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Creating a Research Agenda

by UW alumni Justin Reedy, Ph.D., Communication, and Madhavi Murty, Ph.D., Communication, in conversation with UW graduate students

Creating a research agenda should be a major goal for all graduate students—regardless of theoretical interests, methodological preferences, or career aspirations. A research agenda helps you orient yourself toward both short- and long-term goals; it will guide your selection of classes, help you decide which academic conferences (and within those, which specific divisions) to engage in, and steer you in recruiting mentors and research collaborators.

What is a research agenda?  It’s a plan and a focus on issues and ideas in a subset of your field. You cannot study everything in your field during your time in graduate school, so decide what to focus on now, and what to defer until another day.

Research agendas are not set in concrete;  they naturally change over time as your knowledge grows and as new research questions emerge.

Don’t be intimidated.  Many students may start a graduate program with only a few ideas of areas they would like to study, or perhaps a few general research questions. Graduate courses, conversations with faculty and fellow students, and time spent reading the literature in the field can help you start to form a research agenda out of those ideas or research questions.

How to get started

• Talk with faculty members about your general interests. Use faculty as a resource to find out which topics are over-studied and where additional work is needed.
• If there are students with similar or overlapping interests, get their perspectives as well.
• Read a great deal, even in the early weeks of your graduate work. Be open to reading research outside your immediate areas of interests and seeing how they link to your own areas.
• Ask faculty for reading lists or copies of syllabi. Such resources help you familiarize yourself with the research already done in areas that interest you. Be sure to follow up on citations that are interesting or intriguing.
• Identify key authors relevant to your interests. Read their scholarship and understand the work that has informed their research.

Advancing your agenda

• Identify courses that will help advance your research agenda—both in terms of specific knowledge about the issues and relevant methods. Remember that the title of a class might not always fully describe it, so contact the professor to find out more about class content.
• Look both inside and outside the department for classes—and look outside especially in your second year in the program. Graduate students in interdisciplinary fields, for example, may find very valuable classes in diverse departments.
• Think specifically about the research questions you want to ask, and think about how you will answer them. Then pick courses to help you in reaching this goal.
• Try to use class assignments to advance your research agenda. If possible, use each seminar paper as a way to focus on a specific part of your overall agenda —whether it be a literature review or a proposal for a study.
• Don’t be afraid to take a chance on a course that seems somewhat outside of your agenda or your comfort zone. If the topics or research methods covered in the course draw your interest, you could find a way to incorporate those into your overarching research agenda.

Conference papers, colloquia, and research articles

• Ask faculty members if they have research projects in which you can participate.
• Work with more than one faculty member. Different faculty members provide different perspectives even if they are interested in the same concepts.
• Talk to faculty and other graduate students about conferences you should attend (and conference paper deadlines). Use conference paper deadlines to pace your own research production.
• Present your work at conferences, listen to others’ ideas, and solicit feedback on your research.
• Consider working towards the publication of your papers. With enough feedback and guidance from faculty, fellow graduate students, and colleagues in the field, what starts out as a seminar or conference paper could turn into a journal article or book chapter.
• Attend talks and colloquia on campus—both inside and outside your department. These talks can help you generate research ideas and help you see your research in a new light.
• Recruit others to work with you on projects. Student collaborations are especially fruitful when the constituent members have similar interests, but bring different yet complementary perspectives and skills to the endeavor.

Be active: Be a part of the conversation in your field!

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Shaping the research agenda

As the custodian of norms and standards for health information and research, WHO will support countries in the identification of research priorities and product gaps that will guide new areas of investigation and innovation. WHO will also actively promote fairness and equity in research, including support for open access to research through shared data and publication platforms. 

The systematic approach for undertaking a research priority-setting exercise guide is based on a collection of good practice examples and methodologies drawn from across WHO and more widely. The document sets out a systematic approach to guide how to Plan, Implement, Publish and Evaluate (PIPE) a research priority-setting process. The approach provides a systematic guide to assist planning and implementing a quality research priority-setting exercise that will match the context. The resulting exercise should contain legitimate and credible priorities that have been developed in an ethical and equitable manner. The objectives will support achievement of WHO’s Triple Billion Goal: a billion more people with universal health coverage, a billion more people protected from health emergencies and a billion more people with better health and well-being.

The resulting research priorities that are developed are reported, clearly describing how and why the priorities were identified and who has responsibility for implementing them. Reviewing and monitoring the impact of the exercise allows measurement of how it met the original objectives and how it might be improved if repeated. Research agendas may typically be followed by further research related processes.

A systematic approach for undertaking a research priority-setting exercise: guidance for WHO staff

The Spanish version is published by PAHO: https://iris.paho.org/handle/10665.2/53337The Portuguese version is published by PAHO: https://iris.paho.org/handle/10665.2/53338 

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WTO / Business / Agendas / Research Agenda Examples: How to Write [10 Free Templates]

Research Agenda Examples: How to Write [10 Free Templates]

A research agenda is an action plan that outlines the tasks that need to be prioritised within a particular field of study or research and the execution system of these tasks.

This agenda is a guiding tool for students with specific interests in a subject or field of research who intend to attain predetermined objectives by the end of their studies. 

Most students joining college and university or undertaking research projects will usually have vague ideas of what they want to achieve. A research agenda helps them have a starting point based on their interests, short-term and long-term goals – factors that are vital in decision making, such as deciding the courses and classes to take. The agenda is adaptable in that students can adjust themselves as they progress with their studies or research based on their interactions with faculty, fellow students, research on a particular field, and gaining more knowledge on their chosen academic path.

The agenda improves the student’s sense of direction, thus allowing them to focus on specific areas of their chosen field study. Having an agenda improves your effectiveness as time and resources can be directed to the significant areas of the research topic. A good agenda for research will outline the type of research project, research methods, and tasks to be completed.

Download Templates

Pre-Writing Considerations

A research agenda should help a student get more organised and plan their immediate and future plans within the academic institution. Therefore, the agenda should be specific to the student and must be helpful for them.

Before writing your agenda, consider the following pre-writing considerations:

Discuss your area of interest with the faculty

Consult with faculty and let them know your general interests. Faculty members are typically more informed on general areas of study. They can help you narrow down to the lines of study where there is demand for more expertise and where you can explore your interests further.

Do research

Carry out exhaustive research on the particular field of interest. This will involve a lot of reading and consultations. Gather enough information, and do not hesitate to use external sources and areas outside your immediate interests; it is not unusual to stumble upon a subject that really captures your attention and interest.

Ask your faculty for resources 

Ask faculty for additional resources where you can get further insight into the options available to you. They might recommend relevant dissertations, books, seminars, or conferences you can attend to gather more information on what you should focus on in school. Also, ask for any ongoing projects you can participate in. Ensure to consult more than one faculty member; different members will have diverse inputs and perspectives, all of which can be used to improve your agenda. Note that you can use resources within and without the department; for example, engaging with other graduate students on which conferences are better suited for your field of study can be greatly beneficial.

Consider the second year of the program you are assessing. Sometimes, valuable classes in other interdisciplinary fields may provide further insight into creating a research agenda that helps you arrive at the best possible study options.

Identify key authors relevant to your interests

Visit the library or search online for authors whose bodies of work are related to your interests. Read their books, dissertations, and scholarly work and see how they applied their knowledge to your area of interest in research or real-life scenarios. This can help you determine your role in society after successfully completing your course. Citations are also good sources for materials to read.

Take courses relevant to your interests

Try as much as possible to select courses that align with your interests. This gives you extra motivation to undertake their requirements and be extra motivated throughout them. However, this should not be the sole factor of taking courses. Expand your list of options by identifying areas that spark a novel interest even though they appear to be apart from your passions. 

Use class assignments to advance your research agenda

Class assignments are also viable tools for acquiring more information on how to improve your research agenda. Look into the term papers and identify topics or areas of study being majored on and research further on the same.

