A Customer-oriented Manager for B2B Services. Valerie Mathieu

consumption” (Grönross 1999).

      11 11 Study conducted in April 2019 by Salesforce Research on a sample of over 8,000 customers and over 15 countries in Europe, Asia and North America; 28% being B2B customers and 72% being B2C customers (Salesforce Research 2019).

      12 12 The first researchers in marketing and service management were exposed to criticism of their work, which focused on the validity of a distinction between product and service. In this context, four generic differences between product and service were proposed: intangibility, simultaneity, heterogeneity and perishability (Sasser et al. 1978). These characteristics are still widely cited, although they are regularly criticized as being too general. To be closer to reality, each of these characteristics should be understood as a continuum, on which a particular service can be positioned; some services are very intangible (consulting), while others are less (works and maintenance).

      13 13 This approach is presented in Chapter 7 as a way to counteract the commoditization of supply.

      14 14 Theodore Levitt, professor of marketing at Harvard Business School, was one of the first to speak of the tangibilization of service (Levitt 1981).

      15 15 This reality is elaborated in Chapter 6.