Resources & Services
The Center for Excellence in Service is at the intersection of scholarship and the marketplace, putting its faculty's breakthrough research at the service of students and companies.
Our faculty members are attuned to a marketplace that values innovation, entrepreneurialism, analytical thinking, and hard work. Their teaching and research equip our students with the wisdom of business scholarship rooted in the experiential lessons of the marketplace.
The Maryland-Oxford Brand Reputation Tracker
The Maryland-Oxford Brand Reputation Tracker is a longitudinal database that measures brand reputation at the driver and sub-driver level, at weekly, monthly and quarterly intervals. The drivers and sub-drivers are based on the Rust-Zeithaml-Lemon customer equity model. A collaboration between the University of Oxford’s Centre for Corporate Reputation and the University of Maryland’s Center for Excellence in Service, the database is housed at Oxford, and may be found online.
The data processing that fuels the Brand Reputation Tracker is a product of Maryland’s Center for Complexity in Business and OssaLabs, a division of Perceptronics Solutions, Inc.
The authors of the Brand Reputation Tracker are:
Roland T. Rust, Distinguished University Professor and David Bruce Smith Chair in Marketing, and Executive Director of the Center for Excellence in Service.
William Rand, Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Poole College of Management, North Carolina State University (formerly Director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Complexity in Business).
Andrew T. Stephen, Associate Dean of Research and L’Oreal Professor of Marketing at the Säid Business School at the University of Oxford.
Ming-Hui Huang, Distinguished Professor of Electronic Commerce in the Department of Information Management, College of Management, National Taiwan University.
Gillian Brooks, Postdoctoral Career Development Fellow in Marketing at the Säid Business School at the University of Oxford.
Timur Chabuk, Director of Intelligent Information Systems at Perceptronics Solutions, Inc.
Journal of Service Research
The Journal of Service Research, considered the world’s leading journal in service research, is indexed by the Social Science Citation Index, ABI/Inform, and other leading publication indexes. Founded by Roland Rust, Executive Director of the Center for Excellence in Service, JSR features an Editorial Board made up of the world’s leading service experts, from both academia and the business world. The journal is sponsored by the Center for Excellence in Service, in conjunction with Sage Publications. JSR is published quarterly, and new article submissions are being accepted. JSR has earned an international reputation as a necessary resource for academics and business people with an interest in knowing the latest research results in service.
The purpose of the Journal of Service Research is to be a first-rate outlet for the best service research. The journal is international in scope, in keeping with the increasing globalization of business, multi-disciplinary, in keeping with how the best management is done, and relevant to the business world, in a majority of its articles. JSR strives to be the leading outlet for the most advanced research in service marketing, e-Service, service operations, service human resources and organizational design, service information systems, customer satisfaction and service quality, and the economics of service.
The Journal of Service Research is an "academic" journal in terms of rigor, but a "managerial" journal in that its articles are readable and have practical content.
Incoming Editor: Michael Brady, Carl DeSantis Professor and Chair of Marketing Department, Florida State University
Editor: Mary Jo Bitner, PetSmart Chair in Services Leadership and Professor of Marketing, Arizona State University
Past Editor: A. Parasuraman, James W. McLamore Chair in Marketing, University of Miami
Founding Editor: Roland T. Rust, David Bruce Smith Chair in Marketing, University of Maryland
MBA Curriculum in Service
Course Descriptions
BUMK 736 Service Marketing
Service accounts for eighty percent of the U.S. gross national product. The marketing of service poses unique challenges because of the intangible, heterogeneous nature of the product, and the critical role of customer contact employees in service delivery. Strategies for meeting these challenges are addressed. Topics include 1) customer relationship management, 2) the design and execution of the service delivery process, 3) the development and implementation of employee customer service skills, 4) the measurement and management of critical “outcome” variables, such as customer satisfaction, customer equity, and customer lifetime value, and 5) the role of emerging technology in customer service. (formerly BUMK 758)
BUMK 758 Customer Equity Management
This course focuses on managing customers of a business – whether in B2B or B2C space – as a portfolio of “equity”, focusing on understanding the current and future value of customers to the business that can aid in selective acquisition, development, and retention of customers using latest developments in information technology. Course participants will examine the conceptual foundations of customer equity, its measurement, its strategic implications, its use for determining return on marketing investments and its implementations in different business contexts through a variety of cases spanning both B2C and B2B space. The objective of the course is to examine the strategic and analytical aspects of customer equity in equal measure so that participants will have a deeper understanding of the power of customer equity management and how to put it to work effectively in their business.
BUMK 758J Pricing Strategies for Sustainable Competitive Advantage
The course will focus on both economic and behavioral aspects of pricing, and evaluation of innovative pricing practices such as price matching, customized pricing, bundle pricing and product line pricing, covering both B2B, B2C, online and offline markets.
BUMK 758 Independent Study: Service Project
Students work individually or in teams on consulting projects for service organizations in the for-profit, non-profit, or government sector.
BUMK 720 e-Service
The two most important long-term trends in the business world are the shifting of the economy from goods to service, and the rapid expansion of the information economy and electronic networks. These two trends converge in the concept of e-Service, which is the provision of service over electronic networks such as the Internet. So far, too many companies have focused exclusively on the use of the Internet to increase efficiency and reduce costs. However, the true potential of the Internet lies in using the technology to improve service to customers and drive revenues. This course is organized into four main units – "Fundamentals of e-Service," including principles of how to best take advantage of the unique nature of the Internet to improve service, "The Customer-Technology Interface," dealing with the relationship between customers and the online environment, "Managing Online Relationships and Customer Equity," focusing on how strategically managing online relationships can increase customer lifetime value, and "Applications of e-Service," exploring how e-Service is being developed in a variety of contexts, including government and education. The course is a seminar, encouraging an active, give-and-take environment. Classes are a mixture of lecture/discussion, guest speakers, and student reports and presentations. All sessions are designed to be highly interactive. The course provides an up-to-date discussion of current issues in the management of e-Service. To facilitate this, there is a set of readings, both academic articles and articles from current issues of business magazines, to supplement the classroom experience. The textbook is the recently published book, e-Service. (formerly BUMK 758)