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 papers in the first decade (1986 – 1995) to revisit their original paper and provide a retrospective. Eight authors responded and their retrospectives are listed below:

Rebekah Russell-Bennett and Steve Baron Editorial: Back to the future! The importance of history in services marketing

Len Berry Revisiting “big ideas in services marketing” 30 years later

Scott Kelley Retrospective: efficiency in service delivery: technological or humanistic approaches?

Kirk Wakefield and Jeffry Blodgett Retrospective: the importance of servicescapes in leisure service settings

Amy Ostrom and Dawn Iacobucci Retrospective: the effect of guarantees on consumers’ evaluation of services

Bernd Strauss Retrospective: “culture shocks” in inter-cultural service encounters?

Adrian Palmer and David Bejou Retrospective: service failure and loyalty: an exploratory empirical study of airline customers

Paul Patterson Retrospective: tracking the impact of communications effectiveness on client satisfaction, trust and loyalty in professional services

Joe Cronin Retrospective: a cross-sectional test of the effect and conceptualization of service value revisited