Talk to students with similar interests and collaborate

Anytime you interact with students with similar or overlapping interests, get their opinion on the particular areas of study. They may have a different perspective on the courses or areas of study that would best suit your interests.

How to Write Research Agenda

A research agenda should be comprehensive and detailed enough to help you make an informed decision on what you should be aiming for or prioritising to study.

Below are steps to help you write a good agenda:

Describe your area of interest

Firstly, indicate your area of interest. You can provide some background information on how your specific interest came about, its significance in society, and list any accomplishments in this particular field.

Describe the problem statement(s)

Next, justify the identified area of interest. The agenda should show the problems that the specified area of research can be applied to solve. These problems can be narrowed down to those that align with your interests. Therefore, if there is a challenge you always wanted to solve or be part of the solution, and you would like to focus on areas that help you work towards that, you can expound on how this is possible at this point. 

Research methods relevant to your topical area

After the problem statement, identify the research methods you will use to collect information and make the decision on which classes to take. Different methods can be used at this stage, including research groups, conference papers, programs, research articles, observing trends, scholarly works, consultations, etc. Be specific when indicating the research methods. For example, when consulting with faculty members, talk to multiple members as it broadens the perspective with which you will write the agenda.

Include research questions

The next step in creating this agenda is formulating questions that arose during your exploration of the identified areas of study. Questions can be associated with a specific topic, approach, argument, or method of doing things. As you advance in your studies or research, you may find answers to these questions by using what is already known or discovering new ways to address the questions.

Name collaborators, if any

Afterward, indicate any collaborators you have worked with or intend to work with. List the collaborators’ names and their respective capacities or positions. Collaborators can be professors, faculty members, or organisations that deal with the area of study you will be focused on.  

List your finest ideas

Next, indicate any ideas that will be helpful in actualizing your research agenda. These can range from in-between certifications you wish to achieve, applications that will be of use down the line, or targets you wish to achieve every year. Come up with ideas that will be sustainable for two to five years from now.

Describe the grants and their deadlines

The agenda should then outline any funding opportunities available to support your research in the particular area of study. Provide a brief description that indicates the name of the grant program, the grantor, a brief overview of the type of research they support, and the associated deadline for submission of proposals.

Include scholarly communication outlets

Lastly, indicate scholarly platforms related to your interest in the research area where you plan on joining and sharing your work. Examples of scholarly platforms are conferences, journals, research papers, publications, and books. Consider actively participating in these outlets by presenting your work and asking for feedback. Try not to limit yourself to conferences within your department; venture into other departmental conferences, as you can always pick up a new idea that enhances your research agenda.

Essential Tips to Write a Good Research Agenda

To improve the quality of your research agenda, below are several writing and planning techniques you can use.

They include:

Clarify your ideas first

Choose an area of study, whether it is from a point of curiosity, brainstorming, or educated analysis. Gather background information and engage with professors and colleagues as you work to refine your idea. Also, research your course to develop strong research questions.

Divide and prioritise all tasks

Create your agenda by breaking down the field of study into subsets or tasks that contribute to the overall objectives you wish to achieve. There are multiple requirements any student has to satisfy in order to complete a graduate program successfully; list them as items that define your journey in the particular area of research. Examples of tasks that a student may have to complete include test results targets, presentations that one has to present at a conference, submission of a proposal, etc. 

Keep your agenda flexible

Always create a flexible agenda to accommodate different alternatives and opportunities for accomplishing your set goals. It is acceptable to change to a plan with a more positive impact or better outcome than the original plan.

Keep refining

Keep your agenda up-to-date as you acquire more knowledge in your field of study. Add any supporting data such as a Venn diagram , research findings, or concept maps that add objectivity to your agenda.

Don’t be intimidated

Do not be scared to start your research agenda even if you do not have much knowledge on the specific research area to go on. Carry out personal research, consult with faculty members, and discuss with course mates to get more insight. 

Final Thoughts

A research agenda is a good opportunity for students to align what they study with their interests and things they care about. It helps students plan for the tasks they need to undertake to complete their graduate programs in an organised fashion successfully. An agenda should be a continuously changing document as the user progressively gains more insight into their specific area of study. A comprehensive research agenda outlines what needs to be done, the methods that will be used to grow in the field of study, academic and professional targets, collaborators, and any other details that make up the system of the set goals. 

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Early Career Forum

Developing a research agenda.

November 12, 2014

By Milena A. Keller-Margulis, University of Houston

Despite how much and how often the term “research agenda” is used, there seems to be no agreed-upon, or formalized definition to be found. Many different entities may have a research agenda including entire fields of study, funding agencies, and of course individuals. We propose the following definition of a research agenda; a roadmap or framework that guides inquiry. A research agenda may be both global and specific. Ideally it is used to specify gaps in knowledge in a specific area and serves to guide the direction and development of new projects and research questions. A clear research agenda serves two important purposes. First, it can help you communicate to others what you study and the area in which you have developed (or are developing) expertise.  Second, it serves to guide your decision-making about what projects or specific research questions to pursue. Ultimately, you must be interested in and excited about the topic(s) at the heart of your research agenda.

Strategies for Defining Your Agenda It is never too early or too late to begin to develop your research agenda. It should not be considered static, as the process of developing an agenda is inherently reflective and ongoing. The best way to determine the general topic of your research agenda is to pay attention to the topics that interest you the most. You might discover this through reading the literature but these ideas may also surface through your practical or field-based experiences. These opportunities help to refine what might be a more global topic area into more specific or narrow research questions that have practical significance. Lastly, do not be afraid to test drive some areas of interest by getting involved in research, seeking out opportunities to explore new areas, and talking to other people with similar interests. These activities will help you narrow your focus to the topics and questions that are the most interesting to you.

How to Put Your Agenda into Action Once you determine your general topic(s) of interest, the actions you take are what solidify your agenda. The two key ways to accomplish this are to (1)  conduct research  in the areasthat are the focus of your research agenda, and (2)  disseminate the products of  your research agenda. Generating new research and then disseminating it through writing for publication is the most critical way to further your developing agenda, and of course, contribute to the scientific literature. This can take many forms including writing proposals for conference presentations, writing grant proposals (small or large), and writing for publication. Dissemination can also be informal and involve reaching out to others who are doing similar work in order to identify potential collaborative relationships. All of these actions serve to communicate your agenda to others while at the same time developing and further refining your ideas.  Ultimately, having a research agenda means that you not only have specific topics that you are interested in studying but that you actively engage in research to advance that literature base.

Here are some general tips to consider:

• Use your Research Agenda as your Roadmap:  One of the most exciting aspects of working in academia and engaging in research is the limitless topics and projects you can pursue. This is also a challenge because you have to make choices as to where you will invest your time. Evaluate each potential research opportunity for the degree to which it is consistent with your agenda.
• Develop an Infrastructure:  There are some logistic or infrastructure elements that you might consider in the early stages of developing your agenda. You should consider what you need to facilitate your work. Do you need space or support in the form of research assistants? Materials? Access to certain settings or populations of interest? Build a team of students to help you advance your agenda.
• Get Connected:  Another strategy to further develop your research agenda is to collaborate with other scholars who are interested in the same topics. This can be accomplished in an informal way by meeting at conferences (e.g. attend social hours or networking events) or sending a friendly email but there are also structured mentoring/networking opportunities you can utilize. For example, the Society for the Study of School Psychology (SSSP) hosts the School Psychology Research Collaboration Conference every other year. This opportunity brings together junior and senior scholars to support the development of collaborative relationships. Reaching out to other professionals who work in settings that serve populations you want to study is also a great way to develop field-based research partnerships that are mutually beneficial.

Developing and furthering a research agenda takes time and commitment but having a clear area of interest that you find exciting, ensures that it will be a very rewarding endeavor.

