Sara Martins Gonçalves and Rui Vinhas Silva
Institutions play a central role in service-dominant logic. However, the discussion regarding how institutional theory supports service-dominant logic advancements is still…
Abstract
Purpose
Institutions play a central role in service-dominant logic. However, the discussion regarding how institutional theory supports service-dominant logic advancements is still insufficient. This paper aims to contribute to a discussion on the multiple service-dominant logic approaches to institutions.
Design/methodology/approach
This conceptual paper presents the characterization of the existing streams in the broad institutional literature, highlighting the differences among those streams and elaborates on how one of the discussed streams – neo-institutionalism – is suitable to support service-dominant researchers in understanding the role of institutions in markets and value co-creation.
Findings
The paper shows that the three institutional perspectives presented are used indistinctly by service-dominant logic and a greater fit between the service-dominant logic and the neo-institutionalism stands out.
Originality/value
The paper proposes that service-dominant researchers should look at the neo-institutional stream as a particularly fertile ground for furthering their research.
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Stephen L. Vargo, Robert F. Lusch, Melissa Archpru Akaka and Yi He
While goods- and service-dominant logics are separated in most research as alternative and often incompatible paradigms, this paper aims to show how these logics can be and are…
Abstract
Purpose
While goods- and service-dominant logics are separated in most research as alternative and often incompatible paradigms, this paper aims to show how these logics can be and are combined in purchasing strategies in organizations. The paper also illustrates that multiple logics exist in addition to purely goods- or service-based logics.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on empirical data on the purchasing of management consulting services, which represent an extreme context for understanding the combination and intersection of goods- and service-dominant logics. In particular, four in-depth case studies and interviews with 51 sellers and 30 buyers of management consulting services are used to develop a typology of purchasing approaches that combines goods- and service-dominant logics.
Findings
The study shows that goods- and service-dominant logics are combined in two main purchasing phases: supplier set selection and assignment selection. In both these phases, parallel and knowledge-based, embedded and experience-based approaches were identified as ways of combining goods- and service-dominant logics in the purchasing context.
Research limitations/implications
The research presented in the following adds to our existing understanding of possible purchasing strategies under multiple logics in buying organizations. Future research should explore the conditions under which different strategies are and should be applied in organizations.
Practical implications
This paper gives practitioners alternative approaches to choose from in their purchasing and sales of knowledge-intensive services, in addition to transactional and relational strategies.
Originality/value
The research adds to existing research on business and industrial marketing by identifying particular purchasing strategies on a continuum between goods- and service-dominant logics.
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Ralf Wilden and Siegfried Gudergan
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of a firm’s service-dominant orientation on marketing and technological capabilities, and its performance. It outlines how…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of a firm’s service-dominant orientation on marketing and technological capabilities, and its performance. It outlines how a service-dominant orientation offers guidance for the development and deployment of ordinary capabilities, and indirectly affects performance. Additionally, it delineates how dynamic capabilities affect the impact of a service-dominant orientation on ordinary capabilities.
Design/methodology/approach
Partial least squares structural equation modeling drawing on data from 228 firms serves to assess hypotheses relating service-dominant orientation and dynamic capabilities with firm performance.
Findings
The results indicate that marketing and technological capabilities fully mediate the relationship between a firm’s service-dominant orientation and firm performance. Furthermore, the positive marginal effect of a firm’s service-dominant orientation on its marketing capabilities increases with the firm displaying a stronger service-dominant orientation. In addition, the positive effect of service-dominant orientation on marketing capabilities reduces the more the firm deploys dynamic capabilities.
Research limitations/implications
Because of the cross-sectional sample, future studies could adopt longitudinal research designs to explore the impact of a service-dominant orientation on ordinary capabilities and performance, or investigate the applicability of the findings in other contexts.
Practical implications
The findings imply that implementing a service-dominant orientation can be beneficial for firms. However, because the impact of such an orientation weakens the greater a firm’s dynamic capabilities, managers need to be mindful of this trade-off.
Originality/value
The study is the first to establish a link between the dynamic capability view, originating from strategy research, and service-dominant logic, stemming from marketing thinking.
