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The philosophical foundations determine how an academic discipline identifies, understands and analyzes phenomena. The choice of philosophical perspective is vital for both marketing and service research. This paper aims to propose a social and systemic perspective that addresses current challenges in service and marketing research by revisiting the philosophy of science debate.

The paper revisits the philosophy of science debate to address the implications of an emergent, complex and adaptive view of marketing and service research. It draws on critical realism by combining structuration and systemic perspectives.

A recursive perspective, drawing on structures and action, is suggested as it includes multiple actors’ intentions and captures underlying drivers of market exchange as a basis for developing marketing and service strategies in practice. This is aligned with other scholars arguing for a more systemic, adaptive and complex view of markets in light of emerging streams in academic marketing and service research, ranging from value cocreation, effectuation, emergence and open source to empirical phenomena such as digitalization, robotization and the growth of international networks.

The reciprocal dynamic between individuals and the overarching system provides a reflexivity approach intrinsic to the service ecosystem. This creates new avenues for research on marketing and service phenomena.

This paper discusses critics, conflicts and conceptualization in service research. It suggests a possible approach for service research and marketing scholars capable of responding to current complexities and turbulence in economic and societal contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how service design practices reshape mental models to enable innovation. Mental models are actors’ assumptions and beliefs that guide their behavior and interpretation of their environment.

This paper offers a conceptual framework for innovation in service ecosystems through service design that connects the macro view of innovation as changing institutional arrangements with the micro view of innovation as reshaping actors’ mental models. Furthermore, through an 18-month ethnographic study of service design practices in the context of healthcare, how service design practices reshape mental models to enable innovation is investigated.

This research highlights that service design reshapes mental models through the practices of sensing surprise, perceiving multiples and embodying alternatives. This paper delineates the enabling conditions for these practices to occur, such as coaching, diverse participation and supportive physical materials.

This study brings forward the underappreciated role of actors’ mental models in innovation. It highlights that innovation in service ecosystems is not simply about actors making changes to their external context but also actors shifting their own assumptions and beliefs.

This paper offers insights for service managers and service designers interested in supporting innovation on how to catalyze shifts in actors’ mental models by creating the conditions for specific service design practices.

This paper is the first to shed light on the central role of actors’ mental models in innovation and identify the service design practices that reshape mental models.

The paper aims to conceptualize how behavioral shifts in times of crisis drive the transformation of value co-creation.

Referencing two empirical contexts, the paper explores how digital service platforms facilitate changes in actors’ mental models and institutional arrangements (legal, social, technological) that drive transformation of value co-creation in service ecosystems.

The proposed conceptual framework contributes to existing research by identifying micro-level changes in actors’ mental models and macro-level changes in institutional arrangements enabled by digital service platforms in service ecosystems. In particular, the framework identifies motivation, agility and resistance as moderators of behavioral shifts in times of crisis. This account offers a finer-grained theorization of the moderating factors and underlying mechanisms of service ecosystem transformation but does not extend to the ensuing “new normal.”

The proposed framework indicates how digital platforms support shifts in actors’ behavior and contribute to the transformation of value co-creation. While the enablers are situation-specific and may therefore vary according to the prevailing conditions, the actor-related concepts advanced here seem likely to remain relevant when analyzing the transformation of value co-creation in other crisis situations.

The new conceptual framework advanced here clarifies how behavioral shifts during a crisis drive the transformation of value co-creation and suggests directions for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the characteristics of actors that allow them to relate to others actors in the system through shared intentionality (orientation) and the nature of the A4A relationship and the results that such interactions bring to the emergent system based on this shared purpose (finality).

The topic is approached by theoretical analysis and conceptual development of three integrative frameworks: the sociological perspective, service-dominant logic and a particular perspective of system thinking: the viable system approach (vSa).

The A4A relationships involve value co-creation based on actors integrating their resources and acting with intentionality to obtain value by providing benefits to other parties and by belonging to the emergent viable system; actor acts for other actors directly involved in the relationship generating positive effects for the whole system in which it is contextualized.

Future empirical research might better support findings.

Many social implications deriving from an augmented role of actors engaged within social relationships in co-creation exchanges. From the title of the paper A4A over on the manuscript describes numerous social inferences of actors in co-creation.

A4A is a relationship formed by actors that interact for the benefit of the whole system in which are involved. They find own benefit from the benefit created for the system in which they live and act. In A4A relationships the value of the single actor comes from the participation to the viability of the whole system.

This paper aims to examine the extent to which exporter difficulties in evaluating foreign sales agent performance affect export performance, either directly or as mediated by opportunism.

In developing the hypotheses, the study integrates transaction cost theory and principal-agent theory. The proposed relationships between the constructs (performance ambiguity, opportunism, and export performance) are examined for a multi-industry sample of Norwegian exporters in their dealings with foreign sales agents. A survey of 410 qualified key informants yielded 101 usable questionnaires – a response rate of 24.6%. Structural equation modeling is used for data analysis and hypothesis testing.

The analysis finds support for the hypothesis that sales agent performance ambiguity relates negatively to export performance. While performance ambiguity is positively related to sales agent opportunistic behavior, opportunism does not significantly influence export performance. It seems that the adaptation costs created by the evaluation problem are of greater importance in reducing export performance than the costs created by opportunistic behavior.

In focusing on the core dimensions of sales agent performance in foreign markets, other factors influencing export performance are not included. The fact that small Norwegian firms dominate the sample, further limits application and generalization of the findings. Hence, results should be interpreted with caution and the study considered as investigative. Nevertheless, the results indicate to export managers and theory potentially deteriorating dimensions in the relationship between exporter and foreign independent sales agent.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine how performance ambiguity and opportunistic behavior among foreign sales agents affect export performance. By concentrating on basic deteriorating dimensions, the study adds to the few that focus on inhibiting drivers of exporter – foreign–sales–agent relationships.

