Framing and Overflowing : How the Infusion of Information Technology Alters Proximal Service Production

Abstract: In the heyday of the Internet, there was a wide-spread, not so well grounded, euphoria about the prospects of the Internet for virtualising various service activities. However, by now, a more informed understanding is emerging. For instance, in a services marketing context, it is increasingly recognized that the shift from face-to-face service production to technology-mediated service production is far from linear. Rather, there is a complex interplay between physical and virtual service production. Nevertheless, this interplay has, to a large extent, remained unexplored, since most studies have concentrated on the spectacular move from the physical to the virtual. The aim of this thesis is to begin to fill this gap in the services marketing literature by exploring the physical-virtual interplay and, more specifically, how attempts at virtualising trigger off changes in the physical realms of service production, resulting in overflows. The focal point of interest lies in the interplay between framing and overflowing, that is, the more we attempt to virtualise, the more physical overflows we produce. In order to explore this, I draw on case studies from the travel and banking industries focusing on the interaction between Internet-mediated and proximal, face-to-face service encounters.One of the basic claims of the present thesis is that the tendency to virtualise face-to-face encounters has given rise to four types of overflows: A re-valorisation of proximal service production for information acquisition and knowledge creation, a re-valorisation of proximal service production for cross-selling, a re-valorisation of front-line service employee competencies, and spatial and temporal re-valorisation.