, and for imagining services systems. Inherent within their call-to-action is recognition of the importance of the service context and that service research needs to be better aligned with the needs of practitioners. Indeed, the work by Ostrom et al. (2010) on establishing their top ten service research priorities provides another example of how the academic service research community recognizes the importance of connecting research with the needs of industry.²

Defining Hospitality

The Oxford English Dictionary defines hospitality as “the act or practice of being hospitable; the reception and entertainment of guests, visitors or strangers with liberality or goodwill.” As this definition suggests, the hospitality industry includes all businesses providing hospitable services for people, which diffuses a lack of clarity and agreement around a scope of this dynamic industry. The accommodation and food-service sectors, however, have been regarded as key subindustries of hospitality (Brotherton 1999; Guerrier and Adib 2000; Lockwood and Jones 1989). In this sense, the oldest academic hospitality journal, Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, was originally named Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly at its birth. Others argue that the hospitality industry include additional subindustries such as travel, leisure, attractions, and conventions in a broader perspective (e.g., Ottenbacher, Harrington, and Parsa 2009).

As highlighted above, in its most simplistic sense, hospitality as an industry is about food, beverage, and accommodation. However, finding a well-accepted definition of hospitality more generally is challenging. These nuances about hospitality are important as we aim to examine the bottom–up contribution and application of a particular service context (hospitality in this case). Brotherton (1999) attributes the definition challenges to perspective—hospitality as either a product, a process, an experience, or all three (Brotherton 1999). He defines hospitality as a “contemporaneous human exchange, which is voluntarily entered into, and designed to enhance the mutual wellbeing of the parties concerned through the provision of accommodation and food or drink” (Brotherton 1999, 168). The emphasis on the human exchange element is particularly relevant to the distinction of the hospitality sector and has received endorsement of others (e.g., King 1995)

Alternatively, King (1995) proposed a three domains model suggesting that hospitality broadly straddles three overlapping spheres—private, commercial, and social. The private domain is where one shows hospitality in their home to friends and family, whereas the commercial domain represents the transition of hospitality from a cultural and unconditional offering to one where profit, driven by customer satisfaction and repeat visits, plays the predominate role. The social domain explores hospitality through its historical, sociological, and anthropological perspective (Lashley 2000), emphasizing hospitableness and the use of food, beverage, and shelter (accommodation) to offer generosity to travelers. This creates what Teng (2011) calls a unique combination of two potentially conflicting phenomena—running a business for profit’s sake and demonstrating genuine hospitality.

We argue that it is at the heart of hospitality (“hospitableness”) where the hospitality industry veers away from the broad service domain. Our discussion above suggests that hospitality is a special kind of service industry, where service is vital but where the emphasis on service dimensions can be quite different from other service sectors. Of course, the segment of the industry matters too, as there are clear differences in the degree of genuine hospitality offered, for example, in a Subway restaurant (where the focus is on service process and service design) versus what is required at the Ritz-Carlton (where they claim to “enliven the senses, instill well-being, and fulfill even the unexpressed wishes and needs of guests”). In those cases, service provision has a particularly high proportion of employee–customer interaction that requires an emotional offering, which, in turn, mandates genuinely caring attitudes, emotional connections to guests, warmth, and generosity.

With this background in mind, our review will seek to understand how the body of hospitality-service research has developed over time. In particular, this paper will analyze the contributions of service-related research in the hospitality context and attempt to uncover insights that the hospitality context can offer for a better understanding of service theory. To this end, we seek to embrace the conflict between paradigms as a way to balance the tension between theory and practice.

Method

This systematic review was based on a study of the four leading hospitality journals as identified by the 2012 Thompson Reuters social science citations impact factors. The selected journals have also been ranked within the leading set by other studies (McKercher, Law, and Lam 2006; Oh, Kim, and Shin 2004). Although this list is not intended to represent a complete or exhaustive list of outlets publishing hospitality-service research, and although we have purposely chosen to exclude more generalist journal outlets such as those dealing exclusively with service-related research, we believe that these particular specialist journals will provide an appropriate sample of the integration of the service research into the mainstream hospitality academic literature over the period 1998 to 2012. This reference period was selected for two reasons: (1) It provided for a sufficiently wide reference period to be able to observe patterns and changes over time and (2) it corresponds to the time period where service research reached maturity (with the first issue of the Journal of Service Research in August 1998). Details regarding the journals covered by this review are provided in Exhibit 1.

