Journal of Services Marketing

Author guidelines

Before you start

For queries relating to the status of your paper pre decision, please contact the Editor or Journal Editorial Office. For queries post acceptance, please contact the Supplier Project Manager. These details can be found in the Editorial Team section.

Author responsibilities

Our goal is to provide you with a professional and courteous experience at each stage of the review and publication process. There are also some responsibilities that sit with you as the author. Our expectation is that you will:

Respond swiftly to any queries during the publication process.
Be accountable for all aspects of your work. This includes investigating and resolving any questions about accuracy or research integrity
Treat communications between you and the journal editor as confidential until an editorial decision has been made.
Read about our research ethics for authorship. These state that you must:
- Include anyone who has made a substantial and meaningful contribution to the submission (anyone else involved in the paper should be listed in the acknowledgements).
- Exclude anyone who hasn’t contributed to the paper, or who has chosen not to be associated with the research.
- In accordance with COPE’s position statement on AI tools, Large Language Models cannot be credited with authorship as they are incapable of conceptualising a research design without human direction and cannot be accountable for the integrity, originality, and validity of the published work.
If your article involves human participants, you must ensure you have considered whether or not you require ethical approval for your research, and include this information as part of your submission. Find out more about informed consent.

Emerald’s Policy on AI Usage

Emerald’s overarching principles of AI usage:

Authors and peer reviewers are responsible and accountable for the accuracy and integrity of their work.
AI tools and technology must be used responsibly and transparently.
AI tools and technology should not replace human involvement in the publication process but instead supplement it.

Copywriting (creating, drafting, or writing) any part of a submission using generative AI tools and technology to generate new material is not permitted.

Copy-editing (correcting, editing, formatting, modifying, or refining) all or part of an author’s own original existing work using generative AI tools and technology the content to improve its structure and the clarity of the language and grammar is permitted, ensuring users adhere to the following overarching principles.

Emerald’s full policy, including examples of use cases can be found on our Publishing Ethics page.

Research and publishing ethics

Our editors and employees work hard to ensure the content we publish is ethically sound. To help us achieve that goal, we closely follow the advice laid out in the guidelines and flowcharts on the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) website.

We have also developed our research and publishing ethics guidelines. If you haven’t already read these, we urge you to do so – they will help you avoid the most common publishing ethics issues.

A few key points:

Any manuscript you submit to this journal should be original. That means it should not have been published before in its current, or similar, form. Exceptions to this rule are outlined in our pre-print and conference paper policies. If any substantial element of your paper has been previously published, you need to declare this to the journal editor upon submission. Please note, the journal editor may use Crossref Similarity Check to check on the originality of submissions received. This service compares submissions against a database of 49 million works from 800 scholarly publishers.
Your work should not have been submitted elsewhere and should not be under consideration by any other publication.
If you have a conflict of interest, you must declare it upon submission; this allows the editor to decide how they would like to proceed. Read about conflict of interest in our research and publishing ethics guidelines.
By submitting your work to Emerald, you are guaranteeing that the work is not in infringement of any existing copyright.

Third party copyright permissions

Prior to article submission, you need to ensure you’ve applied for, and received, written permission to use any material in your manuscript that has been created by a third party. Please note, we are unable to publish any article that still has permissions pending. The rights we require are:

Non-exclusive rights to reproduce the material in the article or book chapter.
Print and electronic rights.
Worldwide English-language rights.
To use the material for the life of the work. That means there should be no time restrictions on its re-use e.g. a one-year licence.

We are a member of the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers (STM) and participate in the STM permissions guidelines, a reciprocal free exchange of material with other STM publishers. In some cases, this may mean that you don’t need permission to re-use content. If so, please highlight this at the submission stage.

Please take a few moments to read our guide to publishing permissions to ensure you have met all the requirements, so that we can process your submission without delay.

Open access submissions and information

All our journals currently offer two open access (OA) publishing paths; gold open access and green open access.

If you would like to, or are required to, make the branded publisher PDF (also known as the version of record) freely available immediately upon publication, you can select the gold open access route once your paper is accepted.

If you’ve chosen to publish gold open access, this is the point you will be asked to pay the APC (article processing charge). This varies per journal and can be found on our APC price list or on the editorial system at the point of submission. Your article will be published with a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 user licence, which outlines how readers can reuse your work.

Alternatively, if you would like to, or are required to, publish open access but your funding doesn’t cover the cost of the APC, you can choose the green open access, or self-archiving, route. As soon as your article is published, you can make the author accepted manuscript (the version accepted for publication) openly available, free from payment and embargo periods.

You can find out more about our open access routes, our APCs and waivers and read our FAQs on our open research page.

Find out about open

Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines

We are a signatory of the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines, a framework that supports the reproducibility of research through the adoption of transparent research practices. That means we encourage you to:

Cite and fully reference all data, program code, and other methods in your article.
Include persistent identifiers, such as a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), in references for datasets and program codes. Persistent identifiers ensure future access to unique published digital objects, such as a piece of text or datasets. Persistent identifiers are assigned to datasets by digital archives, such as institutional repositories and partners in the Data Preservation Alliance for the Social Sciences (Data-PASS).
Follow appropriate international and national procedures with respect to data protection, rights to privacy and other ethical considerations, whenever you cite data. For further guidance please refer to our research and publishing ethics guidelines. For an example on how to cite datasets, please refer to the references section below.