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The role and purpose of a research agenda

A research agenda plays a valuable role in helping design scholarly activities for graduate students and faculty. Simply put, a research agenda means identifying the areas you will research and the methodologies you will use to answer questions. You probably have heard from professors in graduate school and beyond that you can’t research everything so you need to pick what you can feasibly study. Moreover, a scattershot approach can keep you from focusing on important questions and pull you in a number of different directions. In today’s post, I will describe research agenda and why they can be of benefit for researchers.

Just as a meeting agenda provides the items to be discussed during a meeting, a research agenda provides clarity and a framework for making decisions regarding your research activities.

It can be tempting to jump on any research idea that comes along and seems interesting.

Rather, what you need is a lens through which you can consider new ideas and projects as they come along.

A clearly articulated research agenda provides boundaries for you to make decisions regarding your scholarly work.

New projects will undoubtedly be attractive at first, but they should be considered in light of your agenda as the first step in reviewing them.

Only once the new idea is in line with your agenda to you move on to consider if you have the time and desire to move forward.

In addition to serving as a useful guide, research agenda help others understand and view the research work that you do.

Research agendas are comprised of a strand (or possibly two or three related ones) of research that you explore. These may be topics or questions that your research seeks to explore.

Many people that I have know do not have a single line of inquiry that forms their research agenda.

Everyone has different and even related interests for their scholarship so you may not have a single, isolated line of research that you explore.

Even tenure committees (that value firm agendas) realize that tenure candidates may have two related concepts that they studied extensively in graduate school, had experience in working on in a laboratory, or were part of their dissertation.

As long as you can articulate each line of inquiry, the relationships between each line, and demonstrate your expertise in the two (or at most three) lines of inquiry that you are studying, most everyone in higher education will find this appropriate.

However, if your research appears to be a collection of random projects lacking a common thread between them, hiring and tenure committees will rightly question whether you have demonstrated expertise and developed a level of sophistication in your research.

For pre-tenure faculty, research agendas can be useful for helping you build up a reputation of expertise and work around a specific topic.

College and universities want to see that pre-tenure are establishing or have achieved a national reputation in the field of expertise.

A tightly focused research agenda helps to achieve prominence by focusing on a specific area.

If someone’s research bounces around among a variety of relatively disconnected projects, then it becomes difficult to establish and validate areas of expertise particularly to external reviewers.

Moreover, working on similar research studies creates significant efficiencies. For example, you do not need to learn a new body of research in order to write the literature review and you are already familiar with journals that publish on your topic.

Overall, if you maintain a sense of consistency with your topic, you can more easily and quickly publish your research.

If you are struggling with articulating your own research agendas, I recommend studying the careers of major researchers in your discipline.

To do this, get a copy of the vita of a significant and well-respected researcher.

Next, look at the years prior to when the established scholar received tenure.

You are looking for how their line of research progressed throughout their career. Research takes a while to build up knowledge and data to answer specific questions.

Over time, as methodologies advance and the knowledge base grows, you will probably see research questions morph and change.

When looking at a full professor with 25 years of research experience, many pre-tenure faculty fail to fully appreciate how research agendas evolve. These professors did not magically come out of graduate school with the focus and expertise they possess today.

Studying these other agendas can help you learn how research agendas evolve over time, which can help in creating your own research agendas.

Establishing a research agenda and sharing this with professors, mentors, and colleagues provides an important groundwork and foundation for your research activities and I highly suggest taking the time to think about and articulate your own agenda.

Service research: past, present and future research agenda

Spanish Journal of Marketing - ESIC

ISSN : 2444-9695

Article publication date: 17 May 2022

Issue publication date: 8 September 2022

This study aims to explore past and present service research and to provide a future research agenda for service researchers by presenting a big picture of the intellectual connections and emerging topics in the discipline.

Design/methodology/approach

This study is an empirical analysis of citations and cocitations on a sample of 5,837 articles published in leading service journals (from 1981 to December 2020). Network analysis was adopted to analyze the data. This study is exclusive in conducting the inquiry at the individual publication level, rather than using the normal aggregated author co-citation analysis approach.

The findings reveal that the main themes of service research centered on customer satisfaction, service quality, service-dominant logic, methodological foundations, market orientation and service encounter. Also clarified is the periphery domain that may become more important in the future (i.e. technology). The findings also present anchor points for conceptual framing and conceptual development – five main themes that are momentous to navigate theory discovery and justification in the knowledge domain.

Research limitations/implications

It calls for a more academic effort to evaluate the service research by considering different epistemological paradigms, such as positivism, monologic and hermeneutic, to better understand the process and progress of the discipline.

Practical implications

Through exploring the transformation of service research into a customer-centric model and technology-based service logic, this study offers possible implications for practitioners and further research areas for service researchers.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to use a citation, cocitation and network analysis to examine service research published in leading service journals. This study provides a significant contribution to the theory by combining main conceptual areas and interests in the given discipline.

Este estudio explora la investigación de servicios pasada y presente y proporciona una agenda de investigación, presentando un panorama general de las conexiones intelectuales y los temas emergentes en la disciplina.

Metodología

Este estudio es un análisis empírico de las citas y co-citas sobre una muestra de 5.837 artículos publicados en las principales revistas de servicios (1981–2020). Se utilizó el análisis de redes para examinar los datos. Este trabajo es único en la realización de la investigación a nivel de publicación individual, en lugar de utilizar el enfoque habitual de análisis de co-citación de autores agregados.

Conclusiones

Los resultados revelan que los temas principales de la investigación sobre servicios se centran en la satisfacción del cliente, la calidad del servicio, la lógica del servicio dominante, los fundamentos metodológicos, la orientación al mercado y el encuentro de servicios. También se clarifica un ámbito periférico que puede adquirir mayor importancia en el futuro (la tecnología). Los resultados también presentan puntos de anclaje para el encuadre y el desarrollo conceptual de diversos temas importantes.

Originalidad

Este estudio es el primero que utiliza un análisis de citas, co-citas y redes para analizar la investigación en servicios publicada en las principales revistas de servicios. Proporciona una importante contribución a la teoría al combinar las principales áreas conceptuales y los intereses de la disciplina.

Implicaciones prácticas

Mediante la exploración de la transformación de la investigación en servicios en un modelo centrado en el cliente y en la lógica de los servicios basados en la tecnología, este estudio ofrece posibles implicaciones para los profesionales y nuevas áreas de investigación para los investigadores.

Implicaciones

Se reclama un mayor esfuerzo académico para evaluar la investigación de servicios considerando diferentes paradigmas epistemológicos, como el positivismo, el monologismo y la hermenéutica, para comprender mejor el proceso y el progreso de la disciplina.

本研究旨在探索过去和现在的服务研究, 并通过展示该学科的知识联系和新兴主题的全局, 为服务研究领域的学者提供未来的研究议程。

本文是基于1981年到2020年12月期间发表在五个领先服务类期刊上的5,837篇文章进行引用和共同引用的实证分析, 并采用网络分析法对数据进行分析和分类。这项研究的独到之处在于在单个出版物层面上进行调查, 而不是采用正常的汇总作者共被引分析方法。

我们的调查结果显示, 服务研究的主题主要集中在顾客满意度、服务质量、服务主导逻辑、方法论基础、市场导向和服务遭遇。同时, 还阐明了未来可能变得更加重要的外围领域（即技术）。研究结果还提出了概念框架和概念发展的锚点–概念图的五个主要主题对导航知识领域的理论发现和论证至关重要。

本研究首次使用引文、共同引文和网络分析来考察发表在领先服务期刊上的服务研究。它结合特定学科的主要概念领域和兴趣, 为理论研究做出了重要的贡献。它还确定了我们在服务学术研究中已知和未知的内容。

通过探索服务研究转变为以客户为中心的模式和基于技术的服务逻辑, 本研究为从业者提供了启示, 也为后续服务研究指引了值得进一步研究的领域。

本文呼吁更多的学术研究通过考虑不同的认识论范式, 例如实证主义、一元论和解释学来评估服务研究, 以便更好地了解该学科的过程和进展。本文还呼吁未来研究可以尝试填补本文研究结果提出的知识空白。

• Service research
• Bibliometric analysis
• Citation analysis
• Co-citation analysis
• Intellectual structure
• Future agenda
• Investigación en servicios
• Análisis bibliométrico
• Análisis de citas
• Análisis de co-citas
• Estructura intelectual
• Agenda de investigación

Arici, H.E. , Köseoglu, M.A. and Altinay, L. (2022), "Service research: past, present and future research agenda", Spanish Journal of Marketing - ESIC , Vol. 26 No. 2, pp. 146-167. https://doi.org/10.1108/SJME-09-2021-0177

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2022, Hasan Evrim Arici, Mehmet Ali Köseoglu and Levent Altinay.

