There have been numerous calls for more relevance in academic marketing, both for and by practitioners and for customers (e.g., Sheth and Sisodia 2006, Hunt 2018, Jaworski, Kohli, and Sahay 2000). It might seem that these calls signal the need for more applied research, based on real data and real-world problems. However, it seems to me that there has never before been such a plethora of empirical articles in marketing journals as there are presently and thus the problem must be much more basic.

Marketing research studies tend to be classified, especially in the United States, under the overlapping and somewhat incoherent rubrics of “quantitative,” “strategy,” and “consumer behavior.” The vast majority of these are empirical, using quantitative data to support hypothetical claims. In the former two categories, these data are usually real-world, secondary data and in the latter, they are often generated in laboratory settings or from surveys. In some parts of the world, there is more emphasis on qualitative research, often using real-world, case-study data. In short, there has been a heavy reliance on empirically-driven studies across all geographic areas. However, most of these articles have relatively little impact, at least as evidenced by citation counts, either in other academic journals or (especially) textbooks. So, what is missing?

What’s more, there seems to be an almost total disjunction between academic journals, what is taught in marketing courses, and what practitioners do. In fact, one needs to look no further than what is taught in the classroom to see there is a relevance problem. It is typically centered on a loosely coupled array of concepts more or less held together by a common focus on the construct of a marketing mix, exemplified by the 4Ps (product, price, promotion and place). At the heart of the marketing mix is of course the product, conceptualized in terms of an output (ideally tangible) created by a firm. The market then represents the group of people who are assumed to have some need for this output and the central aim of consumer behavior becomes the determination of how these people, based on their characteristics, can be segmented into sub-markets so that products can be properly positioned to be attractive to them. Presumably, strategy, pulls all of this together under the rubrics of segmenting, targeting, and positioning (STP). But can the normative concerns of strategy really be used to stitch together the components of the marketing mix, leading to relevant outcomes? There are exceptions to this simplified, product-centered and STP framework of course, but generally, it has been the dominant logic of not just marketing, but also business and economics. Competing organizing frameworks have had difficulty getting a foothold.

Partly for this reason, many scholars, including editors of elite marketing journals, increasingly pointed out the need for more conceptual articles (Ketchum and Hult 2018, Palmatier, Houston, and Hulland 1918, Yadav 2018) and they are probably correct to do so, at least in part. But, can more conceptual articles, by themselves, solve the problem of relevance? I doubt it. Rather, it seems to me that the problems are even more fundamental than that: (1) we are, at least partly, studying the wrong subject matter and (2) we have too little theory, at least of the right kind.

Products versus Value Creation

I suggest that part of the problem rests with the notion that markets are fundamentally about products; they are not and never have been. Clearly, products are often exchanged. However, they are not the purpose of the exchange. Goods just represent exchange devices that help create what Baldwin (2008) calls thin crossing points, the virtual venues that allow two actors to reciprocally pass their applied skills to each other in order to mutually provide input into something each is trying to accomplish in their lives—i.e., benefit, value. They are boundary objects between two institutionally demarcated spheres of responsibility—for example, production and use. That is, the market is about actors, often identified as “firms” and “customers” reciprocally enriching each other’s lives. To be sure, products, and the other, ancillary Ps are important, but does anyone really believe that marketing is fundamentally just about manipulating these variables to establish positioning for some existing target market segment? Does it capture what successful firms really see themselves doing?

The suggestion of a contrary position to a product-centered logic is of course not entirely new. Many scholars have questioned academic marketing’s dominant logic (e.g., Sheth and Sisodia 2006, Van Waterschoot and Van den Bulte 1992) and Levitt (1960) scolded marketing’s myopic focus on the product over 50 years ago. Interestingly, his Harvard Business Review article, arguably the most-cited marketing article in history, is still being used today in marketing classes around the world. I use it in my own marketing management classes and find that the students quite easily “get it,” agreeing that product-centric thinking is flawed. However, once doing so, they migrate back to a discussion of markets in terms of products. Why? The answer has traditionally lain in the lack of an accepted, or at least acceptable, alternative understanding of the role of products and the purpose of economic.