Prepare your submission

Manuscript support services

We are pleased to partner with Editage, a platform that connects you with relevant experts in language support, translation, editing, visuals, consulting, and more. After you’ve agreed a fee, they will work with you to enhance your manuscript and get it submission-ready.

This is an optional service for authors who feel they need a little extra support. It does not guarantee your work will be accepted for review or publication.

Visit Editage

Manuscript requirements

Before you submit your manuscript, it’s important you read and follow the guidelines below. You will also find some useful tips in our structure your journal submission how-to guide.

Format	Article files should be provided in Microsoft Word format While you are welcome to submit a PDF of the document alongside the Word file, PDFs alone are not acceptable. LaTeX files can also be used but only if an accompanying PDF document is provided. Acceptable figure file types are listed further below.
Article length / word count	Articles should be between 9000 – 11,000 words in length at initial submission with a maximum of 12,000 words in the final accepted version. This includes all text, for example, the structured abstract, references, all text in tables, and figures and appendices. Please allow 280 words for each figure or table.
Article title	A concisely worded title should be provided. No more than 11 words to be in the title, we recommend titles that are appealing and interesting. See our editorial, vol 30(5), for details
Author details	The names of all contributing authors should be added to the ScholarOne submission; please list them in the order in which you’d like them to be published. Each contributing author will need their own ScholarOne author account, from which we will extract the following details: Author email address (institutional preferred). Author name. We will reproduce it exactly, so any middle names and/or initials they want featured must be included. Author affiliation. This should be where they were based when the research for the paper was conducted. In multi-authored papers, it’s important that ALL authors that have made a significant contribution to the paper are listed. Those who have provided support but have not contributed to the research should be featured in an acknowledgements section. You should never include people who have not contributed to the paper or who don’t want to be associated with the research. Read about our research ethics for authorship.
Biographies and acknowledgements	If you want to include these items, save them in a separate Microsoft Word document and upload the file with your submission. Where they are included, a brief professional biography of not more than 100 words should be supplied for each named author.
Research funding	Your article must reference all sources of external research funding in the acknowledgements section. You should describe the role of the funder or financial sponsor in the entire research process, from study design to submission.
Structured abstract	All submissions must include a structured abstract, following the format outlined below. These four sub-headings and their accompanying explanations must always be included: Purpose Design/methodology/approach Findings Originality The following three sub-headings are optional and can be included, if applicable: Research limitations/implications Practical implications Social implications You can find some useful tips in our write an article abstract how-to guide. The maximum length of your abstract should be 250 words in total, including keywords and article classification (see the sections below).
Keywords	Your submission should include up to 12 appropriate and short keywords that capture the principal topics of the paper. Our Creating an SEO-friendly manuscript how to guide contains some practical guidance on choosing search-engine friendly keywords. Please note, while we will always try to use the keywords you’ve suggested, the in-house editorial team may replace some of them with matching terms to ensure consistency across publications and improve your article’s visibility.
Article classification	During the submission process, you will be asked to select a type for your paper; the options are listed below. If you don’t see an exact match, please choose the best fit: Article Viewpoint Commentary Book Review Executive Summary You will also be asked to select a category for your paper. The options for this are listed below. If you don’t see an exact match, please choose the best fit: Research paper. Reports on any type of research undertaken by the author(s), including: The construction or testing of a model or framework Action research Testing of data, market research or surveys Empirical, scientific or clinical research Papers with a practical focus Viewpoint. Covers any paper where content is dependent on the author's opinion and interpretation. This includes journalistic and magazine-style pieces. Technical paper. Describes and evaluates technical products, processes or services. Conceptual paper. Focuses on developing hypotheses and is usually discursive. Covers philosophical discussions and comparative studies of other authors’ work and thinking. Case study. Describes actual interventions or experiences within organizations. It can be subjective and doesn’t generally report on research. Also covers a description of a legal case or a hypothetical case study used as a teaching exercise. Literature review. This category should only be used if the main purpose of the paper is to annotate and/or critique the literature in a particular field. It could be a selective bibliography providing advice on information sources, or the paper may aim to cover the main contributors to the development of a topic and explore their different views. General review. Provides an overview or historical examination of some concept, technique or phenomenon. Papers are likely to be more descriptive or instructional (‘how to’ papers) than discursive.
Web appendix	Additional information may be included for both review and access alongside the published article. This appendix can contain literature tables and references for systematic literature reviews, full measurement instruments, and additional analysis. The content in the web appendix must not be central to the argument or rigour of the paper and should be referred to in the paper as (see web appendix). When submitting the web appendix, please classify the file as a Supplementary file for review.
Headings	Headings must be concise, with a clear indication of the required hierarchy. The preferred format is for first level headings to be in bold, and subsequent sub-headings to be in medium italics. The required headings are: Empirical papers: Abstract Introduction Literature Background or Literature review Method Results Discussion (subheadings of theoretical contribution, managerial implications, limitations and further research) Conclusion Conceptual papers: Abstract Introduction Literature Background Proposed framework/theory/model Research Agenda Conclusion
Notes/endnotes	Notes or endnotes should only be used if absolutely necessary. They should be identified in the text by consecutive numbers enclosed in square brackets. These numbers should then be listed, and explained, at the end of the article.
Figures	All figures (charts, diagrams, line drawings, webpages/screenshots, and photographic images) should be submitted electronically. Both colour and black and white files are accepted. There are a few other important points to note: All figures should be supplied at the highest resolution/quality possible with numbers and text clearly legible. Acceptable formats are .ai, .eps, .jpeg, .bmp, and .tif. Electronic figures created in other applications should be supplied in their original formats and should also be either copied and pasted into a blank MS Word document, or submitted as a PDF file. All figures should be numbered consecutively with Arabic numerals and have clear captions. All photographs should be numbered as Plate 1, 2, 3, etc. and have clear captions. All figure/table captions should include the necessary credit line, acknowledgement, or attribution if you have been given permission to use the figure/table; if the figure/table is the property of the author(s), this should be acknowledged in the caption.