Although service research typically asserts that institutions coordinate actors’ value creation processes, institutions and resources are not necessarily transparent, aligned, or pre-existing. This paper aims to develop a more granular perspective on how actors coordinate for value.

Drawing on the established concepts of signaling and screening theory, this paper adopts a service marketing perspective to explore how independent heterogeneous actors coordinate for value creation at the individual level. Illustrative cases of corporate startup collaborations are presented in support of the proposed conceptual framework.

Actors share and acquire information through signaling and screening activities in a coordinative dialogue with other actors. These resource integration activities (for resource creation and matching) affect actors’ valuations and future actions.

The one-sided explanations of coordination in the existing literature reflect the dominance of the institutional theory. By contrast, the proposed agency-oriented perspective based on the integration of signaling and screening functions offers a more granular conceptualization of the resource integration process. As well as capturing how actors use coordinating dialogue to match resources and institutions, this account also shows that matching is a core element of resource integration rather than an antecedent. The findings indicate paths for future research that focus on the actor.

Service managers increasingly strive to achieve sustainability through strategies centered on circularity. With a focus on saving, extending and (re)generating resources and their enclosing service systems, circularity can contribute to environmental, social and financial gains. Yet, the notion of circularity is surprisingly understudied in service research. This article seeks to provide an initial conceptual understanding of circular service management, introducing illustrative strategies and research priorities for circular service management. This paper provides a roadmap for scholars, practitioners and policymakers to develop a deeper understanding of the opportunities from adopting circular services.

The authors explore the concept of circular service management by drawing upon existing literature on sustainability, circularity and service research. Strategies of circular service management and research priorities emerge on the basis of industry best practice examples and research on sustainability challenges and opportunities.

Service researchers have largely ignored the concept and role of circularity for service businesses. Extant research on the topic nearly exclusively features in non-service journals and/or does not seek to advance service theory through circularity. This article argues that circular service management enables the implementation of service thinking in the pursuit of sustainability and outlines four types of circular service management strategies.

The authors introduce the concept of circular service management and highlight the role of service research for designing and managing circular systems and operations. This article also offers a research agenda connecting managerial challenges and opportunities with key service research priorities for circular service management. This provides a roadmap for scholars, practitioners and policymakers to develop a deeper understanding of pursuing circular services, thereby contributing to a more sustainable future.

A service system, including self-service technologies (SSTs), should facilitate actors’ value co-creation processes to enhance customer experiences. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how customers’ experiences – both favorable and unfavorable – are formed by identifying the underlying drivers when using SSTs in the context of a self-service-based system. The authors also analyze customers’ journeys, which occur before, during, and after their experience with a self-service-based system with SSTs.

An exploratory, inductive study examines customers’ self-service experiences of using an SST. By undertaking 60 customer interviews, an event-based technique identified 200 favorable and unfavorable experienced events, which consist of activities and interactions identified through open coding guided by a theoretical framework. Customers’ experiences form through social norms and rules, referred to here as schemas. The authors sorted the drivers into four main categories of schemas (informational, relational, organizational, and technological) and into three categories: before, during, and after the store visit.

The authors identified 13 favorable and unfavorable customer experience drivers that guide value co-creation and explain how the flow of value co-creation helps form customers’ experiences.

The results are limited to one self-service system context and therefore do not provide statistical generalizability. In addition, the examined company already focusses on customer experiences; other organizations may have different experience drivers.

The results explain what is important when designing an SST-based service system. Besides, managers can promote the drivers in this research as advantages customers can gain by using self-service.

This study offers original contributions by: first, classifying and analyzing 13 experience drivers in four categories grounded in customers’ schemas; and second, offering a new conceptualization that focusses on the formation of customers’ experiences during a value co-creation process – that is, the customer's journey – rather than on the outcome experience only.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual model of customer complaining behaviour as a dynamic process in accordance with the service‐dominant logic perspective of marketing.

The study reviews the common behaviour models of customer complaints and relates this to the service‐dominant logic perspective in order to develop and describe a dynamic conceptual model of customer complaining behaviour.

The proposed model posits three categories of complaining behaviour due to a customer's unfavourable service experience: no complaining response, communication complaining responses, and action complaining responses.

Empirical validation of the proposed conceptual model is needed.

The proposed model can be used by managers to understand the various behaviour responses of customer complaints that the company experiences. In addition, the model assists in framing appropriate managerial responses, including service recovery and improved service design.

The study represents a thorough conceptual examination of the complaint process and proposes a dynamic model of customer complaining behaviour based on the service‐dominant logic perspective.

Purpose – The aim is to introduce a sociological perspective on resource integration and value co-creation into service research using a service systems approach.

Methodology/approach – Conceptual and a case study of the service system a Telecom Equipment and Service Provider is embedded in is reported.

Findings – The service practice of the service system is framed by social structures of signification, legitimation, and domination. However, the practice is also independent of the structures since it is embedded in and shapes the structural realm.

Research implications and limitations – Drawing on structuration and practice theory, the chapter offers a new framework describing how social and service structures and practices can inform and reveal mechanisms of service system dynamics. Based on the framework, three propositions are developed focusing on the mechanisms of resource integration and value co-creation. The implications need to be generalized in future research by studying other empirical contexts.

Practical implications – The chapter provides some tentative guidelines on how organizations can design service systems that enable and support customers and other actors in their resource integration and value co-creation processes by paying attention to social structures and forces and not only resources as such.

Originality – The chapter explicates how social structures have implications for value co-creation and resource integration in service system. It makes systematic use of structuration and practice theory to understand the social dimensions of service systems. A distinction between intended and realized resource integration is made.