Managing Service Firms The Power of Managerial Marketing [Paperback]

Based on a conceptual analysis of marketing texts, particularly service marketing texts, and a case study of a service firm that utilizes approaches to managing organizations that have been developed within the boundaries of marketing, this book presents a critical examination of marketing as a managerial practice. Sk?l?n focuses in particular on the managerial research tradition and managerial practice referred to as service marketing (sometimes service management), which is seen as a dominant managerial logic by many marketing scholars.

Sk?l?n analyzes the governmentality of service marketing through textual representations of managerial marketing and a case study of a service organization. Based on the former, the author argues that managerial marketing has always promoted and fostered customer orientation as the main governmental rationality and that this rationality in service marketing targets human beings more exclusively than previously. This book contributes to critical marketing research since this research tradition lacks studies of empirical responses to managerial marketing which articulate a radical social critique.

Preface 1: Introduction 2: Power and Marketing 3: The Bureaucratic Organization and the Reactive Employee 4: I Want To Help You: The Power of Market and Service Orientation 5: The Power/Knowledge of Service Quality and Coaching 6: The Managerial Rationality of Relationship Marketing 7: From Prescribing Marketing Practices to Studying Marketing as Practice Appendix: Methodology and Methods Notes Bibliography Index

Per Sk?l?nis Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Service Research Center, Karlstad University, Sweden. He is the co-author of Marketing Discourse  A Critical Perspective(with Martin Foug?re and Markus Fellesson), also published by Routledge.