Published in Spanish Journal of Marketing – ESIC . Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

1. Introduction

How does scientific service research evolve? To unearth this black box, we need to address another question: “what is the origin of academic service research?” The origin aids to form the intellectual links and consequently the structure of the scientific field ( Köseoglu et al. , 2021 ). Visualization of the intellectual relations contributes to proposing and developing novel and current approaches. Revealing potential structures and solving existing questions could offer knowledge and possible remedies for industry professionals ( Köseoglu et al. , 2021 ). In addition, scientific domains have used identifiable intellectual connections that form further directions. Service research demonstrated a proof of evolution, starting with the discussion of services marketing as a separate field from product marketing and its definition as a unique scientific domain ( Lovelock and Patterson, 2015 ; Parasuraman et al. , 1985 ; Shostack, 1977 ). An academic understanding of this progress could be significant for scholars, who try to clarify the prospective influences of theory on the industry. Revealing interconnections among various service industries could also provide a meaningful contribution to practitioners about past, present and future trends in the service context.

Scholars have conducted empirical studies of evolution by focusing on specific service sectors, including hospitality ( Arici et al. , 2021 ), education ( Tight, 2008 ), health care ( Rigby, 2014 ) and marketing ( Sheoran et al. , 2018 ). However, these investigations have not provided a comprehensive view of the evolving patterns of the service literature. Therefore, there is a need for research that clarifies the origins, progress and topics of the scientific service references in an examination for intellectual connections, also known as intellectual structure, cocitation networks, invisible colleges, knowledge networks, knowledge domains or source knowledge that is a depiction of a discipline’s theme-based features from its roots to its roof ( Köseoglu, 2020 ).

The specific reasons for such an empirical work are threefold. The first and foremost reason is the maturity level of the service research literature. Recent academic debate has also escorted the development of service research. It is noteworthy that there is a current discussion on service delivery design in service industries. Integration of new-generation technologies, for instance, has adopted philosophical viewpoints from determinism and instrumentalism to define technology as autonomous and humanly controlled as a response to the traditional design of service context. This alternative view has also been triggered by academic efforts, particularly after the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Developing a novel approach requires realizing what the origin tells us. Therefore, examining the scientific root of complete service research deserves scholarly attention, different from performing tantamount research within a specific discipline, like hospitality. Even though service literature has a thriving background, past investigations have provided scarce longitudinal scope that leads to producing an inadequate understanding of the progress of the scholarly domain over the longer run. The other reason for such empirical work is because of the restrictions of previously conducted bibliometric analyses in the service literature. Previous investigations neither conceived intellectual connections between appearing studies or subdomains nor the transformative effect of influential studies across the complete service research domain ( Köseoglu et al. , 2021 ). Third, recent bibliometric studies have merely focused on analyzing a historical evolution of a single journal ( Donthu et al. , 2020 ; Tur-Porcar et al. , 2018 ). Moreover, several scholars have considered it a unique sector and a territory ( Rigby, 2014 ). These attempts have of course provided a meaningful contribution to the knowledge, but they fault revealing a complete big picture of service literature because a greater wide bibliometric research could potentially create more generic outcomes.

Last, past investigations have generally included not only journal articles as a way of a credible sources but they also used books, book chapters, conference papers, dissertations and research notes to expand their citation and co-citation analysis. Despite its limited advantages, this method can create problematic empirical results ( Köseoglu et al. , 2021 ). To illustrate, conference papers might be not submitted to a rigorous review process that leads to a question regarding their presented findings, if they are contrasted with academic journal articles.

to define influential fields of source knowledge in service literature by mapping the intellectual connections;

to decide on main connections and clusters within the knowledge domain; and

to display appearing study fields as a possible agenda for further research.

The contribution of this present research to the service literature is threefold. One is a contribution to the theory development in service research. This is achieved through the establishment of intellectual structure across a large body of investigation. Second, this present research includes a larger number of service journal articles over a longer time horizon than its counterparts. This may enable service scholars to gain a wider insight into the domain and its progress over an extended period. In particular, the results could illustrate what we know to extend our current knowledge of service scholarship and what we do not know to reveal the knowledge gap within the domain. Finally, because using academic journal articles could provide more reliable outputs in a bibliometric study ( Köseoglu et al. , 2021 ), this paper merely includes journal articles in the analysis. In doing so, this study has a great potential to produce evidence-based results and future directions from reliable data sources.

2. Intellectual structure of service research

Several scholars have conducted review analysis in the service literature. These studies could be categorized into three clusters. The first cluster includes service-focused investigations ( Arici and Uysal, 2022 ; Benoit et al. , 2017 ; Cronin, 2003 ; Gürlek and Koseoglu, 2021 ; Subramony et al. , 2021 ). Using keywords “service” and “employee,” Subramony et al. ’s (2021) study consisted of articles associated with frontline service employees in applied/occupational health psychology and service journals. Benoit et al. (2017) also used limited criteria, including theory, methodology and some descriptive aspects (e.g. number of authors or references).

The second consists of journal-focused studies ( Donthu et al. , 2020 ; Donthu et al. , 2021a , 2021b ; Pilkington and Chai, 2008 ). Pilkington and Chai’s (2008) study revealed core research themes and concepts of the International Journal of Service Industry Management , whereas Donthu et al. ’s (2020) co-citation analysis identifies the Journal of Service Research ’s (JSR) prominent topics and traces the progress of the study themes in the journal. Similarly, other recent bibliometric studies focus on revealing the intellectual structure of a specific journal, instead of a discipline. Donthu et al. ’s (2021a) work examined the source knowledge of the Journal of Services Marketing (JSMAR) and Donthu et al. ’s (2021b) study revealed the themes of the Journal of Service Theory and Practice (JSTP).

The third and last cluster can be named theme-focused ( Gong and Yi, 2021 ; Klaus and Zaichkowsky, 2020 ). Gong and Yi (2021) , for example, focus on only customer citizenship behaviors, whereas Klaus and Zaichkowsky’s (2020) study investigates artificial intelligence (AI) in the field of services marketing. Though these previous attempts have contributed to the service research, they mostly fail to provide a wider view of the intellectual structure of the knowledge domain. Thus, our paper has the potential to make a considerable contribution to the service literature by not only revealing the past and present of the service research but also providing future research agenda for further scientific efforts. Table 1 provides the past review research investigating the intellectual structure or knowledge networks in service research.

3. Methodology

This study adopts citation analysis and co-citation analysis through network analysis to investigate the intellectual structure of service research. These methods enhance the objectivity of findings obtained, with the inclusion of big datasets over a large period. Citation analysis includes clarifying main documents in a knowledge field through computing references. It presents applicable outcomes regarding the past and future of a domain. Subsequently, co-citation analysis investigates associations among the influential articles by visualizing source knowledge in the discipline. These methods help scholars to reveal emergent subdomains and their intrarelationships. Hence, this paper sets out to explore the intellectual connections of service research by using cocitation and network analyses.

