Visualizing and testing service concepts

Faced with mounting competitive pressures, many companies are attempting to raise their profile in the market by offering new services. As a result, far greater attention has been accorded in the last few years to new service development and service engineering by researchers and businesses alike. However, if we consider the standard suggestions and approaches for developing new services - from the original idea up to the market launch - it is conspicuous that testing of development results has been largely neglected in the past. This paper describes how service testing can be realized in practice and presents a possible technique - ServLab - for simulating services with the help of virtual reality and service theatre.