Tables	Tables should be typed and submitted in a separate file to the main body of the article. The position of each table should be clearly labelled in the main body of the article with corresponding labels clearly shown in the table file. Tables should be numbered consecutively in Roman numerals (e.g. I, II, etc.). Give each table a brief title. Ensure that any superscripts or asterisks are shown next to the relevant items and have explanations displayed as footnotes to the table, figure or plate.
Supplementary files	Where tables, figures, appendices, and other additional content are supplementary to the article but not critical to the reader’s understanding of it, you can choose to host these supplementary files alongside your article on Insight, Emerald’s content hosting platform, or on an institutional or personal repository. All supplementary material must be submitted prior to acceptance. If you choose to host your supplementary files on Insight, you must submit these as separate files alongside your article. Files should be clearly labelled in such a way that makes it clear they are supplementary; Emerald recommends that the file name is descriptive and that it follows the format ‘Supplementary_material_appendix_1’ or ‘Supplementary tables’. All supplementary material must be mentioned at the appropriate moment in the main text of the article, there is no need to include the content of the file but only the file name. A link to the supplementary material will be added to the article during production, and the material will be made available alongside the main text of the article at the point of EarlyCite publication. Please note that Emerald will not make any changes to the material; it will not be copyedited, typeset, and authors will not receive proofs. Emerald therefore strongly recommends that you style all supplementary material ahead of acceptance of the article. Emerald Insight can host the following file types and extensions: Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) MS Word document (.doc, .docx) MS Excel (.xls, xlsx) MS PowerPoint (.pptx) Image (.png, .jpeg, .gif) Plain ASCII text (.txt) PostScript (.ps) Rich Text Format (.rtf) If you choose to use an institutional or personal repository, you should ensure that the supplementary material is hosted on the repository ahead of submission, and then include a link only to the repository within the article. It is the responsibility of the submitting author to ensure that the material is free to access and that it remains permanently available. Please note that extensive supplementary material may be subject to peer review; this is at the discretion of the journal Editor and dependent on the content of the material (for example, whether including it would support the reviewer making a decision on the article during the peer review process).
References	All references in your manuscript must be formatted using one of the recognised Harvard styles. You are welcome to use the Harvard style Emerald has adopted – we’ve provided a detailed guide below. Want to use a different Harvard style? That’s fine, our typesetters will make any necessary changes to your manuscript if it is accepted. Please ensure you check all your citations for completeness, accuracy and consistency. Emerald’s Harvard referencing style References to other publications in your text should be written as follows: Single author: (Adams, 2006) Two authors: (Adams and Brown, 2006) Three or more authors: (Adams et al., 2006) Please note, ‘et al' should always be written in italics. A few other style points. These apply to both the main body of text and your final list of references. When referring to pages in a publication, use ‘p.(page number)’ for a single page or ‘pp.(page numbers)’ to indicate a page range. Page numbers should always be written out in full, e.g. 175-179, not 175-9. Where a colon or dash appears in the title of an article or book chapter, the letter that follows that colon or dash should always be lower case. When citing a work with multiple editors, use the abbreviation ‘Ed.s’. At the end of your paper, please supply a reference list in alphabetical order using the style guidelines below. Where a DOI is available, this should be included at the end of the reference.
For books	Surname, initials (year), title of book, publisher, place of publication. e.g. Harrow, R. (2005), No Place to Hide, Simon & Schuster, New York, NY.
For book chapters	Surname, initials (year), "chapter title", editor's surname, initials (Ed.), title of book, publisher, place of publication, page numbers. e.g. Calabrese, F.A. (2005), "The early pathways: theory to practice – a continuum", Stankosky, M. (Ed.), Creating the Discipline of Knowledge Management, Elsevier, New York, NY, pp.15-20.
For journals	Surname, initials (year), "title of article", journal name, volume issue, page numbers. e.g. Capizzi, M.T. and Ferguson, R. (2005), "Loyalty trends for the twenty-first century", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 22 No. 2, pp.72-80.
For published conference proceedings	Surname, initials (year of publication), "title of paper", in editor’s surname, initials (Ed.), title of published proceeding which may include place and date(s) held, publisher, place of publication, page numbers. e.g. Wilde, S. and Cox, C. (2008), “Principal factors contributing to the competitiveness of tourism destinations at varying stages of development”, in Richardson, S., Fredline, L., Patiar A., & Ternel, M. (Ed.s), CAUTHE 2008: Where the 'bloody hell' are we?, Griffith University, Gold Coast, Qld, pp.115-118.
For unpublished conference proceedings	Surname, initials (year), "title of paper", paper presented at [name of conference], [date of conference], [place of conference], available at: URL if freely available on the internet (accessed date). e.g. Aumueller, D. (2005), "Semantic authoring and retrieval within a wiki", paper presented at the European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC), 29 May-1 June, Heraklion, Crete, available at: http://dbs.uni-leipzig.de/file/aumueller05wiksar.pdf (accessed 20 February 2007).
For working papers	Surname, initials (year), "title of article", working paper [number if available], institution or organization, place of organization, date. e.g. Moizer, P. (2003), "How published academic research can inform policy decisions: the case of mandatory rotation of audit appointments", working paper, Leeds University Business School, University of Leeds, Leeds, 28 March.
For encyclopaedia entries (with no author or editor)	Title of encyclopaedia (year), "title of entry", volume, edition, title of encyclopaedia, publisher, place of publication, page numbers. e.g. Encyclopaedia Britannica (1926), "Psychology of culture contact", Vol. 1, 13th ed., Encyclopaedia Britannica, London and New York, NY, pp.765-771. (for authored entries, please refer to book chapter guidelines above)
For newspaper articles (authored)	Surname, initials (year), "article title", newspaper, date, page numbers. e.g. Smith, A. (2008), "Money for old rope", Daily News, 21 January, pp.1, 3-4.
For newspaper articles (non-authored)	Newspaper (year), "article title", date, page numbers. e.g. Daily News (2008), "Small change", 2 February, p.7.
For archival or other unpublished sources	Surname, initials (year), "title of document", unpublished manuscript, collection name, inventory record, name of archive, location of archive. e.g. Litman, S. (1902), "Mechanism & Technique of Commerce", unpublished manuscript, Simon Litman Papers, Record series 9/5/29 Box 3, University of Illinois Archives, Urbana-Champaign, IL.
For electronic sources	If available online, the full URL should be supplied at the end of the reference, as well as the date that the resource was accessed. Surname, initials (year), “title of electronic source”, available at: persistent URL (accessed date month year). e.g. Weida, S. and Stolley, K. (2013), “Developing strong thesis statements”, available at: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/588/1/ (accessed 20 June 2018) Standalone URLs, i.e. those without an author or date, should be included either inside parentheses within the main text, or preferably set as a note (Roman numeral within square brackets within text followed by the full URL address at the end of the paper).
For data	Surname, initials (year), title of dataset, name of data repository, available at: persistent URL, (accessed date month year). e.g. Campbell, A. and Kahn, R.L. (2015), American National Election Study, 1948, ICPSR07218-v4, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (distributor), Ann Arbor, MI, available at: https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR07218.v4 (accessed 20 June 2018)

