Showing papers on "Service-dominant logic published in 2008"

Service-dominant logic: continuing the evolution

Abstract: Since the introductory article for what has become known as the “service-dominant (S-D) logic of marketing,” “Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing,” was published in the Journal of Marketing (Vargo, S. L., & Lusch, R. F. (2004a)), there has been considerable discussion and elaboration of its specifics. This article highlights and clarifies the salient issues associated with S-D logic and updates the original foundational premises (FPs) and adds an FP. Directions for future work are also discussed.

Managing the co-creation of value

Abstract: Central to service-dominant (S-D) logic is the proposition that the customer becomes a co-creator of value. This emphasizes the development of customer–supplier relationships through interaction and dialog. However, research to date suggests relatively little is known about how customers engage in the co-creation of value. In this article, the authors: explore the nature of value co-creation in the context of S-D logic; develop a conceptual framework for understanding and managing value co-creation; and utilize field-based research to illustrate practical application of the framework. This process-based framework provides a structure for customer involvement that takes account of key foundational propositions of S-D logic and places the customer explicitly at the same level of importance as the company as co-creators of value. Synthesis of diverse concepts from research on services, customer value and relationship marketing into a new process-based framework for co-creation provide new insights into managing the process of value co-creation.

Service logic revisited: who creates value? And who co‐creates?

Abstract: Purpose – In the discussion on service‐dominant logic and its consequences for value creation and marketing the inner meaning of the value‐in‐use notion and the nature of service marketing have not been considered thoroughly. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the meaning of a service logic as a logic for consumption and provision, respectively, and explore the consequences for value creation and marketing.Design/methodology/approach – Being a research‐based paper, the topic is approached by theoretical analysis and conceptual development.Findings – Discussing the differences between value‐in‐exchange and value‐in‐use, the paper concludes that value‐in‐exchange in essence concerns resources used as a value foundation which are aimed at facilitating customers' fulfilment of value‐in‐use. When accepting value‐in‐use as a foundational value creation concept customers are the value creators. Adopting a service logic makes it possible for firms to get involved with their customers' value‐generating proces...

Toward a conceptual foundation for service science: contributions from service-dominant logic

Abstract: Advancing service science requires a service-centered conceptual foundation. Toward this goal, we suggest that an emerging logic of value creation and exchange called service-dominant logic is a more robust framework for service science than the traditional goods-dominant logic. The primary tenets of service-dominant logic are: (1) the conceptualization of service as a process, rather than a unit of output; (2) a focus on dynamic resources, such as knowledge and skills, rather than static resources, such as natural resources; and (3) an understanding of value as a collaborative process between providers and customers, rather than what producers create and subsequently deliver to customers. These tenets are explored and a foundational lexicon for service science is suggested.

The Service System Is the Basic Abstraction of Service Science

Abstract: ion is a powerful thing. During the 19th century, the industrial revolution was built on many powerful abstractions, such as mass, energy, work, and power. During the 20th century, the information revolution was built on many powerful abstractions, such as binary digit or bit, binary coding, and algorithmic complexity. Here, we propose an abstraction that will be important to the service revolution of the 21st century: the service system, which is a configuration of people, technologies, and other resources that interact with other service systems to create mutual value. Many systems can be viewed as service systems, including families, cities, and companies, among many others. In this paper, we show how the service-system abstraction can be used to understand how value is created, in the process unifying concepts from many disciplines and creating the foundation for an integrated science of service.

Customer Integration and Value Creation: Paradigmatic Traps and Perspectives

Abstract: This commentary uses the Customer Integration—Facilities, Transformation, Use (CI-FTU) framework of Moeller as a platform for discussing two nested challenges in the development of service-dominant...

The Service-Dominant Logic and a Hierarchy of Operant Resources: Developing Masterful Operant Resources and Implications for Marketing Strategy

Abstract: Marketing’s evolution toward a new dominant logic requires the focus of marketing to be on the intangible, dynamic, operant resources that are at the heart of competitive advantage and performance. First, building on resource-advantage theory’s notion of basic resources and higher-order resources, this article proposes a hierarchy of basic, composite, and interconnected operant resources. Second, reviewing research on business strategy and marketing strategy, several resources that correspond to the proposed hierarchy are identified and discussed. Third, the notion of developing masterful operant resources is introduced. Fourth, based on the proposed hierarchy and the notion of masterful operant resources, some exemplars of potential research avenues for marketing strategy are provided. Finally, the article concludes with the discussion of implications for marketing practitioners, researchers, and educators. In sum, this article extends and elaborates the concept of operant resources in the service-dominant logic of marketing.

