ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a brief summary of what is meant by 'strategy', and then reviews the main themes in the process and content literatures. The intention is to help locate the idea of service strategy within a wider context, and in doing this set the scene for later discussion of important ideas such as competitive strategy, customer value, service positioning, and the service concept. A. D. Chandler adopted the metaphor of 'strategy' from military science to distinguish between decisions made in pursuit of greater functional efficiency, and 'strategic' decisions which affect the fundamental direction of an organization and its ultimate performance. By the late 1950s, some organizations were going beyond simple extrapolations of the past by trying to forecast the future. The idea was that if the future were to be accurately forecasted, any gap between projected and desired sales performance could be identified and addressed.
