Correspondence: Leyland Pitt, Segal Graduate School of Business Simon Fraser University, 515 West Hastings St, Vancouver BC, V6B 5K3 Canada. Tel: +1 604 2687712; Fax: +1 604 2915122 e-mail: lpitt@sfu.ca

¹is a PhD Candidate at the Lulea University of Technology, Sweden. He is also on the faculty in the School of Business at Richmond University, London, where he teaches marketing and has published in journals such as Business Horizons, Journal of International Marketing and The International Journal of Advertising.

²is a PhD Candidate at the Lulea University of Technology, Sweden. She is a director of Gluemetric, a marketing research company in Pretoria, South Africa, and she also teaches marketing as an adjunct member of faculty at Ecole Nationale Ponts et Chaussees, Paris, France. Her work has appeared in journals such as Advertising Express and International Journal of Technology Marketing.

³is Professor of Marketing at the Segal Graduate School of Business, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. His work has been published in The Journal of Advertising Research, The Journal of Advertising, Information Systems Research, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Sloan Management Review, Business Horizons, California Management Review, Communications of the ACM and MIS Quarterly (which he also served as Associate Editor), and in 2000 he was the recipient of the Tamer Cavusgil Award of the American Marketing Association for the best article in the Journal of International Marketing.

Received 17 October 2006; Revised 17 October 2006.

Abstract

Doctor's surgeries are typically inefficient: They are generally stuck in the middle of the market, neither providing an individually tailored personal experience, nor one that is fast, efficient and cost effective. Introducing ideas from service simultaneity, and dramaturgy (the theory and practice of dramatic composition), this paper provides a simple but powerful model for the conceptualisation and redesign of the doctor's surgery. We argue that doctor's surgeries that are successful will be those that focus either on standardisation of activities in a back office environment (Service Factory), or high customisation of activities in a front office environment (Service Theatre). Those that attempt to do everything will succeed in doing nothing well.