Extending the service-dominant logic: from customer centricity to balanced centricity

Abstract: This is a contribution to the reorientation of marketing. It aligns the service-dominant logic with other developments in marketing and management. It claims that the marketing concept and customer-centricity are too limited as a foundation for marketing and have not—and cannot—but partially be implemented in practice. It urges marketing scholars and educators to accept the complexity of marketing and develop and teach a network-based stakeholder approach—balanced centricity—epitomized by the concept of many-to-many marketing.

The service-dominant logic and the future of marketing

Abstract: According to Vargo and Lusch (Journal of Marketing, 68:1–17, 2004a, Journal of Service Research, 6:324–335, b), service is the appropriate logic for marketing. For them, service is an interactive process of “doing something for someone” that is valued. More radically, goods also render service and have value-in-use. In this context service becomes the unifying purpose of any business relationship. This marketing world-view involves broadening and reframing what by convention counts as service and stands in opposition to 200 years of mainstream economic logic in explaining productive capacity. In our view they have succeeded in applying their scholarly thinking to old themes with synergistic results. Their thesis challenges marketing orthodoxy, and will in our view support much future innovation in both theoretical and practical terms.

An expanded and strategic view of discontinuous innovations: deploying a service-dominant logic

Abstract: The service-dominant logic (S-D logic) provides a novel and valuable theoretical perspective that necessitates a rethinking and reevaluation of the conventional literature on innovation. This literature is built upon a goods-dominant logic and has resulted in a restricted and out-moded perspective that overlooks many major discontinuous innovations. In this article, we show how many innovations can be better understood by deploying a S-D logic perspective. We present six S-D logic categories of discontinuous innovation positing that they can help scholars and managers analyze, design and implement breakthrough advances in resource use. We argue that discontinuous innovation can arise by changing any of the customers’ roles of users, buyers and payers on the first dimension. On the second dimension, the firm changes its value creation by embedding operant resources into objects, by changing the integrators of resources, and by reconfiguring value constellations. Finally, we offer some managerial and research implications of this expanded and strategic view of discontinuous innovation.

Customer Integration—A Key to an Implementation Perspective of Service Provision

Abstract: A paradigm shift in marketing seems to be underway. Inspired by Vargo and Lusch's (2004a) proposal of service dominant logic, customer integration is proposed as a key component of marketing. Three...

Marketing with integrity: ethics and the service-dominant logic for marketing

Abstract: This paper examines a tendency within existing marketing scholarship to compartmentalize ethical issues. It also shows how this tendency can cause ethical tensions and conflicts in marketing practice. The emerging service-dominant (S-D) logic for marketing, as proposed by Vargo and Lusch, is explored as an example of an approach to marketing that overcomes this tendency. The S-D logic is found to be a positive development for marketing ethics because it facilitates the seamless integration of ethical accountability into marketing decision-making. Specific recommendations are made for improving the ethical climate in marketing using marketing performance measurement theory and practice.

Consumers as resource integrators

Abstract: Ongoing research on the service-dominant logic of marketing has identified consumers as integrators of operant resources (physical, social, cultural) as they actively immerse themselves in experiences. However, little is yet understood about how consumers integrate their operant resources and those of co-consumers in the course of defining experiences and creating value. Through exploration of a case study of a finite experiential episode (a consumer campaign to save a local, independent cinema), examples of the use and integration of consumer operant resources are highlighted, and characteristics of successful outcomes of consumer resource integration (the manner of consuming and co-consuming and the interaction with key elements of the external environment) are identified. Finally, a framework for systemised further studies of consumer resource integration is offered.

