Conduct of joint research on services across Europe and elsewhere;
Promote research on services as key to understanding economic activity;
Raise awareness of RESER and facilitate exchange of research, information and ideas;
Develop new methods of statistical analysis and measurement of services;
Provide policy and economic decision makers with reports and analyses related to the development of services and to their role and impact.
Enlarge RESER membership to PhD students, post-docs and young researchers, providing information, supervision, and links to services researcher across Europe and elsewhere.

The annual conference

RESER organises an annual international conference with a specific theme, but the meetings are open to all papers that explore various aspects of services. The RESER Council identifies the conference theme in close collaboration with local organizers. Conference themes have included :

• 2010

The Resilience of the Global Service Economy Göthenburg (Sweden)

• 2009

Public and private services in the new global economy. Budapest (Hungary)

• 2008

New horizons for the role and production of services, Stuttgart, Germany.

• 2007

Service competitiveness and cohesion-balancing dynamics in the knowledge society, Tampere, Finland

• 2006

Services Governance and Public Policies, Lisbon Portugal

• 2005

Growth, employment and location of services: new trends in a global world, Granada, Spain

• 2004

ICT and Service relationship in the global economy, Toulouse, France

• 2003

Services and Regional Development, Mons, Belgium

• 2002

Understanding the Relationship between Services and Innovation, Manchester, United Kingdom

• 2001

New Information and Communication Technologies and Services, Grenoble, France

• 2000

Beyond the Economic? Cultural dimensions of services, Bergen, Norway

• 1999

Services in the Eve of the XXI century: growth, globalisation and the EMU, Alcalá de Henares, Spain

• Globalisation, international trade, outsourcing
  Knowledge, innovation and ICT
  Employment, skills, training
  Productivity and service macroeconomics
  Markets, quality, prices, regulations
  Service management, networks and marketing
  Non-market services, new public management
  Territorial, urban and regional studies of services
  Structural change and tertiarisation processes
  Public-private partnerships and services provision

• Annual special issues of The Service Industries Journal, Economies et Sociétés, Economics and Management of Services series.
• Services, Economy and Innovation Book Series published by Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK.
• Services Book Series published by L’harmattan, Paris, France
• RESER Working Paper Series.

The RESER network facilitates short term research visits and exchanges between participating institutions. Particular importance is attached to encouraging the development of new researchers, including the provision of conferences, scholarships/travel awards that enable graduate students participate in exchange visits between research teams located across Europe.

All members have:

INFORMATION AND CONTACTS
• Access to information and contacts amongst services researchers
• Student / researcher exchange possibilities
• Access to service-specific information on the Web page (in progress)
• Identifying opportunities to participate in joint research programmes

ANNUAL CONFERENCE
• Membership concession for attendance at the annual international conference.
• Scholarships / travel awards
• Dissemination of course brochures, working paper information, other research publications at the annual RESER international conference
• Selected conference papers nominated annually for publication in The Service Industries Journal (UK) and in Economies et Sociétés, Economics and Management of Services series (France)

OTHER
• Special discounts for journal subscriptions

In 2006 RESER Council introduced commendations for lifelong achievements and contributions to service-related research.
These have been awarded to

2009 Peter Daniels (United Kingdom)

2008 Bo Edvardsson (Sweden) and Sven Illeris (Denmark)

2007 William Baumol (USA) and Jean Gadrey( France)

2006 Peter Sjøholt (Norway)

President : Metka Stare (Ljubljana, Slovenia)
Senior researcher
Center of International Relations, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana
Adviser to the director of Institute for Macro-economic Analysis and Development (part-time)


Tel.: 00 386 1 5805 194
Fax: 00 386 1 5805 109
E-mail : metka.stare@guest.arnes.si

for more details

Vice-President : John Bryson (Birmingham, UK)

Reader in Economic Geography, School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham,


Tel: +44 (0)121 414 5537
Fax: +44 (0)121 414 5528
e.mail :J.R.BRYSON@bham.ac.uk

for more details

Secretary : b[Grete Rusten (Bergen, Norway)

she assists also the Reser webmaster on the work with the English text.

Associate Professor,
Departement of Geography ,University of Bergen/ Senior Researcher Institute for Research in Economics and Business Administration (SNF)
Honory Research Fellow at School of Geography, University of Birmingham


Tel + 47 55 58 31 49
Fax + 47 55 95 94 39
e-mail: Grete.Rusten@geog.uib.no
further readings

editing RESERs website Marie-Christine Monnoyer (Toulouse, France)

Professor in business sciences,
Management Institute, University of Toulouse 1.


