Service Research in the Hospitality Literature: Insights from a Systematic Review

This study applies a Delphi analysis regarding the level of integration of service topics in the hospitality literature, as found in 539 service-related papers published in four hospitality journals from 1998 to 2012. The journals in question are Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, International Journal of Hospitality Management, and Journal of Hospitality Tourism Research. The number of service-related studies account for 16 percent of the total pool of articles in the four journals over the fifteen-year period, and the analysis records an increase in the number of service-based articles published over this period. Since then, the number of articles dealing with service-related phenomena has ebbed somewhat. Theory-testing papers dominated the hospitality literature during the study period, accounting for more than half of the papers, while theory-building papers accounted for a quarter of all papers, and around 15 percent had a conceptual purpose. The most popular topic for papers in this sample was service experience, followed by operations management, human resource management, and accounting.