3.1 Data collection

The data analyzed consists of references cited by service associated articles, which have been published in scientific journals. These articles were obtained from the five highly prestigious service journals: The Service Industries Journal (TSIJ), Journal of Service Management , JSMAR, JSR and JSTP. In the selection of these journals, we first searched the most well-known international databases (i.e. Social Science Citation Index and Scopus) and decided on five leading service journals. Another reason behind choosing these journals is their higher impact factors than other service journals. In other words, these five journals have published the most cited articles in service research, thus their potential to dominate the knowledge field is higher than their counterparts. To check the applicability of the selected journals, two productive scholars and a service journal editor have also been advised. Through getting their approval, the five journals have been included in the study sample.

We downloaded articles and their reference lists from the Scopus database from the first issue to the latest issue in 2020. Among these five journals, as the first academic service journal in the world TSIJ’s first issue was released in 1981. Our bibliometric analysis thus includes journal articles published from 1981 to December 2020. The data were transformed into an Excel sheet, including a total of 5,837 articles with a reference list. To enhance the reliability of the study findings, we decided to consider only articles from the references and so excluded books, book chapters, conference papers and dissertations. This process resulted in approximately 250,000 journal reference appearances.

3.2 Analysis

In bibliometric analysis, four main methods have appeared (i.e. actor analysis, cluster analysis, multidimensional scale analysis and network analysis), each of which relies on co-citation analysis to reveal the intellectual connections of a knowledge domain ( Köseoglu et al. , 2021 ). Despite its huge importance in the bibliometric literature, co-citation analysis has still suffered from the lack of a widely accepted threshold value ( Hota et al. , 2019 ; Köseoglu, 2020 ). While several scholars use cutoff criteria for the analysis ( Hota et al. , 2019 ), other researchers adopt the trial-error approach, and the rest follow a threshold value that consists of a minimum of 50, 100, or greater studies based on study choice and specialty ( Köseoglu et al. , 2021 ). Drawing on the debate, we decided to use the most cited 100 articles as a threshold value in this study. This leads to 100 articles that were cited at least 96 times for potential examination with 19,628 appearances.

In this paper, we performed network analysis to visualize the scholarly foundations and main themes like clusters through VOSviewer software. This software clarifies clusters by using modularity-based clustering ( Eck et al. , 2010 ). We then adopted the relationship strength approach for purposes of normalization. In the network visualization, circles present nodes and lines depict the links between the nodes. The colors show the clusters to which the nodes belong. The magnitude of the nodes demonstrates the usage frequency of an article as a reference ( Köseoglu et al. , 2021 ).

4. Findings

4.1 citation analysis in service research.

By using document citation analysis of references of the studies issued in the five service journals, influential studies have been revealed in the service research. This study considers the most cited 30 service research articles. The top ten articles have provided several viewpoints regarding influential studies in the field. In terms of topic, SERVQUAL appears as a leading topic in the first ( Parasuraman et al. , 1988 ), third ( Parasuraman et al. , 1985 ) and fifth most cited articles ( Zeithaml et al. , 1996 ) written by the same research team. Cronin Jr and Taylor’s (1992) study on service quality is another paper among the top ten most cited articles. Vargo and Lusch’s (2004) seminal work suggesting an evolution of marketing dominant logic from firm-centric value creation to customer-centric value creation appears as the most cited fourth article in the service research. Bitner et al. ‘s (1990) pioneering work on service encounters is another of the top ten most cited articles, followed by Morgan and Hunt’s (1994) commitment trust theory. Though it cannot be argued that the findings represent comprehensive knowledge domains in the service research, it can be concluded that SERVQUAL is the leading topic and theoretical framework within the service research, followed by customer-centric models in the service encounter.

In terms of methodology, the most cited study is Fornell and Larcker’s (1981) seminal work on structural equation modeling (SEM). This is followed by Anderson and Gerbing (1988) on the same method (i.e. SEM). Podsakoff et al. ’s (2003) work is another influential methodology-focused paper that appeared as the tenth most cited article in service research. This finding illustrates the dominance of quantitative methods, particularly SEM, in service research.

4.2 Co-citation analysis in service research

Drawing on document co-citation analysis, this study reveals five unique clusters, each presenting a knowledge domain of the service research (see Figure 1 ). Appendix demonstrates the relevant data regarding the unique clusters and their ingredients. To appropriately label each cluster, this study has performed a qualitative examination of citations in clusters.

4.2.1 Customer satisfaction and customer relationship.

Customer satisfaction and customer relationship is the biggest theme (red colored) with the highest volume of ingredients (see Figure 1 ). The suggested label considers two subdomains to identify the foci of studies within the theme. The largest categorizing studies with the highest weightings concentrate on customer satisfaction. An obvious association between service quality and satisfaction has appeared in this cluster. The most influential study is Zeithaml et al. ’s (1996) work that develops a conceptual model of the effect of service quality on particular behaviors that signal if customers are satisfied or dissatisfied with the service provided by a company. Another influential article within this cluster is Oliver’s (1980) pioneering work, which proposes a model expressing customer satisfaction as a function of expectation and expectancy disconfirmation. In line with Zeithaml et al. ’s (1996) model, the author suggested that satisfaction influences customer purchase intentions. Customer defections have also been expressed as a consequence of dissatisfaction in service organizations ( Reichheld and Sasser, 1990 ). The authors addressed that customer defection could tell service organizations what parts of the business must be improved.

Fornell’s (1992) study concentrated on a national level of customer satisfaction barometer. His work revealed that Sweden is the first country to develop a national level satisfaction barometer. This national-level barometer measures quality of the total consumption process as customer satisfaction. Within the same country (i.e. Sweden), the other influential study was conducted by Anderson and Sullivan (1993) to reveal the antecedents and consequences of customer satisfaction. Another influential article confirms that the most influential customer satisfaction studies were conducted in Sweden ( Anderson et al. , 1994 ). The authors investigated the financial outcomes of ensuring customer satisfaction in organizations.

Customer relationship-focused studies constitute a second subdomain in this theme. Morgan and Hunt’s (1994) seminal study is the most influential customer relationship reference. The authors theorized that successful relationship marketing requires relationship commitment and trust. Crosby et al. (1990) developed and examined a relationship quality model, which analyzes the nature, outcomes, and predictors of customer relationship quality. The authors revealed that customer relationship quality, including trust and satisfaction, significantly influences companies’ future sales opportunities.

Other influential references in this cluster have examined the role of trust ( Doney and Cannon, 1997 ; Garbarino and Johnson, 1999 ; Sirdeshmukh et al. , 2002 ) and satisfaction ( Bolton, 1998 ) in the buyer–seller relationship. Doney and Cannon’s (1997) work developed a theoretical model that addresses the importance of the trust in the supplier, salesperson and buyer relationship and found that trust of the supplier firm and trust of the salesperson affect a buyer’s anticipated future interaction with the supplier. Moreover, Garbarino and Johnson (1999) revealed that for the high relational customers, trust and commitment play a mediating role in the relationship of component attitudes and customer future intentions. Sirdeshmukh et al. (2002) also developed a model for comprehending the service providers’ policies and implications that improve or deplete customer trust and the mechanisms that transform customer trust into value and loyalty in relational exchanges. On the other hand, Bolton’s (1998) work revealed that customer satisfaction ratings are positively associated with the duration of the relationship. Overall, influential studies have put a special emphasis on trust to investigate customer relationships.

4.2.2 Service quality and servicescape.

As seen in Figure 1 , the second knowledge domain combined with influential service marketing-focused sources is placed toward the bottom left side of the cluster map (green-colored). The fundamental foci of articles within this theme are associated with service quality and servicescape. Whilst Grönroos’s (1984) article is the first academic attempt to clarify the service quality concept and its marketing practices, Parasuraman et al. ’s (1988) SERVQUAL scale dominates this cluster. Their seminal work evolved the service quality into measurable and utilizable by future researchers. In a similar vein, the same author team conceptualized the service quality concept in their earlier study ( Parasuraman et al. , 1985 ), which is the second most influential article in this cluster. A subsequent influential study by Cronin and Taylor (1992) discussed the current theorizations of service quality phenomenon for purportedly confounding satisfaction and processed to suggest a substitute approach to test the phenomenon, called “a performance-based method.” The researchers demonstrated that the service performance scale excels service quality scale. Moreover, Zeithaml’s (1988) theoretical framework about associations of customer perceptions of service quality, price and value is among the ten most cited studies and empirically supports the interrelationship of these concepts.

