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Sustainable Competitive Advantage in Service Industries: a Conceptual Model and Research Propositions

Developments in marketing science: proceedings of the Academy of Marketing SciencePublished 6 November 2014
Sundar G. Bharadwaj, John Fahy, P. Rajan Varadarajan
Citations1,121

Abstract

This paper presents a review of the literature to demonstrate that research in services marketing is characterized more by an operations management orientation than a strategic orientation. Diverse literature on sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) is synthesized and a conceptual model of drivers of SCA is proposed in this paper. Lessons from the manufacturing sector form the basis for a number of sources of SCA for services industries outlined in the paper. The distinctive characteristics of services are posited to moderate the effectiveness of the sources of competitive advantage.

Keywords

Business, Management and Accounting