Where does service-dominant logic collide?

The proposal that marketing rests on a service-centred logic in which service, the applying of skills and knowledge for another party, is the fundamental basis of all exchange, and goods are only carriers of that service. Vargo and Lusch's 2004 Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing gathered scattered ideas into eight foundational premises and argued that value is co-created with the customer and realised in use, not embedded in a product at the factory. This is the founding statement of the worldview: the later framings on this page keep its core claim but rename it, add operant resources and institutions, or recast it as a Nordic service logic, so the disagreement is over labels and emphasis, not over a different thing.[1]

Unit

A foundational premise of the worldview, stated as a general axiom about exchange

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Assessed conceptually and by how far a study adopts the premises, rather than by a scale

A refinement of the same worldview that sharpened its language and raised the distinction between operand resources, the things acted on, and operant resources, the skills and knowledge that do the acting. Vargo and Lusch's 2008 Service-dominant logic: Continuing the evolution reworded the foundational premises and made the customer always a co-creator of value a central claim. It is not a rival construct but a second edition of the 2004 statement: it renames and tightens the same idea, which is exactly the pattern that makes the label a moving target across its own versions rather than a stable, single-name construct.[2]

Unit

A revised foundational premise, restated as a tighter axiom about exchange

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Assessed conceptually and by whether a study invokes operant resources and co-creation, not by a scale

An adjacent framing, developed in the Nordic school of service research, that shares the view of value as co-created and realised in use but assigns different roles to firm and customer. Gronroos's 2011 Value co-creation in service logic: A critical analysis argued that the customer is the value creator and the firm only a value facilitator, and it criticised service-dominant logic for treating co-creation too loosely. This construct overlaps heavily with the Vargo and Lusch worldview, yet it carries a different name, service logic, and a different account of who does what, so the two are easy to merge into one and just as easy to overstate as opposites.[3]

Unit

A premise about who creates and facilitates value in a service relationship

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Assessed conceptually and by whether a study places the customer as sole value creator, not by a scale

A later development of the worldview that shifts attention from single exchanges to service ecosystems, self-adjusting systems of actors held together by shared institutions and institutional arrangements. Vargo and Lusch's 2016 Institutions and axioms: An extension and update of service-dominant logic added institutions as a fifth axiom and recast value co-creation as coordinated by rules, norms, and shared meanings. This is the same construct viewed at a wider zoom: it keeps the founding claim about service and co-created value but wraps it in the language of ecosystems and institutions, so a reader meeting only this version may not recognise it as the 2004 idea under a new name.[4]

Unit

An axiom about actors, institutions, and value co-creation within a service system

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Assessed conceptually and by whether a study frames exchange as institutionally coordinated ecosystems, not by a scale