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In the mainstream normative pricing literature, value assessment is virtually non-existent. Although the resource-based literature recognizes that pricing is a competence…
Abstract
Purpose
In the mainstream normative pricing literature, value assessment is virtually non-existent. Although the resource-based literature recognizes that pricing is a competence, value-informed pricing practices are still weakly grounded in theory. The purpose of this paper is to strengthen the theoretical grounds of such pricing practices.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper applies the emerging service-dominant logic of marketing to pricing. More specifically, it apples the ten foundational premises of service-dominant logic to pricing and it places pricing in the frameworks of one of the major building blocks of service-dominant logic, namely the resource-advantage theory of competition.
Findings
From a service-dominant perspective, price is the reward for the application of specialized knowledge and skills. Pricing is an operant resource, or competence, that assesses customer value, applies it in multi-dimensional price propositions, and implements it in processes of co-creating prices with customers. Value-informed pricing is the central pricing practice within such competences.
Practical implications
Prices vary among others between “good” and “bad”, firms generate competitive advantage not only through value creation, but also through pricing. Learning is key to develop pricing competences.
Originality/value
This paper is the first to ground value-informed pricing at high levels of abstraction in general marketing theory.
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This article seeks to advance a novel service network perspective, based on the service‐dominant logic, designated as service‐dominant networks (SDN).
Abstract
Purpose
This article seeks to advance a novel service network perspective, based on the service‐dominant logic, designated as service‐dominant networks (SDN).
Design/methodology/approach
Service‐dominant logic components serve to build and describe SDN. Specifically, resources and actors are key components, combined with activities and the process by which they become resources. A case study details the features of SDNs.
Findings
Service‐dominant networks exhibit unique, previously unaddressed features. According to the service‐dominant logic, components only become resources when they are integrated; thus, they disappear as resources after their integration, which means SDNs are fugacious: they (be‐)come and go. In addition, SDNs comprise one or more main intended activities that explain their existence, though these intended activities do not necessarily initiate any particular SDN. Rather, other critical incidents can initiate SDNs.
Research limitations/implications
The features of SDNs proposed in this article have not been a focus of prior research. In particular, the dynamics and fugaciousness of SDNs are challenges for research and management.
Originality/value
This article offers the first proposal of a novel, service‐dominant network perspective. In a very general and abstract form, it identifies the features of SDNs.
Details
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This paper aims to problematise critiques raised against customer accounting’s numeric focus, which risks controlling and simplifying customers rather than facilitating closer…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to problematise critiques raised against customer accounting’s numeric focus, which risks controlling and simplifying customers rather than facilitating closer engagement. This analysis suggests ways to better account for what it is that customers buy, why they do so and how to better serve them.
Design/methodology/approach
Service-dominant logic (SDL) is a marketing ideology that recognises the active role of customers in value creation. Seven customer accounting techniques are appraised against SDL principles to identify strengths and shortfalls in logic and application.
Findings
Customer accounting techniques align with SDL’s beneficiary-oriented and relational view of customers. Weaker alignment is found regarding a focus on outputs rather than outcomes, silence about the customer’s role in co-creating value and failure to recognise contextual circumstances.
Research limitations/implications
The analysis uses prototypical descriptions of customer accounting techniques. Actual applications could offset weaknesses or raise other shortfalls.
Practical implications
For each area of SDL, the authors suggest avenues for integrating SDL into customer accounting using related literature and building on concepts within customer accounting techniques.
Originality/value
SDL contrasts with the traditional, goods-dominant logic that underscores much of accounting. SDL is used to critically and constructively evaluate customer accounting techniques.
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Marco Tregua, Danilo Brozovic and Anna D'Auria
The purpose of this article was to provide an outline of the citation practices of “Evolving to a new dominant logic for marketing” by Vargo and Lusch (2004) to identify and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this article was to provide an outline of the citation practices of “Evolving to a new dominant logic for marketing” by Vargo and Lusch (2004) to identify and discuss the most prominent research topics in which citations were used and to suggest future research based on the results of the analysis.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors used a comprehensive framework of citation practices based on iterations of previous literature to analyze the relevant literature, which they identified by accessing, systematically and rigorously, every available contribution matching a set of criteria. The authors then categorized these contributions and highlighted the main topics of research interest in each category.