Tel 33 5 61 29 82 88
Fax 33 5 61 13 97 95
e-mail : marie-christine.monnoyer@univ-tlse1.fr
further readings

Treasurer: Jose Luis Navarro Espigares (Granada, Spain)

Departamento de Economía Aplicada
Facultad de CC. Económicas y Empresariales


Tel : (34) 958249920
Fax : (34) 958244046
E·mail : josel.navarro.sspa@juntadeandalucia.es
more details

Markus Scheuer (Essen, Germany)

Researcher
Rheinisch Westfalisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung

Tel 49 201 8148 277
Fax 49 201 8149 200
e.mail :scheuer@rwi-essen.de
more details

Stefano Visitin (Madrid, Spain)

PHD Student
Servilab, University of Alcala


Tel.: 0034 918855213
Fax: 0034 918854219
E-mail: stefano.visitin@uah.es
more details

Patrik Ström (Göthenburg, Sweden)]b

organiser of the RESER 2010 Conference in Göteborg

Researcher
Department of Human and Economic Geography School of Economics and Commercial Law Göteborg University,

Tel : +46 31 773 1404
Fax: +46 31 773 1398
e.mail : patrik.strom@geography.gu.se
further readings

Maria Savona (Lille, France)

Senior Lecturer (Maître de Conférences)
Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences Lille
Visiting Research Fellow Cambridge MIT Institute

Tel. +33(0)3 20 43 66 21
Fax +33(0)3 20 43 66 55
email: Maria.Savona@univ-lille1.fr
further readings

Walter Ganz
Director of Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering - IAO
Head of the division »Service and Personnel Management«

Phone: +49 711 970-2180
Fax: +49 711 970-2130
email : walter.ganz@iao.fraunhofer.de
further readings

url:http://www.dienstleistung.iao.fraunhofer.de/EN/index.jsp

Éva Palócz, (Budapest, Hungary)
Doctor,
General director Kopint-Tárki.ltd

Non-permanent member of the Council , organiser of the RESER 2009 Conference in Budapest.

mail:palocz@kopint-tarki.hu
further readings

RESER is an interdisciplinary European network of social scientists linked by a common interest in service industries and their territorial expression. The annual RESER research conference provides a unique opportunity for the exchange of ideas concerning the cutting edge of service research and is open to all researchers interested in these topics.

The RESER 2010 Award for life-time achievement in the field of services research will be presented at the RESER conference. The Award winner will present a key note lecture.

As in the past, we expect participation by the representatives of the European Commission and other policy makers. Businessmen and professional associations representing services sectors are also invited to attend.

Sub theme 1: Services as engine of regional economic development
Sub theme 2: The global service economy and international business; trade, FDI and sourcing
Sub theme 3: Value-adding activities at the interface of advanced services and manufacturing
Sub theme 4: Interrelation of public and private services in the welfare state
Sub theme 5: The role of creative and cultural industries for economic growth

During the financial and real economy melt down that the world has experienced over the last two years, almost all sectors have been hurt. Governments have struggled to keep the financial sector floating as well as creating a viable environment for business. Trade in goods and services have suffered and calls have been raised not to give in to pressures of economic nationalism and isolation, but rather to promote free trade and investment.

These challenges have increased the interest in and importance of resilience. Resilience refers to the capability and capacity of social (individuals, firms, regions, etc) and physical urban systems to withstand change. Resilience is a core concept in ecology, environmental sciences and psychology and is becoming central to debates that address social, community, ecological and economic resilience to environmental and socio-economic risk. Resilience operates on three levels. First generation resilience is the ability of systems to absorb shocks and to recover rapidly. Second generation resilience focuses on community resilience and the extent to which businesses, local government, community groups and citizens cope with and respond to change. Third generation resilience is the ability of individuals, businesses, governments and communities to anticipate shocks and ultimately embed resilience through adaptation within everyday activities.

Due to the importance of the service sectors in the advanced economies they will play a vital role for the economic recovery, stabilization and turn around. They can both act as facilitators for economic resilience on various levels and show resilience as a more specific sector of the economy. The same is true for the growth in emerging markets. The resilience and innovativeness of the service economy will help to determine the long-term development of the economy as a whole. Knowledge intensive services constitute the platform of interconnection with advanced manufacturing, and regional economic development policies have to take further notice of the potential of the service industry. Areas that have been negatively affected through the downturn might reposition themselves to take advantage of services and service innovation. Innovative services are expected to play a major role in the restructuring and recovery of economies in the years ahead. Here it is necessary to explore and envisage what services will be able to have a long lasting economic impact and how this will reshape regional structures. Questions regarding the creative and cultural sectors must also be put into the perspective of economic development in combination with other forms of the experience economy such as tourism. In general, increased entrepreneurship connected to the service industry will also affect the possibility for economic resilience.