However, the tide seems to be shifting to a value-creation model, in which it is becoming recognized that it is not the output of the firm that is the critical focus; rather, it is the benefit experienced by customers – that is, value creation (Vargo, Maglio, and Akaka 2008). Also increasingly, it is becoming recognized that this value is cocreated (Vargo and Lusch 2008, Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004), not just by the firm or the beneficiary (e.g., customer) or even the firm and the beneficiary but, more generally, by the beneficiary and a whole host of other, market-facing, public, and private actors. From this perspectives, goods become understood in terms of facilitating devises for value cocreation, rather than carriers of value.

Marketing versus Markets

As I have argued elsewhere (Vargo 2007), academic marketing has been trying to be an applied science without a sufficient basic-science foundation (see also Arndt 1985). That is, we are trying to teach normative marketing without a clear understanding of markets, how they are formed, and how they function. This might seem odd but, as Venkatesh, Penaloza, and Fuat (2006) have point out, “the market is everywhere and nowhere in marketing.” The reasons for this are that (1) marketing, as a normative science, is built on a positive economics foundation that is itself built on Smith’s (1776 [1904]) normative conceptualization of national wealth creation and (2) we assume that economic science is grounded in an understanding of the market. However, as North (1977), a Nobel Laureate in economics science, tells us, economics has not studied the market either. Thus, what is needed is a theory of the market.

The Need for Holistic, Explanatory Theory

Overriding all of the concerns about subject matter is an even more fundamental one: marketing is characterized by a near dearth of theory or, more accurately, a dearth of general or overarching, or grand theory, even though there are some midrange and micro-level theories. Theory plays several roles in any science. Most often the primary task is seen as prediction (Hunt 2010) but this is not its only role and might not even be possible in all cases (see Vargo and Lusch 2017). As important, if not more so, theory ties together more basic elements – e.g., lawlike generalizations, sub theories, and insights and provides explanation. Thus, higher-level theory has the potential of establishing and solidifying the nomological network associated with a subject matter – in this case, the market – for subsequent application, that is, marketing.

Service-Dominant Logic: An Example of the Role of Theory

When I was doing the groundwork for what became to be known as service-dominant (S-D) logic in the mid 1990s, I had no clear vision of turning it into grand theory development, nor do I believed did Bob Lusch when we later joined our efforts (though Bob did have a long-standing interest in a general theory of marketing). The initial quest was more concern with (1) making sense of the goods vs services divide and (2) questioning whether or not goods (products) were the proper focus for understanding the market or marketing. However, with the input from hundreds of scholars from around the world, S-D logic has morphed into something much more; a holistic and integrated, metatheoretical framework that is, arguably, potentially generalizable across, not only market and marketing phenomena, but also other social, value-cocreating activities. While Bob and I have never claimed full theory status, others have suggested that S-D logic has achieved, or is close to achieving, that position (e.g., Benoit et al. 2017).

At the heart of the S-D logic model is the concept of service, conceptualized in terms of one actor using its resources for another actor’s (or its own) benefit. The purpose of this reciprocal service exchange is value cocreation, benefit, conceptualized in terms of viability, or wellbeing for a focal actor created through contributions of multiple actors. This is a much more encompassing of value than the traditional and more restrictive, good-for-goods or good-for-money conceptualizations.

