Valerie Mathieu - A Customer-oriented Manager for B2B Services

Above all, a sense of service must be a state of mind shared by all employees. This state of mind will be all the more widespread in the group if a service culture, supported by clear values, is strong.

1 1 The primary sector includes activities that exploit natural resources, mainly agriculture and fisheries, but mining activities are also often included in this sector. The secondary sector includes companies that process raw materials, mainly industry and construction. The tertiary sector is often defined by default in relation to the first two sectors and includes activities that do not belong to the first two sectors; it mainly includes services, distinguished into market and non-market services.

2 2 www.insee.fr[Accessed September 4, 2019].

3 3 These two theses are set out by the economist Jean Gadrey (1992, p. 21).

4 4 Although new technologies, such as digital technologies and AI, are now challenging the lower productivity in services.

5 5 Statement by Bruno, the mayor: Vie publique (2019). Déclaration de M. Bruno Le Maire, ministre de l’économie et des finances, sur une politique économique en faveur du plein emploi, à Paris le 15 octobre 2019 [Online]. Available at: http://www.vie-publique.fr/discours/271205-bruno-le-maire-15102019-politique-economique[Accessed on October 21, 2019].

6 6 This is precisely the path defended by Jean Gadrey (1992).

7 7 Gadrey then proposed the following definition: “a service activity is an operation, aimed at a transformation of state of a reality C, owned or used by a consumer (or client, or user) B, carried out by a service provider A at B’s request, and often in relation to it, but not resulting in the production of a good that can circulate economically independently of the medium C” (Gadrey 2003, p. 18). This definition implies the impossibility of attributing a property right to a service, which fundamentally differentiates it from a good.

8 8 The concept of servuction was developed by Pierre Eiglier and Eric Langeard and presented in their first book in 1987 (Eiglier and Langeard 1987).

9 9 The purchasing phase is presented in Chapter 5, and the negotiation phase is presented in Chapters 5 and 6.

10 10 This distinction was conceptualized by Grönross by distinguishing “process consumption” from “result consumption” (Grönross 1999).

11 11Study conducted in April 2019 by Salesforce Research on a sample of over 8,000 customers and over 15 countries in Europe, Asia and North America; 28% being B2B customers and 72% being B2C customers (Salesforce Research 2019).

12 12 The first researchers in marketing and service management were exposed to criticism of their work, which focused on the validity of a distinction between product and service. In this context, four generic differences between product and service were proposed: intangibility, simultaneity, heterogeneity and perishability (Sasser et al. 1978). These characteristics are still widely cited, although they are regularly criticized as being too general. To be closer to reality, each of these characteristics should be understood as a continuum, on which a particular service can be positioned; some services are very intangible (consulting), while others are less (works and maintenance).

13 13 This approach is presented in Chapter 7as a way to counteract the commoditization of supply.

14 14 Theodore Levitt, professor of marketing at Harvard Business School, was one of the first to speak of the tangibilization of service (Levitt 1981).

15 15 This reality is elaborated in Chapter 6.

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