Exhibit 1:

Information on Hospitality Journal Outlets (1998–2012).

Journal Name	Established	During Reference Period			Impact Factor	H-index^a
Journal Name	Established	Volumes	Issues	Papers	Impact Factor	H-index^a
Cornell Hospitality Quarterly ^b	1960	15	60	848	1.892	58
International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management	1989	15	105	941	1.266	57
International Journal of Hospitality Management	1982	15	60	1,040	1.692	63
Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research	1976	15	60	536	0.820	44

H-index and paper counts obtained from Publish or Perish (www.harzing.com) on June 1, 2013.

Published as Cornell Hotel & Restaurant Administration Quarterly (1960–2003).

From a total pool of 3,365 articles published in the four journals during the reference period, a subset of 539 papers with the word service or services in the title or abstract were identified for initial consideration. Four criteria were then used to classify these papers, namely, (1) nature of the service focus, (2) primary purpose (i.e., theory-building, theory-testing, and conceptual), (3) data collection approach (i.e., qualitative, case study, field research, laboratory research, archival research, and surveys), and (4) services function, topic, or theme.

The classification process followed a simplified four-stage Delphi (panel of experts) method. The first stage involved allocating a randomly assigned pool of papers to a pair of authors. The results of the initial classification were then shared between the authors, followed by a second round of classification. The third stage involved the compilation of a conflict list that included any articles for which agreement was not achieved during the first two stages. This list was then distributed to the entire research team for classification. The fourth and final stage involved a teleconference involving all members of the research team to discuss and reach agreement on any articles for which classification was still problematic. This final stage involved a majority decision rule.

While the iterative nature of this classification process negates the need to formally calculate multi-rater agreement indices (e.g., Boyer and Verma 2000), it is noteworthy that there was a high degree of consensus among the members of the research team with only a small number of articles progressing to the fourth classification stage. Of course, the nature of contemporary hospitality-service research meant that a number of articles met more than one criterion within the above-listed categories. For example, it was not uncommon for an article to use more than one data collection approach or examine more than one type of phenomenon. As such, the sum of the category counts may exceed the total number of articles in some instances.³

Criterion 1: Nature of the Service Focus

The focus of an article was determined by the primacy of the service phenomena and the centrality of the hospitality context. The goal here was to exclude irrelevant articles, and to uncover articles that can add to our understanding of how the hospitality context can add to our understanding of service. Exhibit 2 provides a breakdown of the number of papers in which service-related phenomena are central to the study, and the number of papers that deal with hospitality as a service context, but focus on non-service phenomena. Those papers classified as “not relevant” were concerned neither with service phenomena nor with hospitality as a service context. From these data, we can see that the vast majority of papers within our sample (63%) are dealing with non-service phenomena.

Exhibit 2:

Focus of Service Articles Published in Leading Hospitality Journals (1998–2012).

Focus of Paper	Count	%
Service central	181	30.9
Service ancillary	367	62.6
Not relevant	38	6.5
Total	586	100.0

Exhibit 3 shows the breakdown of the service-related articles published during 1998 to 2012. Because the total number of published articles fluctuates from year to year, we have presented a three-year moving average of the number of articles as a percentage of the total number of articles published in the focal journals over the reference period in Exhibit 4. This exhibit shows that there has been a general increase in the number of service-related articles published in the hospitality literature over the reference period.

Exhibit 3:

Focus of Service Articles Published in Leading Hospitality Journals (1998–2012).

Year	Service Central	Service Ancillary	Total
1998	10	26	36
1999	10	24	34
2000	14	25	39
2001	6	8	14
2002	7	13	20
2003	10	10	20
2004	10	21	31
2005	9	19	28
2006	6	20	26
2007	15	22	37
2008	7	13	20
2009	15	38	53
2010	15	30	45
2011	21	42	63
2012	26	56	82

Exhibit 4:

Three-Year Moving Average of Percentage of Service Articles, 1998 to 2012.

However, when we examine the nature of the service focus over this period, we can see that there has been a decreasing number of articles dealing with service-related phenomena in recent years. Exhibit 5 shows that interest in service-related phenomena appears to have peaked in the leading hospitality journals in 2003.

