Summary of The emergence of the new service marketing: Nordic School perspectives The purposes of this article were

talk about the reflective account of the emergence of new marketing theory as seen by the Nordic School of Service. The interest in services marketing began in the 1970s in several countries simultaneously. Services were absent in management and business disciplines despite official statistics telling us that services constituted the largest economic sector in developed economies. The dominating marketing management and mix approaches built on experience and research of mass manufactured and mass distributed consumer goods. The article proceeds to discuss the past, present and future of marketing with the conviction that theory developments are as much the story of individuals and institutions as of the empirical and conceptual research contributions. In the 2000s, we are progressing towards a new science (or logic) of service as valuecreation abandoning the production-centric goods manufacturing versus a service sector divide. This issue has been raised by the Nordic School over the decades. Conceptual work and thinking out-of-the-box are key characteristics of the Nordic School. Research is not constrained by mainstream norms regarding what marketing is or what makes research scientific. The research is oriented towards case study research, action research and other interactive and interpretive methods, but quantitative methods like surveys are used when appropriate. Theory generation is considered more important to the development of a discipline and not just as an antecedent to hypotheses-testing. Constant comparison between new and existing theory, keeping the winner and discarding the loser, is a productive way of evaluating theory. In certain instances traditional theory testing has also been found useful. Initially service marketing research was normative and pragmatic but is increasingly striving to offer both basic and applied research. Alleged service characteristics used in the 1980s and 1990s intangibility, etc. have proved to be invalid to define goods and services as overriding economic categories. They are only some of numerous dimensions that can help define any offering or marketing situation. Services and service should not be defined as a goods anomaly but as something in its own right, representing a perspective and certain aspects on marketing. Service and goods should always be addressed as interdependent. In fact goods have never been properly defined, and manufactured goods are also the outcome of processes, although the consumer is rarely present. The concepts of the service economy and service competition were syntheses of goods, services and other input to offer

service and value to citizens and customers. Making clear that marketing management and mix theory could not be directly applied to service as it is rooted in B2C mass marketing and mass manufacturing of goods. Long-term interactive relationships and networks rather than transactional exchange are considered the core of research in marketing as well as in marketing practice. Service management and market-oriented management are more adequate concepts than service marketing and marketing management. Marketing is not a silo among silos. The concept of internal marketing emerged as a natural consequence of this integrative approach. This is supported by the concepts of full-time marketers (those hired as marketing professionals) and part-time marketers (others who on part of their time influence a firms marketing, among them employees, customers, suppliers, intermediaries and the media). Service is seen as activities combined into processes. Service processes (conventionally referred to as service production and delivery) and service consumption are partly simultaneous processes where customers are active co-producers and concreators. Many characteristics of service marketing align with the B2B research done by the IMP Group and where the active role of customers is emphasized together with network thinking. Nordic School research has here benefitted from this. Relationship marketing, CRM, one-to-one and later many-to-many marketing could be referred to the three core variables of relationships, networks and interaction. C2C interaction has become a major element of marketing expedited by the new infrastructure of the internet, mobile communication and social media. We would like to conclude where we started: the past, present and the future are elusive and can be addressed in many ways. We see this as our humble contribution. Others are invited to provide their perspectives and interpretations.