Service-dominant logic and resource theory

Abstract: Taking inspiration from the importance accorded resources in the emergent-service dominant logic marketing researchers might develop a more robust marketing ecology based on existing resource theories. Researchers may begin to think of firms and their customers as deploying operant and operand resources both to co-create discursively legitimated market spaces and provide inputs for value definition and delivery within them (Vargo and Lusch 2004). Spaces ranging from the Web, to industry clusters, to trade shows, and experiential retail exemplify the former (Leigh et al. 2006; Penaloza 2000; Spohrer et al. 2007). Service is the master category that defines that later, of which examples are legion (Arnould et al. 2006). Several literatures present themselves for developing resource centered ecological theory. I will highlight a few specific points of interest related to the resource based theory of the firm; organizational ecology; cluster theoretic models; social capital theory; and Foa’s interpersonal resource model. Each provides some distinctive contributions; each has limitations that would invite further theoretical development and empirical research. One source is the resource based theory of the firm that shares with the S-D perspective an interest in the strategic value of firms’ skills, knowledge and cultural competencies (Day and Wensley 1988; Wernerfelt 1995). This literature argues that such resources are heterogeneously distributed across firms, and that these distributions are relatively stable over time, thereby conveying a superior ability to capture resources (primarily economic) from customers. Aspects of operant resources that may generate sustained competitive advantage – value, rareness, imitateability, and substitutability – have been identified, but empirically-grounded dimensions could be better developed. Day (1994) and Hunt and Morgan (1995) famously suggest market orientation is such an advantage, or in Day’s terms, market sensing and customer linking capabilities. A paradox worth further exploration is Barney’s (1991) contention that if a firm’s advantageous resources were clearly defined, they would become replicable by competitors and their advantage lost versus Hunt and Morgan’s contention that causal ambiguity about operant resources represents a firm vulnerability. More generally in a fully networked economy, the idea of information asymmetry is problematized. Opportunities exist to specify the precise nature of firm sensing and customer linking capabilities, comparative typologies thereof, and the nature of their links to firm value propositions. Research that focuses on how organizational schema for market sensing and intervention are learned and deployed holds promise for helping us understand how firms co-construct marketspaces and populate them with value propositions (Gebhardt et al. 2006). In addition, this literature would benefit from a customer centric model of firm resources to know with what kinds of firm resources customers wish to engage on a transaction specific or relational level. Finally is a customercentric model of firm lifetime value imaginable? A second source of insight is organization ecology. This literature is concerned with deterministic models of the growth, development, and death of firms within a competitive resource space. Thus the unit of analysis is not the firm, but firms within a resource space (Haveman 1995; Ruef 1997; Van Witteloostuijn and Boone 2006). One J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2008) 36:21–24 DOI 10.1007/s11747-007-0072-y

Reconfiguration of the conceptual landscape: a tribute to the service logic of Richard Normann

Abstract: This article is a tribute to the late Richard Normann, whose call for a “service logic” (Normann, Reframing Business: When the Map Changes the Landscape, Wiley, Chichester, p. 99, 2001) both parallels and enriches service-dominant (S-D) logic (Vargo and Lusch, J. Mark, 68:1–17, 2004a). Like Vargo and Lusch, Normann shifted the focus of the offering from an output to a process of value creation and perceived the firm as an organizer of this process, with the customer as a co-producer, rather than a receiver of value. He also argued that offerings are “frozen knowledge,” similar to Vargo and Lusch’s contention that the basis of exchange is applied operant resources (service) and suggested that the ‘dematerialization’ of resources increases their ‘liquidity’, which allows increased “density” for value creation. Thus, he suggested that firms need to “reframe business”—rethink the logic of value creation—to reveal opportunities in reconfiguring the value constellations of which they are part. This tribute explores these and other similarities and differences between Normann’s work and the evolving S-D logic.

The Search for a Dominant Logic: A Macromarketing Perspective

Abstract: This paper suggests an extension to the Vargo and Lusch (2004) proposal where the fundamental unit of analysis is not the exchange itself but a marketing system within which the service dominant exchange is embedded The relevant marketing system could range from a micro-system in which the reciprocal creation of value through a single transaction between a buyer and seller is considered, to purposeful, structured, or emergent systems (such as supply chains, business ecosystems, or shopping malls), to the aggregate marketing system Five criteria are suggested that should be met by any proposed dominant logic or world view The system-embedded service-dominant (SESD) logic meets all five criteria and may reverse the growing fragmentation occurring in both micro- and macromarketing It redefines the relationship between micro- and macromarketing and in focusing attention on a meso level of analysis it opens up new horizons for research In a multidisciplinary setting it highlights what is intrinsic to mark

A service-dominant logic for management education: It's time

Abstract: Even though services dominate the U.S economy and figure prominently in other developed economies, principles for the effective provision of service experiences receive little attention in conventi...

Co-production and co-creation using self-service technology: the application of service-dominant logic

Abstract: Research on how customers engage in the co-creation processes envisaged by the Servicedominant logic paradigm is currently limited and even less work has been published on frameworks for organizations to manage the co-creation process. This conceptual paper examines a particular aspect of co-creation: co-production as a result of the application of self-service technology (SST). We propose a conceptual framework for co-production, which emphasizes the need to understand productivity from the point of view of the customer, and demonstrate how this can be applied in both consumer (b2c) and interorganizational(b2b) contexts. We conclude that service organizations might benefit from clearly identifying co-production with task-performance, and co-creation with the valueattributing aspects of the customer service experience. Both aspects generate a range of design and management challenges for suppliers particularly the need to understand the cocreation process 'outputs' desired by customers and the full costs of moving away from person to person interaction.

Re-inventing Wroe?:

Abstract: Marketing is a relatively young discipline and mainstream marketing education pays little attention to the discipline's development and history. While on the sidelines of the discipline there has been some criticism of the lack of a historical understanding of marketing's development, marketing too often produces theory without appropriate regard to past marketing theory. This paper considers the case of the `most important' paper on marketing theory in 2004 with reference to a leading marketing writer from the 1950s and 1960s. It finds support for the argument that the 2004 paper brings little novelty over the 1965 book to which it is compared.