The SERVQUAL concept has been theoretically and operationally described based on the gap between customers’ service quality perceptions and expectations. Service quality has widely been considered an active concept and an action of two kinds of prediction: what will and needs to happen ( Boulding et al. , 1993 ). Academic efforts have proceeded to refine, redesign and develop the measurement scale and model of the service quality concept.

The concept of servicescape is the second knowledge domain of this cluster. Bitner and his coauthors significantly contribute to the knowledge field ( Bitner , 1990, 1992 ). As a most influential reference, Bitner’s (1990) work evaluates the service encounter where the customer interacts directly with the service provider. The author synthesizes consumer satisfaction, services marketing and attribution concepts. As the second most influential study, Bitner (1992) suggested a theoretical model for comprehending environment-user associations in service businesses.

Unsurprisingly, this cluster involves several articles that use an operational model, because servicescape is an environment where service delivery processes exist. Amongst the earliest works, Chase’s (1978) seminal study proposes a service model claiming that the less direct customer contact in service delivery, the greater the potential of the system to operate at peak efficiency. Shostack (1984) proposes a service blueprint model that enables a service organization to discover all the issues inherent in generating or designing a service. The same author’s earlier conceptual study provided various market-inspired thoughts on the development of new services marketing approaches and the progress of related services marketing principles ( Shostack, 1977 ). Solomon et al. ’s (1985) pioneering work also develops a model based on the role theory suggesting that a dyadic relationship between service providers and customers is a significant factor affecting customer satisfaction with the service offered. Moreover, Zeithaml et al. ’s (1993) study proposed a conceptual framework suggesting the nature and antecedents of customer expectations.

4.2.3 Service dominant logic: value creation.

The darker blue-colored cluster compounds influential service references that concentrate on service-dominant logic including value creation and is located on the right side of the map (see Figure 1 ). Vargo and Lusch(2004 , 2008 ) are two authors who contributed to the two most influential references in this cluster. Vargo and Lusch’s (2004) service-dominant logic suggested that consumer inclusion in value cocreation is important to the execution of service logic. The authors show evolving of a new dominant logic for services marketing from a good-centered model of exchange. Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004) evaluate and discuss the meaning process of value creation and evolution from a good-centric approach to a service-centric approach. They define a shift to personalized customer service that includes the cocreation of value via personalized interactions based on how each customer wishes to interact with the firm. This study emphasizes dialog, access, risk–benefits and transparency as the base of the consumer-company interaction.

Later, Vargo and Lusch (2008) identified the salient issues related to their introductory article for what has become known as the “service-dominant logic of marketing (i.e. Vargo and Lusch, 2004 ) and updated the original foundational premises. Similarly, this knowledge domain includes several studies, which extend and update service-dominant logic to develop knowledge of service exchange and value cocreation. Payne et al. (2008) proposed a model that presents a structure for customer participation and considers customers as the same degree of significance as the business as cocreators of value. Edvardsson et al. ’s (2011) study criticized the service-dominant logic and suggested several concepts from social construction theories, such as social structures, social systems, roles, positions, interactions and reproduction of social structures. Grönroos and Voima (2013) also contribute to the development of service-dominant logic in the service literature. The authors classified the company and customers’ actions (i.e. provider, joint, customer) and their interactions (i.e. direct and indirect), resulting in various forms of value creation and cocreation in the service context. The most prolific authors of this cluster, Vargo and Lusch (2016) , modified service-dominant logic by considering institutions and axioms. The authors evaluate and develop an understanding focusing on the role of institutions and institutional arrangements in systems of value cocreation: service ecosystems.

Because of the customer-focused nature of the service-dominant logic, customer engagement is another influential reference within the knowledge domain. Van Doorn et al. (2010) propose the concept of customer engagement behaviors, which is defined as the customers’ behavioral manifestation toward a brand or company. The authors articulated that companies could execute customer engagement behaviors by taking a more integrative and extensive method. Brodie et al. (2011) also discuss the role of customer engagement in cocreating customer experience and value. This study suggests that customer engagement “reflects a psychological state; occurs within a dynamic, iterative process of service relationships that cocreates value”; plays a central role within a nomological network; is a multidimensional concept; and occurs within a specific set of situational conditions generating differing customer engagement levels” ( Brodie et al. , 2011 , p. 258).

As a changing and growing way, customers interact with companies to create service value, technology also proceeds to gradually become a critical topic in this theme. For instance, Meuter et al. ’s (2000) study examines customer interactions with technology-based self-service delivery options. Bitner et al. ’s (2000) work also examines the transforming nature of service, with a focus on how service logic could be developed by effectively using technology. The authors proposed and analyzed the technology infusion matrix including customization/flexibility of service, effective service recovery and spontaneous delight to customers. To comprehend this technology-based changing landscape in service logic, Ostrom et al. ’s (2015) recent study provided several service research priorities, such as using big data, stimulating service innovation, understanding value creation and leveraging technology to advance service. These studies show that service research inclines to focus more on the usage of technology in customer service.

Two theory development studies have also fallen into this cluster. First, Eisenhardt’s (1989) study, which is amongst the earliest papers in theory development describes the process of theory building from case studies. The second most influential study (i.e. Barney, 1991 ) suggested that service firms need to possess physical, human and financial resources and these resources must be valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable and unsubstitutable. The reason these two papers have been involved within this cluster could be related to the development of new approaches for the service context. That is, service-dominant logic proposes a shift in service delivery from firm centric to customer centric and scientific efforts have continued to theorize this transformation in service research.

4.2.4 Methodology and market orientation.

As exhibited in Figure 1 , the fourth cluster combines influential methodology and market orientation-related references (noted in yellow). The largest category with the highest weights emphasizes SEM in this cluster ( Anderson and Gerbing, 1988 ; Bagozzi and Yi, 1988 ; Fornell and Larcker, 1981a ). Podsakoff et al. ’s (2003) study is also placed among the most influential articles within the knowledge domain. The authors developed statistical (i.e. Harman’s one-factor analysis) and procedural remedies (i.e. using time-lagged data) to control common method bias. Studies within this domain that possess similar emphasis but a lesser influence consist of the study by Hu and Bentler (1999) on cutoff criteria for fit indexes used to test model fit, Podsakoff and Organ (1986) on self-reports in organizational research, Fornell and Larcker (1981b) on interpretative statistics in SEM, Armstrong and Overton (1977) on nonresponse bias and Baron and Kenny’s (1986) on moderation and mediation analysis in social psychological research.

Two articles within this knowledge domain also emphasize scale development ( Churchill, 1979 ; Gerbing and Anderson, 1988 ). Narver and Slater’s (1990) study also develops a valid measure of market orientation and tests its positive impact on a firm’s financial performance. This cluster endorses that service research mostly benefits from empirical analysis through conducting quantitative research methods.

Market-orientation-related studies constitute a second subdomain within this cluster. Kohli and Jaworski’s (1990) study reviews extant literature and knowledge about market orientation and presents a foundation for further investigation. Similarly, Jaworski and Kohli (1993) examined the antecedents and consequences of market orientation. This study found the significant effect of market orientation on the financial profitability of organizations.

Customer perception of service quality also plays a part in this theme. Schneider and Bowen’s (1985) examination of employee and customer perception of service quality in banks replicated and extended Parkington and Schneider’s (1979) previous work on the associations between employees and customers in service firms. The authors found a significant relationship between employees’ perception of human resources practices and customers’ reactions to the service offered. Finally, Hartline and Ferrell (1996) suggested that to improve customers’ perception of service quality, supervisors need to enhance employees’ self-efficacy and job satisfaction and mitigate their role conflict and ambiguity in the service setting.

