The first French-German Workshop was held in Innsbruck in the beginning of 1996, and attracted about 30 researchers from the French and German speaking areas in Europe (namely Germany, Austria, France and Switzerland), plus two Japanese professors who belong to the French Marketing Association (A. F. M. ). The initiative was taken by marketing research authorities on both sides, given that researchers have, gene rally speaking, little or no opportunities to know of the research which is carried out in foreign countries, apart from that which is published in international journals. The German and French speaking communities in Europe representing a great number of people, it was thought that a specific workshop could be organized in the perspective of intermingling researchers from both sides. In fact, much of the workshop participants were bilingual French-German, but English was the only common language for everybody, so this is the reason why it was chosen as the working language. A large range of topics was presented during the two days, given that, traditionally and necessarily, service marketing issues overlap service management ones; we will present, very briefly in this introduction, the main issues dealt with in this book of proceedings, classifying them by theme. Like in any other marketing conference, the theme "consumer behavior" was the most important one in respect of number of presentations, as weil as background of most of the others. Underlining the fact that service attributes are manifold (almost unlimited in number. . .The economic impact of services is steadily increasing. Against this background knowledge regarding their development and marketing is one of the key factors of success.
This book presents the findings of the First French-German Workshop on Services Marketing. The wide range of topics includes articles on the optimal design of services and their internationalisation as well as on instruments for the analysis of service markets.
