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Challenges For Service Science, Steven Alter

Steven Alter

Service science is still in a formative stage, with many basic ideas still in flux and significant disagreements about definitions and implications of basic concepts. This paper suggests directions for progress in relation to eight problematic areas within service science. It uses five typical medical services to question typical definitions of service and service system. It suggests that service science should not privilege servitizing over productizing; that a series of design dimensions whose end-points are often associated with products or with services are more useful than yes/no distinctions between products and services; that the concept of "the customer" should be …