Editorial: service research in the new (post-COVID) marketplace

The aim of this paper is to encourage service researchers to consider the long-term or permanent impact of the coronavirus-2019 (COVID-19) on services, service delivery, organizational structures, service providers and service systems from global perspectives.

This editorial is based on the personal reflections of the Journal of Services Marketing editors.

The services marketing discipline emerged in a time when customers and employees were encouraged to engage in social interaction and to form relationships, as many service encounters were deemed as social encounters. COVID-19 has impacted the ability of customers and employees to freely engage in social interaction, and as a result, we need to consider the steadfastness of our foundational theories and conceptual models in the “new” marketplace.

The editors put forth a series of sixteen research questions that warrant future empirical and descriptive research.

Managers can understand how COVID-19 will profoundly impact dramatic changes in the marketplace and prepare for them.

This study suggests that our theoretical and practical understandings of service industries has been significantly impacted by COVID-19.