Purpose: The objective is two-fold. The first is to describe contemporary and future penetration (i.e. analysis and understanding) in service encounter research. The other is to describe contemporary and future abstraction in service quality research. Design/methodology/approach - The paper provides a conceptual discussion of new aspects of research into service encounters and service quality.

Findings: There are still flaws in the contemporary penetration of service encounters and the contemporary abstraction of the service quality construct.

Research limitations/implications: Service encounters and service quality pertain not only to human interactions, but also to the interaction between individuals and self-service technology. The new aspects of service encounters and service quality described here are restricted to the interaction between individuals. It is argued that an extended penetration of service encounters, and an extended abstraction of the service quality construct, taken together, provide great potential for future research opportunities in services marketing.

Practical implications: The aspects of penetration discussed here have the potential to provide a more sophisticated understanding of the complexity and dynamics of service encounters. The aspects of abstraction described here have the potential to contribute to a more sophisticated level of measurement of the service quality construct.

Originality/value: A two-fold approach is suggested that goes beyond the current state of the art in terms of penetration of service encounters and abstraction of the service quality construct. This is likely to trigger and encourage innovative research designs and alternative methodological approaches to new research problems. This might also stimulate innovative analytical techniques that could produce groundbreaking research findings, with important implications for practice. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.