Submit your manuscript

There are a number of key steps you should follow to ensure a smooth and trouble-free submission.

Double check your manuscript

Before submitting your work, it is your responsibility to check that the manuscript is complete, grammatically correct, and without spelling or typographical errors. A few other important points:

Give the journal aims and scope a final read. Is your manuscript definitely a good fit? If it isn’t, the editor may decline it without peer review.
Does your manuscript comply with our research and publishing ethics guidelines?
Have you cleared any necessary publishing permissions?
Have you followed all the formatting requirements laid out in these author guidelines?
Does the manuscript contain any information that might help the reviewer identify you? This could compromise the anonymous peer review process. A few tips:
- If you need to refer to your own work, use wording such as ‘previous research has demonstrated’ not ‘our previous research has demonstrated’.
- If you need to refer to your own, currently unpublished work, don’t include this work in the reference list.
- Any acknowledgments or author biographies should be uploaded as separate files.
- Carry out a final check to ensure that no author names appear anywhere in the manuscript. This includes in figures or captions.

You will find a helpful submission checklist on the website Think.Check.Submit.

The submission process

All manuscripts should be submitted through our editorial system by the corresponding author.

The only way to submit to the journal is through the journal’s ScholarOne site as accessed via the Emerald website, and not by email or through any third-party agent/company, journal representative, or website. Submissions should be done directly by the author(s) through the ScholarOne site and not via a third-party proxy on their behalf.

A separate author account is required for each journal you submit to. If this is your first time submitting to this journal, please choose the Create an account or Register now option in the editorial system. If you already have an Emerald login, you are welcome to reuse the existing username and password here.

Please note, the next time you log into the system, you will be asked for your username. This will be the email address you entered when you set up your account.

Don't forget to add your ORCiD ID during the submission process. It will be embedded in your published article, along with a link to the ORCiD registry allowing others to easily match you with your work.

Don’t have one yet? It only takes a few moments to register for a free ORCiD identifier.

Visit the ScholarOne support centre for further help and guidance.

What you can expect next

You will receive an automated email from the journal editor, confirming your successful submission. It will provide you with a manuscript number, which will be used in all future correspondence about your submission. If you have any reason to suspect the confirmation email you receive might be fraudulent, please contact our Rights team on [email protected]

Post submission

Review and decision process

Each submission is checked by the editor. At this stage, they may choose to decline or unsubmit your manuscript if it doesn’t fit the journal aims and scope, or they feel the language/manuscript quality is too low.

If they think it might be suitable for the publication, they will send it to at least two independent referees for double anonymous peer review. Once these reviewers have provided their feedback, the editor may decide to accept your manuscript, request minor or major revisions, or decline your work.