Exhibit 5:

Three-Year Moving Average of Percentage of Service Articles by Focus.

Criterion 2: Primary Purpose

We classified articles according to three main purposes: (1) theory-building, (2) theory-testing, and (3) conceptual. Theory-building papers were typically concerned with proposing new relationships, or identifying new conceptual frameworks that could be tested by later researchers (Gupta et al. 2006). Theory-testing papers focus on testing frameworks, hypotheses, and relationships identified in earlier research. This category also includes papers that extend existing frameworks in an incremental way (Gupta et al. 2006). Conceptual papers include essays, commentaries, and descriptive empirical articles that do not seek to build or verify theory. Exhibit 6 provides a breakdown of articles by primary purpose.

Exhibit 6:

Primary Purpose of Service Articles by Focus.

The exhibit shows that theory-testing papers dominated the hospitality literature during the reference period, accounting for more than half (54%) of the total pool of papers. Theory-building papers accounted for a quarter of all papers, with around 15 percent of articles having a conceptual purpose.

Criterion 3: Data Collection Approach

The diversity of research undertaken in the hospitality-service domain has contributed to a broad range of methods. For the purpose of this study, we will follow the approach of Gupta et al. (2006) to classify data collection approaches according to the following categories: (1) qualitative, (2) field study, (3) survey, (4) laboratory research, (5) archival data, (6) case study, and (7) non-empirical. The qualitative approach involves individual and group interviews, and other data collection approaches of a non-quantitative nature. Field study research is used in our study to refer to observational studies that are typically conducted according to the ethnographic tradition. These types of study differ from the qualitative category in that they do not generally involve direct contact with respondents.

Survey research, like qualitative research, involves collection of data directly from respondents. However, it differs in that it generally involves larger sample sizes, and the nature of the data collected is typically quantitative in nature. Laboratory research is used to describe experiments conducted in an artificial or simulated environment. While the instruments may be the same as those used in qualitative and survey-based approaches, the approach allows for much greater control of environmental variables. Archival data center on the analysis of secondary data from various sources such as government reports, public databases, and consumer evaluations. As these data were often collected for reasons other than research, they usually require some degree of interpretation. The case study approach involves research where the unit of analysis is some aggregation of individuals, typically at the organization or destination level. Case studies tend to collect longitudinal data that are both qualitative and quantitative. The final category, “non-empirical,” is used to describe papers that did not involve any formal collection or analysis of data. Exhibit 7 shows a breakdown of articles by the data collection approach.

Exhibit 7:

Data Collection Approach of Service Articles by Focus.

From this exhibit, we can see that survey-based research was the most dominant data collection approach, accounting for 44 percent of service-related articles. Other popular approaches include qualitative (14%) and field study (14%), with 15 percent of articles of a non-empirical nature. The data collection preferences were relatively consistent across the different paper foci. Exhibits 8 and 9 provide information on how the different data collection approaches vary based on the primary purpose.

Exhibit 8:

Data Collection Approach by Purpose (Column Percentages).

	Qualitative (%)	Field Study (%)	Survey (%)	Laboratory Research (%)	Archival Data (%)	Case Study (%)	Non-empirical
Theory-building	53	77	11	22	22	24	0
Theory-testing	39	21	83	76	66	49	6
Conceptual	8	3	6	3	12	27	94
Total	100	100	100	100	100	100	100

Exhibit 9:

Data Collection Approach by Purpose (Row Percentages).

	Qualitative (%)	Field Study (%)	Survey (%)	Laboratory Research (%)	Archival Data (%)	Case Study (%)	Non-empirical (%)	Total (%)
Theory-building	25	38	16	5	9	6	0	100
Theory-testing	9	5	58	8	13	6	1	100
Conceptual	5	2	12	1	7	10	63	100

From these data, we can see papers focused on theory-building were dominated by field study and qualitative data collection approaches, while the theory-testing papers were most often aligned with survey-based data collection methods. Conceptual papers were observed to favor the case study approach.

Criterion 4: Services Function, Topic or Theme

The papers published in the peak hospitality journals covered a variety of service functions, topics, and themes. However, we have grouped them under broad topical themes aligned with the focus areas introduced earlier—namely, service central, service ancillary, and not relevant. Exhibit 10 presents the keywords used for this classification. In addition to the article focus, this classification also considers whether an article takes a customer perspective or an organization perspective (or both).

