Buying and selling sex: a preliminary examination of the service encounter

Reports the results of a survey of the service encounters in sauna and massage parlours in the UK offering sex for sale. Draws evidence from a customer generated World Wide Web site and a case study of a small massage parlour in a small town in the north west of England. Concludes that the initial contact with the reception and the working girl is crucial to success together with the physical environment. Suggests that the woner’s ability to manage these in ways that recognize the client’s sensitivities and emotional needs will be vital for future sustainability

GPS: An Architecture to Help Firms Running from a Product to a PSS Offer

Part 2: Service Enhanced ProductsInternational audienceFor many reasons (differentiation, duration of the relationship with the customers...) a lot of firms, especially SMEs, are moving from an offer of product to an offer of a product-service. From this point of view, firms need to implement new management rules, in terms of skills and control. In this paper, we propose a framework with three levels of modeling, which aims at providing guidelines to firms that enter in this new paradigm. This framework is based on theoretical investigations on the service concept, and on real SMEs cases