September 17, 1998 Contact: Lew Harris (615) 322-2706 Lewis.G.Harris@vanderbilt.edu

Vanderbilt's Owen School to host Frontiers in Services Conference

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- About 200 faculty members and business executives from 18 countries will convene at Vanderbilt for the seventh annual Frontiers in Services Conference Sept. 24-26.

The conference is co-sponsored by the American Marketing Association and the Center for Service Marketing at the Owen School.

"This conference is widely recognized as the top services conference in the world and that's why we're able to draw people from all across the globe," said Roland T. Rust, founder and chair of the conference. Rust is the Madison S. Wigginton Professor of Management and director of the Center for Service Marketing at Vanderbilt's Owen Graduate School of Management.

Rust said the strength of the conference is that it attracts a blend of marketing and services experts from both academia and the business world. "It creates a very healthy dialogue between experts from both the business world and academics."

There will be about 70 presentations during the course of the event. Among the top speakers are Howard McNally, vice president of AT&T; Gary Hoover, CEO of TravelFest Superstores; Rod Brodie, professor and chair of the Department of Marketing at the University of Auckland, New Zealand; and Akiyoshi Oshima of WORD Laboratories, Inc. in Japan.

Rust and Rich Oliver, the Valere Blair Potter professor or management at the Owen School, will make a presentation on customer delight, where a store or company goes beyond ordinary customer satisfaction expectations.

"Some people ask if you don't actually hurt yourself by raising customer expectations when you provide customer delight," Rust said. "We don't think you harm yourself. We have mathematical and psychological models that show whether or not it is wise for a company to provide customer delight."

-VU-

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