This journal offers an article transfer service. If the editor decides to decline your manuscript, either before or after peer review, they may offer to transfer it to a more relevant Emerald journal in this field. If you accept, your ScholarOne author account, and the accounts of your co-authors, will automatically transfer to the new journal, along with your manuscript and any accompanying peer review reports. However, you will still need to log in to ScholarOne to complete the submission process using your existing username and password. While accepting a transfer does not guarantee the receiving journal will publish your work, an editor will only suggest a transfer if they feel your article is a good fit with the new title.

While all journals work to different timescales, the goal is that the editor will inform you of their first decision within 60 days.

During this period, we will send you automated updates on the progress of your manuscript via our submission system, or you can log in to check on the current status of your paper. Each time we contact you, we will quote the manuscript number you were given at the point of submission. If you receive an email that does not match these criteria, it could be fraudulent and we recommend you email [email protected].

Manuscript transfer service

Emerald’s manuscript transfer service takes the pain out of the submission process if your manuscript doesn’t fit your initial journal choice. Our team of expert Editors from participating journals work together to identify alternative journals that better align with your research, ensuring your work finds the ideal publication home it deserves. Our dedicated team is committed to supporting authors like you in finding the right home for your research.

If a journal is participating in the manuscript transfer program, the Editor has the option to recommend your paper for transfer. If a transfer decision is made by the Editor, you will receive an email with the details of the recommended journal and the option to accept or reject the transfer. It’s always down to you as the author to decide if you’d like to accept. If you do accept, your paper and any reviewer reports will automatically be transferred to the recommended journals. Authors will then confirm resubmissions in the new journal’s ScholarOne system.

Our Manuscript Transfer Service page has more information on the process.

If your submission is accepted

Open access

Once your paper is accepted, you will have the opportunity to indicate whether you would like to publish your paper via the gold open access route.

Copyright

All accepted authors are sent an email with a link to a licence form. This should be checked for accuracy, for example whether contact and affiliation details are up to date and your name is spelled correctly, and then returned to us electronically. If there is a reason why you can’t assign copyright to us, you should discuss this with your journal content editor. You will find their contact details on the editorial team section above.

Proofing and typesetting

Once we have received your completed licence form, the article will pass directly into the production process. We will carry out editorial checks, copyediting, and typesetting and then return proofs to you (if you are the corresponding author) for your review. This is your opportunity to correct any typographical errors, grammatical errors or incorrect author details. We can’t accept requests to rewrite texts at this stage.

When the page proofs are finalised, the fully typeset and proofed version of record is published online. This is referred to as the EarlyCite version. While an EarlyCite article has yet to be assigned to a volume or issue, it does have a digital object identifier (DOI) and is fully citable. It will be compiled into an issue according to the journal’s issue schedule, with papers being added by chronological date of publication.

How to share your paper

Visit our author rights page to find out how you can reuse and share your work.

To find tips on increasing the visibility of your published paper, read about how to promote your work.

Correcting inaccuracies in your published paper

Sometimes errors are made during the research, writing and publishing processes. When these issues arise, we have the option of withdrawing the paper or introducing a correction notice. Find out more about our article withdrawal and correction policies.

Need to make a change to the author list? See our frequently asked questions (FAQs) below.

Frequently Asked Questions

The only time we will ever ask you for money to publish in an Emerald journal is if you have chosen to publish via the gold open access route. You will be asked to pay an APC (article-processing charge) once your paper has been accepted (unless it is a sponsored open access journal), and never at submission.

Read about our APCs

At no other time will you be asked to contribute financially towards your article’s publication, processing, or review. If you haven’t chosen gold open access and you receive an email that appears to be from Emerald, the journal, or a third party, asking you for payment to publish, please contact our support team via [email protected].