Exhibit 10:

Keywords for Topic Classification.

Common Focus	Perspective	Relevance	Related Keywords
Service experience	Customer perspective	Central	Service quality, satisfaction, customer loyalty, service expectations, service guarantees, service encounter, value perceptions
Human resource management (HRM)	Organization perspective	Ancillary	Training, recruitment, rewards and remuneration, knowledge management, work–life balance, careers, learning, skill development, diversity, empowerment
Strategic management	Organization perspective	Ancillary	Leadership, competitive advantage, business model, location choice, customer/market orientation, product channel
Operations management	Organization perspective	Ancillary	Queue management, financial management, quality management, suppliers, contracts, scheduling, efficiency, productivity, B2B services, safety
Relationship management	Organization perspective	Central	Loyalty programs, switching barriers/costs
Revenue-yield management	Organization perspective	Ancillary	Revenue management, yield management
Product/service attributes	Organization perspective	Central	Product characteristics, service features, trends, product/service design, key success factors
Service failure/recovery	Employee perspective (further along the value chain)	Central	Service failure, service recovery
Frontline employees	Employees perspective	Central	Staff attitudes, service roles, emotional exhaustion/labor
Consumer behavior	Customer perspective (everything other than service)	Central	Tipping behavior, motivations, emotions, planned behavior, decision making, consumer values, psychological characteristics, risk orientation
Marketing/brand management	Organization perspective	Ancillary	Target marketing, brand recognition, brand equity, brand differentiation, packaging, brand personality, co-branding, promotions, advertising, marketing strategies
Cross-cultural issues	Both	Ancillary	Multicultural, cultural differences
Servicescape	Both	Central	Physical environment, service setting, atmospherics
Innovation/technology management	Organization perspective	Ancillary	Information technology, new service delivery channels, food-service technologies, creativity, innovation management, self-service technologies, technology adoption
Social responsibility	Both	Ancillary	Environmental concerns, society/community considerations, disability services, organic food
Not relevant	N/A	Not relevant	Education, food services, research methods

The data presented in Exhibit 11 reveal that the most popular topic for papers within our sample was service experience, accounting for around 14 percent of the papers overall. Other popular topics included operations management, followed by human resource management, accounting for around 13 percent each. An interesting aspect of this analysis is that it also indicates the relative importance of service-related phenomena within the hospitality literature, with four of the top six topics or around 33 percent of papers related to central service phenomena. The least popular topics were concerned with servicescape, social responsibility, and financial management each accounting for just 2 percent of papers.

Exhibit 11:

Broad Theme of Service Articles by Focus.

Conclusion and Future Directions

Our conclusions are based on an analysis of 539 service-related papers that were published in the four chosen hospitality journals from 1998 to 2012. Overall, we observed that there is an increasing trend in the number of service-based articles published over this period. The following sections highlight some of the key observations emerging from our analysis.

Importance of Service

The number of service-related studies sampled in our analysis account for 16 percent of the total pool of published articles in the four journals during the fifteen-year period. Although the proportion of these service-related papers appears to be increasing over the period, the majority of the papers are concerned with hospitality as a service context (i.e., service ancillary), rather than primarily dealing with service phenomena (i.e., service central). Even though it is difficult to assess a level of the contribution of the service research to the hospitality literature by merely counting the number of service-related papers, our findings suggest that hospitality journals have embraced diversified topics, of which service-related issues are considered but certainly not dominant. It should be noted that there are 38 papers that include “service(s)” in their title or abstract but are not related to service at all. This is consistent with the concerns raised earlier in this paper regarding the definition of service and highlights that the meaning or nature of service is still unclear to some hospitality researchers despite a significant body of literature (e.g., Berry 1999; Berry and Parasuraman 1993; Fisk, Brown, and Bitner 1993; Grönroos 1993; Kandampully 2002; Lovelock 2001). This finding suggests that further research may be warranted to examine the specific nature of service within the hospitality context.