Commentary on “The Essence of Business Marketing Theory, Research and Tactics: Contributions by the Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing,” by Lichtenthal, Mummalaneni, and Wilson: A Paradigm Shift and Prospection Through Expanded Roles of Buyers and Sellers

Abstract: The authors build upon the effort by Lichtenthal, Mummalaneni, and Wilson (2008) and others to applaud the B2B marketing progress to date and delineate the paradigm shift in marketing from goods to service-dominant logic, and from value creation to value cocreation. They argue that inquiry through the expanded roles of buyers-sellers will enable favorable innovation/customer/financial outcomes depending on the interaction(s) and metrics emphasized. They also provide the propositions that underline their logic.

Towards an alternative logic for electronic customer relationship management

Abstract: Traditional Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems are based on a model of exchange that centres on goods (goods-dominant logic), with value created by the firm and relationship implying multiple transactions of value-laden output. We explore an alternative logic of exchange (service-dominant logic) based on the reciprocal application of applied competences (service), which sees relationship in terms of the co-creation of value. We then review the partial transition of recent CRM models toward a service-dominant logic perspective and offer an initial service-dominant logic-informed next generation CRM system design.

Creating the service experience

Abstract: The topic for this special issue was approved in early 2006, with a 'Call for Papers' following in July 2006. The topic was emerging as important in 2006, but we did not forecast, at the time, how much more important it was to become by February 2008. In particular, the notion of 'the consumer experience' is central to current debates on the co-creation of value, the service-dominant logic of marketing and interdisciplinary approaches to service (for example, under the heading of 'service science', as presented in the QUIS Conference and Frontiers in Service Conference in 2007). We believe, therefore, that this special issue is very timely, and that the papers will encourage further research on the service experience and provide encouragement for the use of innovative methodologies in the quest for greater understanding. The papers offer insights into a diverse set of experiences: tourism consumption, department store shopping, student lectures and degree ceremonies, baseball attendance, and cinema-going....

Brand Community as Co-Creation Value in the Service-Dominant Logic of Marketing

Abstract: In this paper, we present the conceptual paper to adapt a new dominant logic of marketing for understanding the consumer behaviour in the globalization. To compete in the globalisation or localisation, companies need the potential marketing strategy in order to sustain their market position; therefore, they have to find the effective way to understand how consumers consume in the dynamic world which consumers seek the value and symbolic meaning from their consumption beyond functional utilities. This leaded to call for the new dominant logic of marketing. Vargo and Lusch (2004a) respond to this call by proposing the "Service-Dominant Logic of Marketing" or "S-D logic", a marketing paradigm evolution which shifts from the firm-centric or good-centred view to the consumer-centric or service-centred view. The idea is presented by resource-based theory to explain firms' and consumers' operant and operand resources (figure 1). In figure 2, we synthesise the S-D logic with the Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) by integrating theories of firms' resources and consumers' resources and adding the social dynamics within a group of consumers to understand the value co-creation process. This conceptual paper has several contributions to the consumer behaviour. First, it moves the level of consumer behaviour and consumption analysis from individuals to social dynamics. Second, because consumers in brand communities are an integral part of the co-creation value, the importance of consumer power to co-create value during their consumption has relevance to firms, as their control over the brand may be diminished. It advances the S-D logic in the value co-creation process between consumers and firms to emphasise co-creation among consumers who can jointly pressure firms to apply their core competencies to capture this value and process in order to create and deliver an effective value proposition. Finally, brand communities create value between consumers and consumers, and between consumers and marketers or brands in different forms and activities. Many researchers have been interested in the value from brand community which emerge from consumer interaction with brands or specific products, but very few researchers have concerned themselves with the co-creation value of consumers. Consequently, the question of "How do members of brand community co-create value", and "How do firms engage themselves with consumers' co-creation process" are asked. The response to this question provides a new perspective to the concept of brand community through linking the S-D logic of marketing, and CCT which suggests the idea of consumer co-creating values by the field.

German and Anglo-Saxon Approaches to Services and Services Marketing: Taking Stock - Looking Ahead

Abstract: The paper discusses what has been achieved by one German and two Anglo-Saxon approaches to services with reference to the concept of service, the analysis of service economies, and the tasks which evolve from that for the further development of marketing theory. It addresses three approaches to marketing theory: a German theory of the firm having roots in transaction cost economics and property rights theory, which has particularly gained influence in Germany's business-to-business marketing, a service-centered approach called 'service-dominant logic,' and the rental-access approach by Lovelock and Gummesson. The paper does not only compare recognitions and shortcomings of the above mentioned approaches; it also deals with the identification of criteria which will contribute to the advancement of this field of study.