Editorial team

Senior Co-Editor
- Professor Mark S Rosenbaum
  The Citadel - USA
  [email protected]
Co-Editor
- Professor Kristina Heinonen
  Hanken Business School - Finland
  [email protected]
Associate Editor
- Dr Chrysostomos Apostolidis
  University of Northumbria – Newcastle Business School - UK
- Dr. Courtney Azzari
  University of North Florida - USA
- Professor Amanda Beatson
  Queensland University - Australia
- Dr Gabriela Beirão
  University of Porto - Portugal
- Professor Kimmy Chan
  Hong Kong Baptist University - Hong Kong
- Professor Tom Chen
  University of Kent - UK
- Dr. Maria Colurcio
  Magna Graecia University of Catanzaro - Italy
- Professor J Joseph Cronin, Jr., Ph.D
  Florida State University - USA
- Dr Janet Davey
  Victoria University Wellington - New Zealand
- Sarah Dodds
  Massey University - New Zealand
- Professor Jörg Finsterwalder
  University of Canterbury - New Zealand
- Mario Eduardo Giraldo Oliveros
  Universidad del Norte - Colombia
- Professor Ross Gordon
  University of Technology Sydney - Australia
- Associate Professor Wafa Hammedi
  University of Namur - Belgium
- Professor Thomas Hollmann
  Arizona State University - USA
- Dr Pramod Iyer
  Kennesaw State University - USA
- Professor Raechel Johns
  University of Canberra - Australia
- Professor Ingo Karpen
  Karlstad University - Sweden
- Professor Philipp Klaus
  International University of Monaco, INSECC Research Center - Monaco
- Professor Volker Kuppelwieser
  NEOMA Business School - France
- Henna Leino
  Turku School of Economics - Finland
- Associate Professor Kate Letheren
  Australian Catholic University - Australia
- Professor Jiun-Sheng Chris Lin
  National Taiwan University - Taiwan
- Professor Rory Mulcahy
  University of the Sunshine Coast - Australia
- Dr. Yupal Shukla
  IRSSM - India
- Associate Professor Ramendra Thakur
  University of Louisiana at Lafayette - USA
- Professor Rodoula Tsiotsou
  University of Macedonia - Greece
- Associate Professor Josina Vink
  Oslo School of Architecture and Design - Norway
Commissioning Editor
- Richard Whitfield
  Emerald Publishing - UK
  [email protected]
Journal Editorial Office (For queries related to pre-acceptance)
- Please contact the Journal Editorial Office
  [email protected]
Supplier Project Manager (For queries related to post-acceptance)
- Sonali Durge
  Emerald Publishing
  [email protected]
Editorial Advisory Board
- Assistant Professor Melissa Akaka
  University of Denver - USA
- Dr Levent Altinay
  Oxford Brookes University - UK
- Assistant Professor Nwamaka Anaza
  Southern Illinois University Carbondale - USA
- Assistant Professor Kelley Cours Anderson
  College of Charleston - USA
- Professor Nicholas J. Ashill
  Victoria University of Wellington - New Zealand
- Assistant Professor Todd Bacile
  Loyola University New Orleans - USA
- Dr. Melissa Baker
  UMass Amherst - USA
- Associate Professor Thomas Baker
  University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa - USA
- Dr Donald Barnes
  University of North Carolina Wilmington - USA
- Professor Sabine Benoit
  Singapore Management University - Singapore
- Professor Blaise J Bergiel
  University of West Georgia - USA
- Professor Jeffrey Blodgett
  University of Houston - Victoria - USA
- Professor Liliana Bove
  The University of Melbourne - Australia
- Professor Matthew Bunker
  University of Northern Iowa - USA
- Professor Jamie Burton
  Alliance Manchester Business School, The University of Manchester - UK
- Associate Professor Mark Anthony Camilleri
  University of Malta - Malta
- Dr Walid Chaouali
  University of Jendouba - Tunisia
- Associate Professor Charlene Dadzie
  University of South Alabama - USA
- Associate Professor Gopal Das
  Indian Institute of Management Bangalore - India
- Professor Kate L. Daunt
  Cardiff Business School - UK
- Dr Janet Davey
  Victoria University Wellington - New Zealand
- Professor Barry J Davies
  University of Gloucestershire - UK
- Associate Professor Phillippe Duverger
  Towson University - USA
- Dr Dahlia El-Manstrly
  University of Edinburgh Business School - UK
- Professor David Faulds
  University of Louisville - USA
- Professor Raymond P. Fisk
  ServCollab - USA
- Professor Dale Fodness
  University of Dallas - USA
- Dr Tony Garry
  University of Otago - New Zealand
- Professor Mario Giraldo
  Universidad del Norte - Barranquilla - Colombia
- Professor Dominique Greer
  Queensland University of Technology - Australia
- Assistant Professor Amy Gregory
  University of Central Florida - USA
- Professor Stephen J Grove
  Clemson University - USA
- Dr Johanna Katariina Gummerus
  Hanken School of Economics - Finland
- Associate Professor Lin Guo
  Old Dominion University - USA
- Professor John D. Hansen
  University of Alabama at Birmingham - USA
- Associate Professor Eric G. Harris
  Pittsburg State University - USA
- Professor Lloyd Harris
  University of Birmingham - UK
- Professor Kim Harris-Cassidy
  Nottingham Trent University - UK
- Professor Kristina Heinonen
  Hanken School of Economics - Finland
- Professor Toni Hilton
  Glasgow Caledonian University - UK
- Linda D. Hollebeek
  Sunway University - Malaysia
- Professor Jonas Holmqvist
  Kedge Business School - France
- Professor Tim Hughes
  University of the West of England - UK
- Professor Elina Jaakkola
  University of Turku - Finland
- Professor Lester W Johnson
  Swinburne University - Australia
- Dr Byron Keating
  Queensland University of Technology - Australia
- Professor Scott W. Kelley
  University of Kentucky - USA
- Professor Christian Kowalkowski
  Linköping University - Sweden
- Dr Bodo Lang
  University of Auckland - New Zealand
- Professor Bart Larivière
  KU Leuven - Belgium
- Dr Tiffany S. Legendre
  University of Houston - USA
- Professor Annouk Lievens
  University of Antwerp - Belgium
- Associate Professor Heejin Lim
  University of Tennessee - USA
- Professor Dominik Mahr
  Maastricht University - Netherlands
- Associate Professor David Martin
  Auburn University - USA
- Associate Professor Lee McGinnis
  Stonehill College - USA
- Associate Professor Joanna Melancon
  Western Kentucky University - USA
- Dr Kars Mennens
  Maastricht University - Netherlands
- Dr. Kalyani Menon
  Lazaridis School of Business and Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University - Canada
- Dr. Atmadeep Mukherjee
  Weber State University - USA
- Professor Rory Mulcahy
  University of the Sunshine Coast - Australia
- Associate Professor Duane Nagel
  Wichita State University - USA
- Dr Amin Nazifi
  University of Birmingham - UK
- Professor Richard Nicholls
  Worcester Business School, University of Worcester - UK
- Professor Aron O'Cass
  Macquarie University - Australia
- Professor Lisa O'Malley
  University of Limerick - Ireland
- Professor Gaby Oderkerken
  Maastricht University - Netherlands
- Dr Jason Oliver
  East Carolina University - USA
- Professor Adrian J Palmer
  University of Wales Swansea - UK
- Professor Joy Parkinson
  Australian Catholic University - Australia
- Professor Lia Patricio
  University of Porto - Portugal
- Professor Anthony Patterson
  Lancaster University - UK
- Professor Paul G Patterson
  The University of New South Wales - Australia
- Professor Maria Raciti
  University of Sunshine Coast - Australia
- Professor Javier Reynoso
  EGADE, Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey - Mexico
- Dr Nichola Robertson
  Deakin University - Australia
- Professor Michel Rod
  Carleton University - Canada
- Professor Sanjit Kumar Roy
  Edith Cowan University - Australia
- Dr László Sajtos
  The University of Auckland - New Zealand
- Dr Tali Seger-Guttmann
  Ruppin Academic Center - Israel
- Dr Harjit Sekhon
  Coventry University - UK
- Associate Professor Daniel Shen
  State University of New York - USA
- Professor Elaine Sherman
  Hofstra University - USA
- Associate Professor Jeremy J. Sierra
  Texas State University - San Marcos - USA
- Professor Marianna Sigala
  University of Newcastle - Australia
- Associate Professor Cláudia Simões
  University of Minho - Portugal
- Dr Erose Sthapit
  Manchester Metropolitan University - UK
- Associate Professor Jeff W Totten
  McNeese State University - USA
- Dr Sven Tuzovic
  Queensland University of Technology - Australia
- Professor Giampaolo Viglia
  Faculty of Business and Law, University of Portsmouth - UK
- Professor Paul Williams
  American University of Sharjah - United Arab Emirates
- Prof Dr Heidi Winklhofer
  Nottingham University Business School - UK
- Professor Lars Witell
  Linköping University - Sweden
- Professor Ip Kin Anthony Wong
  University of Macau - People's Republic of China
- Professor Dana Yagil
  University of Haifa - Israel
- Dr Nadia Zainuddin
  University of Wollongong - USA
- Associate Professor Zhen Zhu
  Suffolk University - USA
- Professor Judy Zolkiewski
  Alliance Manchester Business School - UK
- Dr Catharina von Koskull
  Hanken School of Economics - Finland
Expert Research Panel for Service Operations
- Professor Joy Field
  Boston College, USA - USA
- Liana Victorina
  University of Victoria, Canada