4.2.5 Service encounter.

Figure 1 demonstrates that the last theme in light violet color unites articles on service encounters and customer complaints. Of the seven articles, three are related to service encounters, whereas the rest are related to customer complaint behaviors and experiences. The most cited article within the theme belongs to Bitner et al. (1990) . The authors depicted types and classes in service design based on their consequences. Smith et al. (1999) also developed a conceptual model of customer satisfaction with service failure/recovery encounters based on an exchange framework. Using a mixed-design experiment from two service contexts (i.e. restaurants and hotels), the authors revealed that customers choose to receive recovery resources, which match the kind of failure they confront in amounts that are congruent with the weight of the failure appearing. Bitner et al. ’s (1994) study explored the sources of satisfaction and dissatisfaction in service encounters from the contact employee’s perspective. The authors revealed that customers will be likely to blame the employee for a service failure caused by their misbehaviors.

Customer behavior also plays a significant role in this knowledge domain. Keaveney’s (1995) exploratory study identified approximately 80 critical behaviors of service organizations leading to customers switching services. The authors also classified customers’ reasons for switching services into eight general groups: pricing, inconvenience, core service failure, service encounter failures, response to a service failure, competition, ethical problems and involuntary switching. Tax et al. (1998) also revealed that customers were likely to have favorable responses to encounters in which initial service failures were followed by effective recovery. Interestingly, this study found that a poorly handled complaint hurt trust among current guests just as much as it did among first-time guests.

5. Conclusions, future research agenda and limitations

This study aims to investigate the intellectual structure of service research. This chapter emphasizes the theoretical contributions of this current work for the five revealed clusters and provides directions for further investigations. A preliminary and important characteristic of the highly cited documents in service research is the predominance of SERVQUAL over other concepts and approaches. This paper contributes to academic debates regarding popular service marketing theories. SERVQUAL is revealed as the most extensively accepted theory. The predominance of this theory citation demonstrates the vitality of quality as a service research theme. A comparative study examining whether SERVQUAL is a prevalent concept in all service industries would pay dividends.

Second, this present work contributes to academic debates on the breadth and dimensions of the service literature. Of the five explained knowledge domains, four could be called services marketing themes (customer satisfaction and relationship, service quality and servicescape, service-dominant logic and the service encounter). This is consistent with Javalgi et al. ’s (2006 , p. 13) study, suggesting “the crucial importance of services market research in service settings.” These scholars claimed that marketing research is a key mechanism through which service organizations realize their present and future customers. This present work confirms these authors’ main argument. Considering this key philosophy, naturally, customer satisfaction is the fundamental outcome of the service domain like similar services marketing variables (i.e. market orientation, value creation, cocreation and service encounter).

Third, our study has explored important voids in its clarification of knowledge fields in service research. Service research could be comprehensively studied by adopting various epistemological perspectives to better comprehend service exchange, value cocreation and service designs and encounters. By considering various paradigmatic positions or comparing findings from investigations using various paradigms, researchers could develop the service research discipline ( Tronvoll et al. , 2011 ). Though it cannot be claimed that this study completely mirrors all published service research, the analysis has demonstrated that study domains and the majority of their ingredients suit what could prevalence be considered as “positivistic research” (e.g. service quality, customer satisfaction and customer relationship), whereas monologic or hermeneutic paradigmatic articles and knowledge domains are largely absent (e.g. service-dominant logic, service encounter). Tronvoll et al. (2011) suggest that this predominance of positivistic studies has narrowed down the enrichment of the service research discipline. Thus, service scholars need to enrich service research beyond the positivistic approach to better comprehend the process and progress of the discipline. The dynamic nature of service management and marketing leads to more complex and nonstatic transactions, thus examining a topic or concept often requires various epistemological paradigms to comprehend the relevant phenomena completely. Persisting to use a limited paradigmatic way in the long term, the knowledge field might risk becoming marginalized, because of its complicated, human-interactive and relational characteristics. Thus, future service researchers can follow different paradigmatic points of departure, which can result in the enrichment of novel concepts to both conceptual and practical themes.

Fourth, our study reveals the progress of the service research, with the appearance of technology as a new and critical topic within the knowledge domain. This topic is different in its longevity because it includes the recently published most cited articles. As a shifting and increasing path customers interact with companies to create service value and exchange, service research evolves into a technology-focused domain. Even though this field recently has the smallest number of constituents, the advent of the internet and enrichments in the new-generation technologies, such as AI and service robotics, encourage service scholars to conceptually and empirically analyze the usage of technology in service research. Altinay and Arici (2021) have recently suggested a transformation of services marketing structure in the postpandemic world. The authors proposed new generation technologies as a substitutional actor in services marketing. Considering the transformation of services marketing structure in the postpandemic world, is it possible that technology can be a new actor within the service-dominant logic? Does this field provide the potential to transform mainstream disciplines? Or, may this trend appear as a unique and different knowledge field that requires special concern, such as services marketing or customer behaviors in the discipline?

Our paper has contributed to these knowledge fields by exploring their conceptual foundations. The first and foremost cluster includes studies focusing on customer satisfaction and customer relationships. Most documents in this domain emphasized customer satisfaction as an important concept for achieving service firms’ profitability. Topics of interest consist of recommendation of the service company, remaining loyal to the company, spending more time money and customer repurchase intentions, deriving from customer satisfaction with the service quality. Customer relationships also appeared as a subcluster within this knowledge domain. This cluster includes articles focusing on relationship quality between customers and service providers. Trust appears as a significant concept in the customer relationship. The customer–company relationship can be expanded by future scholars who could investigate customers’ priorities, main needs and expectations in the postpandemic world, because the recent pandemic may transform customers’ behaviors, attitudes and beliefs.

Recent studies have suggested a mixed-service approach that includes both human and technology-oriented service designs to meet customers’ changing needs and expectations in the new world ( Altinay and Arici, 2021 ). Future research could accelerate these recently developed efforts by proposing novel industry-specific models and frameworks in service research.

One extensively investigated services marketing-focused cluster relates to SERVQUAL, a concept and a measure that has been considerably considered in service literature. The service performance scale was developed as a substitute for the SERVQUAL. Many scholars have examined and empirically analyzed the significant influences of these concepts on consumer satisfaction and loyalty. Examining potential moderating and mediating variables on the direct and indirect effects of service quality and service performance on both employee-level and organization-level outputs could improve the knowledge domain. Moreover, service companies have still waited for novel approaches that provide unique remedies for coping with the devastating impacts of the recent pandemic. Thus, scientific endeavors could more focus on redefining the service quality concept and its measurements in the postpandemic world. One possible direction could be proposing a redesigned service encounter where the employee–customer interaction has been revised.

Another investigated cluster relates to service-dominant logic. Service scholars have centered on customer-focused service design. This domain includes vital articles, which theoretically developed an evolving framework from a good-centric approach to a customer-centric approach. Customer cocreation value seems to be the most influential of the service-dominant logic. Customer participation and customer engagement are inherently the main focuses of articles appearing within this cluster. Font et al. ’s (2021) study has recently discussed how shared value can contribute to sustainable supply chain management. Another recent study has examined innovation and cocreation value for peer-to-peer accommodation services ( Casais et al. , 2020 ). Thus, sustainability and innovation could be more emphasized by future attempts to examine their roles in customer cocreation value. This cluster also shows technology as an important factor triggering the evolution of service research in the millennium. Support of this claim, a very recent study proposes changing the marketing channels of hospitality services ( Altinay and Arici, 2021 ). The authors proposed that “service organizations can keep up with developments in cutting-edge technologies, and those technologies can inaugurate a new era in service by replacing human labor in the service encounter” (p. 26). Thus, future research could investigate the role of cutting-edge technologies in customer service. The interrelationship of technology and customer cocreation value could also be investigated. It needs to be clarified whether could the employee-oriented nature of service organizations be replaced by the new technology?