Primary Purpose

Theory-testing was adopted as a primary purpose for service-related papers in the hospitality literature during the reference period. Nevertheless, there was an observable difference depending on the focus of an article. The papers that focus on central service phenomena had a mix of both theory-building and theory-testing, whereas the articles dealing with ancillary service content mostly focused on theory-testing alone. Our findings are not surprising, given the previous observation that there may be some confusion regarding the nature of service within the hospitality context. Interestingly, this observation is likely to reflect one of two possible circumstances: (1) that the literature is still maturing and has yet to settle on a common understanding of the phenomena of interest or (2) the previously held assumptions regarding the phenomena are being revisited. As the hospitality literature predates the emergence of multidisciplinary service research, we suspect that the latter is the case. Following Kuhn (1970), we question whether we may be observing the “anomaly” (p. 52) that he describes as preceding the “crisis” (p. 77) that will necessitate a paradigmatic shift in thinking.

In general, our findings concur with prior research that observed that theory-testing was more popular with empirical studies in non-service sectors than those in service sectors (Gupta et al. 2006). The dearth of conceptual service-related papers in the hospitality literature is also noteworthy. We support the call by Line and Runyan (2012) for further conceptual studies in the hospitality literature. Conceptual articles play an important role in knowledge development within a discipline, providing the foundation for scholarly debate and inspiring thought innovation (Yadav 2010).

Preferred Methods

Overall, most service-related studies (85%) used some form of empirical data collected for their research purpose. Surveys were the most frequently used means of data collection, followed by qualitative and field study methods. The results are similar to those in service operation management (Gupta et al. 2006), hospitality marketing (Line and Runyan 2012), and hospitality studies (Law, Leung, and Cheung 2012), where survey and field studies were most commonly used type of empirical study. The choice of data collection methods seems to be associated with primary research purpose in our sampled service-related studies. Theory-building studies tend to favor field study and qualitative approaches, theory-testing studies mainly use a survey approach, and conceptual papers favored a case study approach, respectively. Thus, it would appear that hospitality researchers investigating service-related questions tend to use relevant data collection methods. Laboratory research methods, however, were scarce regardless of service focus (i.e., service central vs. service ancillary). We believe that future research could make better use of experimental and quasi-experimental methods to explore causal relationships among phenomena in the hospitality literature, and to control for specific contextual factors.

Dominant Themes

It is noteworthy that four of the top six topics are directly dealing with central service phenomena. This is significant given the proportion of service central papers to service ancillary papers within our sample. Among the dominant themes, the service experience, which concerns service quality, value, and satisfaction from the customer perspective, was the most favored topic, followed by service failure and recovery, consumer behavior, and service and product attributes. These topics highlight that most studies sought to understand hospitality service from the customer perspective. While this finding is interesting, and is in contrast with prior reviews of the hospitality literature that focus mostly on the perspective of the organization (Law, Leung, and Cheung 2012), it suggests that more research is needed to understand service phenomena from the management perspective. Topics for future research should focus on the impact of service on relationship management and marketing and brand management, in the hospitality context.

Another interesting observation is that operations management and human resource management were the most popular topics for ancillary service studies using hospitality as the service setting. This implies that researchers in these disciplines are more likely to consider the hospitality setting as a context for services research than other disciplines such as innovation or technology management, revenue or yield management, and strategic management. While this finding highlights an opportunity for future collaborative projects, it also reaffirms the dominance of the human-centered topics within the hospitality-service literature, albeit from the organization perspective on this occasion.

Limitations

In spite of the contributions made by our paper, there are several limitations. First, our analyses were only based upon the articles published in the four leading hospitality journals. Although we believe that these outlets are representative of the hospitality literature, further studies could include other hospitality journals or those of service-specific outlets. This subsequent research should be encouraged to provide comparisons with our findings. Furthermore, we acknowledge that the intent of this study was to provide a descriptive analysis of the literature. Future studies could extend this work with qualitative approaches (e.g., interviews with expert groups) to verify our findings, and to draw stronger conclusions and set disciplinary priorities (e.g., Edvardsson, Gustafsson, and Roos 2005; Ostrom et al. 2010).

Contributions and Future Directions

The extant review and synthesis of the current literature has helped to highlight the nature and integration of service research into mainstream hospitality literature through an investigation of published articles in four influential hospitality journals over a fifteen-year period. One of the reasons that the hospitality sector provides a unique context for the study of service is that customers and employees often have the opportunity to develop genuine bonding relationships far beyond most other service contexts. Although it could be argued that similar relationships occur in health care, we believe that there are important differences between them, driven by the motivations for purchase because most people are hoping to repurchase health care as infrequently as possible as opposed to hospitality, where customers generally aspire to dine out and have accommodation experiences more frequently and more voluntarily. The emotional bonds thus created are often the outcome of repeated positive customer experiences.

