Dokuz Eylul University, Faculty of Business is very pleased to host the 3rd Biennial International Conference (BIC) on Services Marketing and looks forward to welcoming you on September 2011. The theme of the conference is "Servicing the Way out of the Economic Downfall: The Present and Future Role of Services".

The services sector is the dominant driving economic force worldwide and marketing and management practices in this field are evolving rapidly. There is, as a result, an increasing academic and business interest in the services sector. This is especially pertinent at a time of ambivalence in the aftermath of a severe economic crisis, which challenged established business models and practices, eroded customer confidence and buying power, and altered customer behavior in potentially fundamental ways. Academics and business practitioners are called upon to help companies come to terms with the new constantly changing conditions they are confronted with and align their business processes in ways that can enable them to adapt to the new economic reality. The conference will be looking into the ways through which services companies can achieve and sustain prosperity and growth in these turbulent times. The success, relevance and reliability of established models and practices will be reassesed based on their resilience and performance in these conditions, while new processes and models will be presented and their potential superiority will be evaluated.