S-D logic has taken several important turns (Vargo and Lusch 2017) since the publishing of its initial article (Vargo and Lusch 2004). These have been aimed at the refinement and addition of core concepts, especially institutions and service ecosystems and the refinement of foundational premises (FP). The current version of S-D logic comprises just five axioms (Table 1) and a simple narrative: Value cocreation takes place through social and economic actors, integrating resources and reciprocally exchanging service, coordinated by endogenously generated, shared institutions and institutional arrangements, forming service ecosystems, which provide the context for future value creation through service exchange through resource integration. Institutions, as used here, are shared, often taken from granted, norms, rules, symbol, and other coordinating heuristics (Vargo and Lusch 2016, Scott 2008) and institutional arrangements are interrelated sets of intuitions. While parsimonious, it is a narrative that has found widespread applicability, including marketing subdisciplines such as branding, consumer culture theory, social marketing, and customer/actor engagement, to name a few. It has also found acceptance in many, diverse non-marketing, business-focused (sub)disciplines, such as information technology, hospitality management, and human resources, as well as non-business areas, such as civil engineering, healthcare, the arts, and library science (for a more comprehensive list and sources, see Vargo and Lusch 2017).

It is important to understand that, while S-D logic is metatheoretical and thus, by definition, represents a high level of abstraction, it nonetheless is applicable to all levels of aggregation. That means that the S-D logic narrative can be used to explain individual, dyadic, organizational, “industry,” or societal level value cocreation as seen from various levels of aggregation (see Vargo and Lusch 2017 for a more detailed discussion of levels of abstraction and aggregation). In fact, as Chandler and Vargo (2011) point out, to understand phenomena at one level of aggregation, it is necessary to zoom in and zoom out to observe them from the actor-to-actor interactions and institutional contexts that are apparent from other levels. While S-D logic represents a higher level of abstraction, Vargo and Lusch (2017) have called for more midrange and micro-foundational research. This is because metatheory, while essential, for reasons stated, cannot be directly tested and applied.

The accommodativeness and applicability of S-D logic can be seen in a recent stream of related research. Vargo, Wieland, and Akaka (2015) used S-D logic to reframe innovation, both in technology and in markets. The process was to reconcile the respective literatures with S-D logic’s institutional and ecosystems, metatheoretical framework. Then, in Wieland, Hartmann, and Vargo (2017), these reconciliations were extended to include business model innovation. Part of that reconciliation process can be seen in Table 2. These reconciliations accomplish several things. First, they provide a common, single theoretical framework, which allows the various individual frameworks and literatures to inform each other, potentially extending each. Second, at least in this instance, they afford a fractal, institutionally based model of value cocreation. That is, the metatheoretical narrative of S-D logic can be seen, not only similarly explaining each of the three areas of interest at a meso level of aggregation (i.e., technological, market, and business model innovation), but also as explaining how they jointly and interactively lead to value cocreation. This fractal model is depicted in Figure 1.

The use of S-D logic in the above does not suggest that it holds any inherent, privileged position as an overarching theoretical framework, though no other contenders for that role immediately come to mind. Rather, it is discussed here to demonstrate the potential theoretical elegance and integrative potency of grand theory. Over 60 years ago, Wroe Alderson (1957 p. 69), whom many feel was the greatest marketing academic of all time, proclaimed “What is needed is not an interpretation of the utility created by marketing, but a marketing interpretation of the whole process of creating utility [value creation].” Hopefully, as it seems, based on its increasing acceptance, not only in marketing but beyond, S-D logic represents an advancement in that direction.

Either way, the need for more grand theory development remains. I suggest that it is only through its development that empirical research can become more relevant. That is, only through overarching and unifying theory can the bits and pieces of what we think we know from empirical investigation be synthesized into a more holistic understanding of the market. In doing so, it affords the potential of allowing midrange theories from various subdisciplines to inform and reinforce each other and to reveal tensions and paradoxes that require further investigation, thus creating more robust exhalations of market-related phenomena. This more cohesive and better validated nomological foundation can, in turn, lend itself to defining more relevant market-informed, normative theory of marketing for practitioners.

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Enlace alternativo

https://periodicos.uninove.br/index.php?journal=remark&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=12423&path%5B%5D=5986 (pdf)