Methodology and market orientation is the third-largest cluster. Many studies from this domain adopt quantitative data analysis. SEM is the dominant quantitative approach appearing in this cluster. This finding endorses the previous research ( Köseoglu et al. , 2021 ) that found hospitality service research has been dominated by methodology-focused articles, particularly, quantitative research methods (i.e. SEM). This calls for further inquiry on methodology papers in various service industries, such as education and banking. A comparative research that evaluates variances of methodology-focused studies among service industries would pay dividends.

Market orientation-focused studies concentrate on antecedents and outcomes of market orientation as well as management focus on the market orientation that cares about clarifying customer needs and wants and generating services that satisfy them. Whilst the subdomain consists of wide-ranging themes, no particular aspect of market orientation has received constant attention. Low et al. ’s (2007) study determining how market orientation or its related practices interact with the innovation process could be useful to other aspects of market orientation and it could be time to perform qualitative studies on this intrarelationship. Could the predominance of quantitative analysis (i.e. SEM) be replaced by other methodologies, such as mixed-method including both quantitative and qualitative or bibliometric analysis? Or could the panel data approach provide a more comprehensive insight into service research? These are vital inquiries still waiting for academic attention from the service researchers. Furthermore, market orientation is broadly considered from the organization and managers’ perspective, so investigating the link of the market orientation-innovation process is needed at the employee level to examine whether employees are the linking determinant between the concepts of market orientation and innovation.

The last cluster consists of the service encounter. The conceptual foundations of this cluster consist of such themes as service failure/recovery, employee reactions, customer complaints and customer changing behaviors. This domain broadly discusses the employee–customer interaction in the service encounter. However, technology may be adapted as a new way to solve customer complaints and minimize potential service failures deriving from human errors. Thus, a growing academic interest is needed in the adaptation of technology into the service encounter to help industry practitioners in coping with the service failures and consequently customer complaints.

Considering these five main clusters, we provide research questions that can encourage service researchers to conduct further research in the knowledge domain. We also present related theories for each question that can help scholars conceptually underpin their arguments (see Table 2 ).

Beyond these five themes, we also acknowledged that we do not have sufficient knowledge of emergent topics in the service research. As mentioned above, recent efforts ( Altinay and Arici, 2021 ; Casais et al. , 2020 ; Font et al. , 2021 ) addressed the adaptation of such emergent concepts including technology, innovation and sustainability and called for more research on expanding our knowledge of these topics and their adaptation in service environments. Considering these recent calls, we invite future researchers to analyze three main themes (i.e. innovation, sustainability and technology) to further expand our knowledge of new trends and implications in service industries in the new era.

Like its predecessors, this study inherently has some limitations that need to be addressed. First, it is well known that a predominance of self-citations can result in biased citation measures. Yet, this study has covered numerous documents published over a large period. Covering such big data is not easy for any researcher to analyze and interpret the citations at a significant level. Second, this study only considers five highly prestigious journals from the service literature. Service-associated articles published out of these journals have not been involved in the study sample. Future studies could expand the sample and apply temporal threshold values to analyze and visualize the progress of the knowledge domain, which can lead to examining the probability that the weights of several most cited articles could decrease in due course, while others appear.

Network visualization of service research

Studies of intellectual connection in the service research

Future research agenda in services

The most cited 100 articles in the service research:

www.researchgate.net/publication/360024163_Appendix_A-Online_supplement

Note : You may find the Appendix in the link. If you face any issue, please contact authors.

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Future of Aging

Innovative financing and care models to scale affordable housing solutions for middle-income older adults.

Globally, the number of people aged 60 and older is projected to grow from 900 million today to more than 2 billion by mid-century. With shifts in employment, retirement norms, healthcare delivery, family structures, and other economic and social determinants, the future of aging will be different for individuals, families, businesses, communities, and government agencies. Now is the time for all entities to plan – and act.

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​​​​​​T he Future of Aging advances healthy longevity and financial security for all through research, convening, multisector partnerships, and the elevation of high-impact policies and practices.

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For too long, people living with dementia and their caregivers have endured a fragmented care experience, lacking guidance, disease education and training, and subsidized support to navigate the complex health and long-term care systems after diagnosis.

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The expanding older adult population is changing the face of the nation. With a striking growth rate of 1,000% from 2010 to 2020 for the ages 65 and older population, the United States already looks different.

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Future Research Agenda

• First Online: 29 September 2023

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This chapter serves as an extension to the primary content of this book by highlighting areas for future research that can build upon the topics covered in the book and expand our understanding of digital content consumption and its impact on users and the wider digital content ecosystem. In addition to offering research recommendations for digital content contribution and consumption, we have a separate section that specifically focuses on live streaming and discusses relevant topics that can be explored in this area.

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Hu, Y., Wang, K., Chen, M., & Hui, S. (2021). Herding among retail shoppers: The case of television shopping network. Customer Needs and Solutions, 8 (1–2), 27–40. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40547-020-00111-8

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Ma, X. (2023). Future Research Agenda. In: Social Influence on Digital Content Contribution and Consumption. Management for Professionals. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-6737-7_10

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The Department of State leads US engagement around the world building alliances and partnerships; facing up to aggression; aiding and supporting emerging democracies; and preserving US interests abroad. In a rapidly changing world with shifting politics, accelerated economic developments, global challenges such as climate change, and the increasing role digitization plays for both opportunity and threats, the Department is committed to leading through both policy and operational engagement on behalf of the nation and our government.

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• Intergovernmental partnerships with the Department of Defense, the intelligence agencies, the Departments of Commerce, Treasury, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services, and cross-government Councils ( e.g., National Economic Council, National Security Council);
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• An organization and operation that is agile and adaptive to a changing environment; attractive to new talent; and fosters long-term commitment between the organization and its people.

The Department requires long-term partnerships with organizations that can bring research, development, innovation, and support needed to guide the leadership and employees through this transformative period in our history. This will allow the Department to focus on the mission at hand, while adopting and integrating changes necessary to make consistent progress on these goals and surge, when needed, to address urgent issues that require data, partnerships, technology and insights applied in near-term operational situations.

To meet this need, the Department seeks to establish and sponsor one FFRDC under the authority of 48 CFR 35.017 .

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The purpose of the GOA is to advance diplomatic effectiveness through collaborative and cutting-edge acquisition methodologies and tools, and data assessments of broad scale Departments needs, international cooperation, and innovative operational practices.

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Based on internal requirements and public comments from the first two notices, the Department intends to issue a Request for Information/Sources Sought. All interested parties should monitor SAM.gov for that posting in the near future. In particular, the Department will be interested in feedback regarding the proposed scope of the work to be performed by the FFRDCs, and the presence of any existing private- or public-sector capabilities in these areas that the Department should be considering. All response instructions will be found in the Sources Sought notice when it is published.

Since drafting the second notice, the Department has received the following comments/questions and is hereby providing the following responses:

The Department received seven (7) comments since the second notice. All of these comments expressed interest in submitting responses, capabilities, or eventually proposals for the FFRDCs. One comment requested information on how Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Businesses can be involved with the FFRDC; however, FFRDC contract holders must fall within the list of organization types within FAR 35.017(a)(3). Finally, one of the commenters did provide feedback on the focus areas listed in the previous notice, which will be considered in developing the final Statement of Objectives prior to a formal solicitation. The Department appreciates the interest and looks forward to receiving further comments/questions and submissions in response to the Sources Sought Notice.

Michael W. Derrios,

Deputy Assistant Secretary for Acquisition, & Senior Procurement Executive, Department of State.

[ FR Doc. 2024-18454 Filed 8-16-24; 8:45 am]

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