icedTHE SERVICE EXPERIENCE AS THEATER
Stephen J. Grove, Clemson University
Raymond P. Fisk, University of Central Florida
INTRODUCTION

Services marketing play a major role in the economies of the United States and the entire world, this has been indicated by the increased interest in the etiquette of how most people are taking it up, the past decade reflects a growing appreciation of the part they play in the frugalities. Lovelock 1991, states that services are said to be approximately amounting to seventy per-cent of the Gross National Product of the United States and the world, and supporting the same notion is Bateson 1989 who indicates that three quarters of those employed in some countries labour in service sector occupations

Berry 1980, Sasser 1976, Zeithaml, and Parasuraman 1985 have given significant attention to how the marketing of services is distinguishing from the marketing of goods. The simultaneity of production and consumption of the service product is one key characteristic that differentiates services marketing, according to the above mentioned scholars and researchers. They noted that services exist only in the time in which they are rendered and they cannot be disassembled. Essentially, services are fashioned from the interaction between service providers and customers and, as such, service quality is comprised of both process and outcome dimensions. These various aspects of service delivery underscore the notion that services are complex, behavioural phenomena that can be quite difficult to understand or describe (Grenroos 1982; Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry 1985; Sasser, Olsen and Wyckoff 1978). A review of the services marketing literature compiled by Fisk, Tansuhaj and Crosby (1988) reveals that less than fifteen per cent of the total service literature to attempts to conceptualize the service experience. In short, conceptual