Critical Analysis of the Article from both POSITIVE and NEGATIVE aspects - Essay Example

The article “Whither Services Marketing: In search of New Paradigm and Fresh Perspectives” is written by Lovelock, C & Gummesson, E and was publishedin Journal of Service Research (2004) in Vol. 7 & issue 20. This article challenges the existing set of beliefs about the services by questioning the fundamental characteristics. Traditionally, services are considered as the perishable, non-divisible, intangible as well as heterogeneous in nature however; it does not actually result in change in ownership.

As in products or goods, the ownership actually changes from seller to buyer however, in case of services it does not take place or take place very momentarily. This is where the authors claim to have an alternative paradigm which can attempt to answer this paradox. Based on this assumption, authors therefore have recommended a different and alternative approach of rental/access perspective. The authors therefore claim that based on viewing services from this lens will offer a greater insight into the development of products as services as well as to view the time in more elaborative manner in order to design services and products in complimentary manner.

Thus the authors have attempted to challenge the basic ideas formulated to define and discuss the services marketing due to the changes that took place due to internet and other forms of services which require less or no human interaction. Services in such perspectives therefore require a comprehensively different and unique paradigm to understand and define services.What is also the stronger point of this article is the fact that it has attempted to reconcile the ideas that has emerged from both the European scholars as well as the American scholars.

The need to have dialogue and reconciliation of ideas therefore can provide a common ground to undertake future research on the topic of services marketing.The conclusion of this article indicates that due to emergence of new and fundamentally different and more fluid business models, it is necessary that the more robust frameworks must be developed in order to accommodate the relative changes that take place. This article however, does not provide the way as to how the different changes that unfold themselves into the future can be captured with the existing frameworks.

Till new paradigm emerged and services marketing take an entirely new shape, existing theoretical models must be changed or designed in such a manner that they must undertake to capture these changes.This article also lacks in providing as to how the future research will shape and what can be the key indicators or variables that can play significant part in shaping the future of services marketing. Though the authors have mentioned few variables but whether such variables can provide empirical support to the arguments is still a debatable issue which authors have not addressed successfully.

On the whole, this article provides a very good understanding of historical approaches towards the research undertaken on services marketing and provides a roadmap for setting the future direction of how the research may be shaped with the changes in the business models.