Value in Services – A Service Dominant Logic Perspective

Abstract

Along with the changing logic of marketing from goods-dominant view to service-dominant view, the services marketing which has long been sharply separated from the marketing of goods is directly influenced. With the change in the logic to the understanding that the core of an exchange is the service provision rather than products (Vargo & Lusch, 2004a), the services literature has entered into a crisis time for which Lovelock & Gummesson, (2004) suggested that a re-evaluation of some concepts of services marketing is of upmost importance. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to re-evaluate the value concept in services marketing. Specifically, an evaluation of how the term value has been defined and utilized within different marketing and consumption patterns from the goods dominant to service dominant logic eras is provided and an integrative value approach encompassing multiple levels of value creation process is proposed.