Indexing & metrics

Citation metrics

7.4

CiteScore 2024

9.3

CiteScore Tracker 2025

(updated monthly)

4.5

2024 Impact Factor

5.3

5-year Impact Factor (2024)

Publication timeline

Time to first decision

days

Acceptance to publication

days

Acceptance rate

12.5

Usage

Downloads

28343

Articles

This journal is abstracted and indexed by

Business Source Complete
Emerald Management Reviews
Cabell's Directory of Publishing Opportunities in Management and Marketing
CNRS (France)
Current Citations Express
Current Contents/Social and Behavioral Sciences
Electronic Collections Online
EP Collection
Expanded Academic Index
FMS Journal Rating Guide (C)
FNEGE (France)
Gale
Galileo
General Reference Center
Inspec
Manning & Napier
QUALIS
ReadCube Discover
The Marketing Report
Telebase
Zetoc (British Library)
AIDEA (Italy)
Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) Journal Quality List - A ranking
Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS, UK) Academic Journal Guide
Scopus
Social Science Citation Index SSCI (Clarivate Analytics)
The Publication Forum (Finland)

Reviewers

Reviewer information

Peer review process

This journal engages in a double-anonymous peer review process, which strives to match the expertise of a reviewer with the submitted manuscript. Reviews are completed with evidence of thoughtful engagement with the manuscript, provide constructive feedback, and add value to the overall knowledge and information presented in the manuscript.

Mission

The mission of the peer review process is to achieve excellence and rigour in scholarly publications and research.

Vision

Our vision is to give voice to professionals in the subject area who contribute unique and diverse scholarly perspectives to the field.

Values

The journal values diverse perspectives from the field and reviewers who provide critical, constructive, and respectful feedback to authors. Reviewers come from a variety of organizations, careers, and backgrounds from around the world.

Ethics

All invitations to review, abstracts, manuscripts, and reviews should be kept confidential. Reviewers must not share their review or information about the review process with anyone without the agreement of the editors and authors involved, even after publication. This also applies to other reviewers’ “comments to author” which are shared with you on decision.

Resources to guide you through the review process

Discover practical tips and guidance on all aspects of peer review in our reviewers' section. See how being a reviewer could benefit your career, and discover what's involved in shaping a review.

More reviewer information

Calls for papers & news

Calls for papers

Historical Perspectives on the Development of Services Marketing Theory & Practice

Journal of Services Marketing

Submit your paper here from 9 February 2026!IntroductionIn an era dominated by emerging technologies, predictive algorithms, and hyper-personalized m...

Guest editor(s):

J. Joseph Cronin Jr, D.M. Nagel

The Emotional Burden and Uplift of Service Experiences: Designing Tomorrow's Human-Centred Services

Journal of Services Marketing

Submit your paper here from 9 February 2026! IntroductionServices have always aimed to meet human needs, with decades of valuable research adva...

