Stresses the importance of professional service provider selection and the potentially disastrous financial penalty for error made by a client organization. Identifies problems with previous studies relating to this selection process and offers suggestions for improving future research. Provides...

Examines the responses of national account decision makers to open‐ended questions asking for their views on what salespeople need to do to build relationships, and categorizes the results. Eight categories of responses were found. These categories address a number of salesperson behaviors and...

Even though service marketers are interested in influencing customer choice at the service provider level (i.e. the service brand level), the decision to patronize a particular service firm seldom occurs until after the customer decides to use a service provider in the first place. Ultimately,...