This paper aims to synthesize the widespread economic impact of the outbreak of COVID-19 and presents a new concept, service mega-disruptions (SMDs), which refers to fast moving market disturbances at a massive scale caused by a pandemic. The purpose of this paper is to offer a framework to recognize the impact of SMDs on service ecosystems and a call to action for service researchers in light of the COVID-19 outbreak.
This paper presents an overview of massive market disturbances that is observed across multiple service sectors based on current news reports. It then develops themes for timely and actionable research for service scholars.
The outbreak of COVID-19 demonstrates that both service industries and the service research community face a new reality, something that we are not well-prepared to handle. A new framework is needed to understand the impact of such virus outbreaks, and current service marketing concepts need to be re-investigated from a new perspective.
This paper contributes to the literature and service research community by addressing the phenomenon of SMDs by curating a framework and collection of research themes to understand what we observe and what we need to learn to do better in the future.