Findings
The findings identify some of the factors in the continuous development of SDL, the way this new marketing logic permeated the scientific debate, the infusion of Vargo and Lusch (2004) into several contributions framed in the new logic or justified through it, and a general perception of a default reference. Additionally, the findings highlight the main topics of research interest in each category.
Research limitations/implications
The analysis enabled the detection of the original paper's influence through advances in service studies, pollination into other fields of research and continuous scientific debate. The authors have highlighted several avenues for research and proposed future research directions.
Originality/value
This research analyzed the effects of the spread of the SDL cornerstone article and emphasized the advantage of using an in-depth approach to the analysis of studies through a framework applied to more than 4,600 studies.
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Bo Edvardsson, Gloria Ng, Choo Zhi Min, Robert Firth and Ding Yi
Few empirical studies have been conducted to explore the mechanisms and drivers of service exchange and value co‐creation. In particular, no study has compared a service system…
Abstract
Purpose
Few empirical studies have been conducted to explore the mechanisms and drivers of service exchange and value co‐creation. In particular, no study has compared a service system design informed by service‐dominant logic (SDL) with a service system design informed by goods‐dominant logic (GDL). The purpose of this paper is to address this knowledge gap. The research question is: does a service‐dominant system design result in a more favourable customer experience than a goods‐dominant service system?
Design/methodology/approach
An experiment was carried out on a group of habitual bus travellers. The subjects were asked to plan a specific journey using two online journey planning systems. Two hypotheses were tested: first, an SDL informed service system will evoke a better overall customer experience than a GDL informed service system. Second, this better customer experience arises out of seven service system design characteristics. Both objective and subjective data were gathered to compare the customers' experiences of using the two service systems.
Findings
The results show that a service‐dominant service system outperforms a goods‐dominant service system in terms of both objective and subjective criteria. Moreover, the experiment elucidates the subjects' perceived importance of the characteristics of a service‐dominant service system. Analysis of the subjects' perception of the two service systems reveals that certain characteristics set the service‐dominant service system more distinctly apart from the goods‐dominant one.
Originality/value
The paper contributes by extending the empirical foundation for service‐dominant logic, providing new knowledge on value co‐creation and design characteristics of service systems, and identifying the most important service system characteristics perceived by the customer.
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Jukka Ojasalo and Katri Ojasalo
The purpose of this study is to develop a service logic oriented framework for business model development. “Service logic” covers the basic principles of the three contemporary…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to develop a service logic oriented framework for business model development. “Service logic” covers the basic principles of the three contemporary customer value focused business logics: service-dominant logic, service logic and customer-dominant logic.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is based on an empirical qualitative research and deployed the focus group method. The data are generated in a series of interactive co-creative focus group workshops involving both practitioners and academics.
Findings
As the outcome, a new tool was developed, called Service Logic Business Model Canvas. The new canvas is a modified version of the original Business Model Canvas (Osterwalder and Pigneur, 2010).
Research limitations/implications
This study adopts service logic in business model thinking and increases knowledge on how to keep the customer needs in the centre of business model development.
Practical implications
The developed canvas makes the theory of service-dominant logic tangible and easily applicable in practice. It enables service innovation truly based on customer value by ensuring that the customer is in the centre of all the elements of a business model. It can function both as a rapid prototype of a new business model and as a communication tool that quickly illustrates the company’s current business model. It can also help in creating a customer-centred business culture. It is designed to be applied to each customer profile separately, thus enabling a deeper understanding of the customer logic of each relevant profile.
Originality/value
Earlier business model frameworks tend to be provider-centric and goods-dominant, and require further development and adaptation to service logic. This study adopts service logic in business model thinking. It embeds the true and deep customer understanding and customer value in each element of the business model, and contributes to both business model and service-dominant logic literature.