Guest editor(s):

Rory Mulcahy, Kate Letheren

Redefining Luxury Services: Exclusive Experiences, Emerging Elites, and the Future of Yachting

Journal of Services Marketing

Submit your paper here from 9 February 2026!IntroductionThe Journal of Services Marketing invites submissions for a special issue focused on the futu...

Guest editor(s):

Prof. Dr. Phil Klaus

News

Thank you to the 2024 Reviewers of Journal of Services Marketing

The publishing and editorial teams would like to thank the following, for their invaluable service as 2024 reviewers for this journal. We are very grateful for the contributions made. With their help, the journal has been able to publish such high...

28/08/2025

Thank you to the 2023 Reviewers of Journal of Services Marketing

The publishing and editorial teams would like to thank the following, for their invaluable service as 2023 reviewers for this journal. We are very grateful for the contributions made. With their help, the journal has been able to publish such high...

23/09/2024

Previous award winners of the Steve Baron Award

Steve’s perspective on contribution to the service community. I believe that contributions to the service research community do go beyond what is immediately visible, such as research publications and teaching innovation...

19/07/2024

Steve Baron Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Service Research Community

...

06/03/2024

JSM papers included in WHO COVID-19 database

The importance of services marketing research for improving the health and wellbeing of global citizens has been recognised by the World Health Organisation with the inclusion of the following 18 Journal of Services Marketing articles ...

09/02/2023

Emerald: 1st ServCollab Special Issue Free Access

Founded in 2018 by Ray Fisk, ...

07/12/2022

Revisiting seminal JSM articles in the first decade: The retrospective collection 1986 - 1995

In 2016, JSM celebrated 30 years, and to commemorate this milestone the editors Prof Steve Baron and Prof Rebekah Russell-Bennett wrote an editorial about the importance of revisiting the past, and invited authors of seminal pap...

18/10/2021

JSM Editorials

2022 Editorial: Research priorities in the new service marketplace...

10/09/2020

Editorial Honour Roll

A journal cannot exist without the selfless service of colleagues who are willing to provide their time and expertise to encourage quality research to be submitted and peer reviewed. Since the establishment of the journal in 1986, the follow...

11/07/2019

JSM KeyWords 2019

The Editorial Team of JSM would like to encourage you to select from the keywords below, when submitting a manuscript to ScholarOne: Airline industry artificial intelligence Atmospherics Baby Boomers Base of the...

02/04/2019

Literati awards

Journal of Services Marketing - Literati Award winners 2025

We are pleased to announce our 2025 Literati Award winners!Outstanding PaperService sy...

Journal of Services Marketing - Literati Award Winners 2024

We are pleased to announce our 2024 Literati Award winners. Outstanding Paper A dignity-vulnerability approach fra...

Journal of Services Marketing - Literati Award Winners 2023

We are pleased to announce our 2023 Literati Award winners. Outstanding Paper A voice for the silent: un...

Journal of Services Marketing - Literati Award Winners 2022 

We are pleased to announce our 2022 Literati Award winners. Outstanding Paper Shaping service delivery throu...

Journal of Services Marketing - Literati Award Winners 2022

We are pleased to announce our 2022 Literati Award winners. Outstanding Paper ...

Journal of Services Marketing - Literati Award Winners 2021

We are pleased to announce our 2021 Literati Award winners. Outstanding Paper Artificial intelligence: disru...

Journal of Services Marketing - Literati Award Winners 2020

We are pleased to announce our 2020 Literati Award winners. Outstanding Paper Value of social robots in services: social cognition p...

ISSN: 0887-6045
eISSN: 2054-1651

You can choose to publish your article open access in this journal by indicating on the editorial system when you submit your paper.

Aims and scope

The Journal of Services Marketing (JSM) is not preferentially disposed towards either empirical work or pure theory, nor towards one particular method or approach.

JSM will be an outlet for research that is:

unique and interesting research on services marketing in a contemporary global world
from a diverse range of methodological, philosophical and theoretical approaches
situated within either a pure or applied research tradition
well-grounded theoretical conceptualisation
rigorous and appropriate research methodology
well written and of clear relevance and interest to services marketing scholarship and practice.

JSM is keen to publish manuscripts that address contemporary issues relevant to services marketing that make a clear contribution to services marketing scholarship and practice.

Topics currently of interest to the editors are:

The role of services in transforming society and consumer lives
New methodological approaches for service research
Services marketing and the bottom-of-the pyramid
The role of new technologies and interactivity
Off-shoring and outsourcing of services
Servitization
Service design
Co-creation and third-parties
Crowd-sourcing
The future and key trends in the practice of services marketing: what researchers need to know
Micro-businesses, cottage industries and the service sector
Social service enterprises
Viewing service(s) through a new lens.

Latest articles

These are the latest articles published in this journal (Last updated: April 2025)

How consumers self-manage service interaction vulnerability to autonomously improve satisfaction modes

The role of materialism and social judgment in human-chatbot service interactions

How does service description contribute to peer-to-peer service satisfaction? consumer clout matters

Top cited

These are the top cited articles for this journal, from the last 12 months according to Crossref (Last updated: April 2025)

This title is aligned with our responsible management goal

We aim to champion researchers, practitioners, policymakers and organisations who share our goals of contributing to a more ethical, responsible and sustainable way of working.