It is this uniqueness of the hospitality context that informs our suggestions for future service research in the hospitality domain. One direction for future research would be to undertake an examination of the service literature for insights into the way the hospitality context has been used to generate knowledge and understanding in the service research domain. While the hospitality industry is clearly a part of the broad service sector, we believe that hospitality represents a particularly unique kind of service, yet such distinction is rarely considered in service research where various service industry contexts are often aggregated, with results generalized across the broad sector. Because of this, we suspect that an analysis of key service research outlets will require an in-depth review of methodologies and research context rather than only via key word searches since industry context is unlikely to be considered as an important distinction by the service research community.

For example, future studies may seek to understand more fully the impacts of emotional bonds in the hospitality context and its importance and benefits for customers, employees, and (internal and external) brand, and the role of employees in hospitality brand or image building. Furthermore, because the interaction between customers and employees takes place over an extensive period of time in many hospitality settings, an opportunity exists to reduce the negative impacts of service failure. More important, it provides a vital opportunity to engage customers in the recovery process, and thus customers’ renewed trust in the employee and the firm.

Furthermore, research in the field of service failure recovery may explore this fact and extend our present knowledge. While emotional labor is becoming a frequently researched issue, the hospitality context exemplifies a slightly different perspective due to the bond that employees are able to nurture with customers. Although this may be difficult to generalize to other service sectors, this perspective poses an interesting research question. While the idea of co-creation of service is a rather new area of research discussion, co-creation and its effective use in marketing has always been at the core of hospitality service, with most hospitality service designed to encourage customer participation and engagement. Future research may examine the role of service design to enhance customer engagement in hospitality.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Professor Rohit Verma for his contribution to discussions and the direction of the paper.

Authors’ Note

The views expressed here are solely those of the authors. The authors are listed alphabetically to reflect equal contribution.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Jay Kandampully is a Professor of Service Management at The Ohio State University. Jay is the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Service Management and he serves on the editorial advisory board of 12 refereed international journals. He holds a PhD in service quality management, and an MBA, specializing in services marketing, both from the University of Exeter. Jay has published over 100 articles and has presented numerous papers at international conferences on issues relating to services management and marketing, service quality, service orientation and service innovations.

Byron William Keating is a Professor of Service Management at the University of Canberra. He is also Director of the Service Innovation Lab, a service-focused management and research consultancy based in Canberra, Australia. His research interests focus on examining different service phenomena across a wide range of service delivery contexts and channels. Byron has a particular interest in the role of emerging technologies in supporting the delivery of services. His research has been published, or is forthcoming, in the Proceedings of the IEEE, European Journal of Information Systems, Electronic Markets, Managing Service Quality, and Journal of Service Management.

BeomCheol (Peter) Kim is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Hospitality and Tourism, and Associate Director of the New Zealand Tourism Research Institute at the Auckland University of Technology (AUT). His major research interests include Strategic Human Resource Management and Service Management in the hospitality and tourism context. His previous works have been published at peer-reviewed journals such as Journal of Service Management, International Journal of Hospitality Management, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research, Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Education, and Journal of Hospitality Marketing Management.

Anna Mattila is the Marriott Professor of Lodging Management at the School of Hospitality management at the Pennsylvania State University. She holds a Ph.D. in services marketing from Cornell University. Her research interests focus on service encounters with a particular interest in service recovery, corporate social responsibility, social media and cross-cultural research. Her work has appeared in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Retailing, Journal of Service Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Service Management, Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, Journal of Travel Research, International Journal of Hospitality Management, Tourism Management and Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, among others. Anna currently serves on numerous editorial boards in journals specializing in services management. She is also the Chief Editor of Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research and an Associate Editor for the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly.

David Solnet is a Senior Lecturer in Service Management at the University of Queensland’s Business School. He joined the University of Queensland in 2002, following an 18 year career in the restaurant industry where he worked in numerous management roles in the USA and Australia. His research and teaching interests are closely aligned with his industry advisory work, where he is a principal partner in the consulting firm Shift Directions. David has authored many peer-reviewed academic papers in top international journals, and has written a number of book chapters for leading textbooks. His research interests include service climate and managing the service industry workforce.

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