Marketing Theory http://mtq.sagepub.com/ The logical structure of the service-dominant logic of marketing
John Williams
Marketing Theory 2012 12: 471
DOI: 10.1177/1470593112457745
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>> Version of Record - Dec 9, 2012
What is This?
What is S-D Logic?
The concept of the S-D logic of marketing made its public debut in an award-winning article in the
Journal of Marketing (Vargo and Lusch, 2004). That article is essentially an integrative literature review. The authors are not proposing any new theory, rather they are describing trends in marketing thought that have been influential and well accepted in certain circles, but have not yet reached total mainstream acceptance. These ideas are then integrated into a coherent framework, summarized in a set of eight ‘FPs’).
It is important to realize that some of the premises contained in that paper are not hypotheses or propositions in the sense that they are empirical (and hence disprovable) statements about the world. Rather, they are concisely expressed statements of a coherent philosophical lens (i.e. not a world view or paradigm, according to Vargo and Lusch) for examining markets and marketing.
They provide a framework for understanding and analysing markets and marketing phenomena, but some of them cannot be said to be true or false; they are simply ways of looking at things. The following example may make these ideas more clear.
At the business briefing that followed the Otago Forum on the Service-Dominant Logic (Aitken et al., 2006), Robert Lusch told the audience about how he teaches undergraduate marketing

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