Another area that will help to determine the resilience of the global service economy in is trade and investment. An increasing challenge will face international service firms operating in a multicultural setting. Regulatory aspects need to be studied in order to better understand how they can facilitate trade and investment within services. Company strategy within various service sectors is another area that needs to be further studied in relation to the development of specific services and the choice of location. Also, cross-disciplinary attempts at combining management decisions, location and industry development within services have to play more important role.
Increased complexity between manufacturing and services has made it difficult to distinguish among clear cut categorizations. Rather the challenge lies within understanding and analyzing the value-added activities. This can be studied using an internal perspective that is focusing on a firm, or by an external perspective taking into account a complex web of activities. Knowledge creation can appear at different locations and through globalization be put to work in complex production networks. The recent downturn has showed the importance of sustainability of these networks if regions and individual firms are to show economic resilience.

The recent crisis has also shown the importance of the public sector service operations. The execution of new strategic policies to support the economy has been vital. In order for these policies to be effective the organization and innovative capability within the public sector services has to be improved. It has also brought new challenges to the development of the welfare state and social security systems. Countries need to tackle the problem of aging populations, climate change and environmental challenges along with increased financial pressure.
In all above mentioned service fields, issues concerning necessary structural changes, innovation processes, pricing, collaboration models, as well as issues on how to approach these questions scientifically arise. Since its first international conference in 1990, the RESER research community has sought to identify and explore new service trends in a multidisciplinary context. The RESER conference is interested in studies ranging from the micro to the macro level.

Papers that explore the issues related to sub themes 1-5 are especially welcome.

Papers can be conceptual, empirical or methodological. We welcome studies from social, geographical, business, economic, policy and management sciences, and particularly interdisciplinary approaches.

Doctoral studies are also welcome.

RESER will financially support the participation of 4 PhD students to the conference.
On the basis of the extended abstracts submitted, 4 works will be selected and their authors will receive a grant of 500 € to fund travel, accommodation and conference fees. In order to be eligible for the grant, the PhD student must sign the paper as first author and will have to be in charge of its presentation at the conference.

The grant recipients will be contacted when all authors will receive the notification of acceptance of their papers (31st of May).


Official languages:

The official languages of the conference are English and French,

A selection of papers presented at the conference will be considered for publication in

"The Service Industries Journal" (SIJ) published by Taylor & Francis group,
"Economies et Societes" serie "Economie et Gestion des Services" (EGS), and
“Services Business” published by Springer.

Selected papers will also be considered for an edited (eds. Prof. Cuadrado) book on services, territory and regions to be published by Springer during the first half of 2011.

• Title of paper
• Objectives
• Methodology
• Expected results
Maximum of two pages for the abstracts! (template will be available on the conference website)

Important deadlines
• Submission of abstracts: April 6th, 2010
• Notification to authors of acceptance: May 31st, 2010
• Submission of final texts: August 30th, 2010

Deadline Regular fees Students fees
Before July 16th € 300,- € 100,-
Before September 10th € 350,- € 160,-
After September 10th € 400,- € 200,-

Conference website: http://www.reser2010.se

Additional information on submission, registration, accommodation and program will be available by the end of February at the local website above.


*all conference fees include a one year RESER membership

Research director: Pr PHILIPPE Jean, Paul Cezanne University, Aix en Provence

Abstract:
This research aims at a better understanding of the customer’s assessment of the service experience within a multi-channel context. We’ve tried to understand to what extent the use of different distribution channels has an impact onto the customer’s overall service experience. The main hypothesis is that the overall satisfaction of a multi-channel customer depends on both the perceived service quality from all the channels used and the way in which those channels are integrated.
The quantitative study conducted among 668 bank customers, mainly targeted on users of the traditional channel and online channel, reveals three factors which influence multi-channel customer’s overall satisfaction in a positive manner: The perceived service quality through both the virtual channel and the traditional channel, but also the quality of channels integrated. Our research contributes to the conceptualization of the service quality and the satisfaction of the customer within a multi-channel service distribution context (included Internet); the research also brings forward the need for channels integration, the latter acting upon the overall consumer experience.

Contact
Anne Marianne SECK
Docteur es Sciences de gestion
Attachée Temporaire d'Enseignement et de Recherche
Université d'Avignon et de pays de Vaucluse
UIT d'Avignon, département G.C.E
Tel: 33 6 65 30 35 30
mail:annemarianne79@yahoo.fr