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A new marketing definition was issued by AMA in 2007. However, the new definition has argued that marketing covers a set of activities that guide organizations to achieve their business objectives. Perhaps, exploring the new insight of service practitioners would enhance the understanding of how the new marketing definition is universally applicable, especially in a developing country. This paper seeks to focus on the issues.

The qualitative research was conducted on a sample of managers who worked in a low‐cost carrier (LCC) airline. Four managers of ten LCCs agreed to participate in the study. The interviewees had to comment on their business challenges and current practices. The researcher then classified the interviewees' comments and opinions into sub‐topics.

There are some future agenda and implications for practitioner and service marketing researchers to develop service quality in the Indonesian LCC industry. The factors are corporate image, employees' capabilities, and a strong bonding with reliable suppliers.

In the LCC industry, the combination of internal and external supplier capabilities to deliver service quality is a business strategy to gain service breakthroughs.

This is preliminary investigation to identify a new research agenda in service marketing and to improve the quality of LCC service in Indonesia.

The purpose of this paper is to present a framework – the Relationality Framework – for elaborating relational behaviour, in response to calls to address the ontological weaknesses identified in the extant value and value creation literature.

The social philosophical understanding of interaction as an organic mode of social organisation, upon which the Relationality Framework is based, supersedes the economistic (mechanistic) understanding of interaction as a means of connecting otherwise independent actors. In foregrounding the relationality of interaction, the authors are inspired by Grönroos and Voima’s (2013) conceptualisation of spheres of value generation to conceptualise the intersubjective dynamics and domains invoked in direct interaction.

The Relationality Framework identifies distinct relational concepts that build on service logic’s specificity and conceptualisation at the level of direct interactions between service providers and customers. In particular, this paper develops the concept of “relationality” using the three domains in any interaction of I, Other and We.

The Relationality Framework provides sound conceptual support for extending the theoretical and practical analysis of the value creation processes of the customer and of the firm and for the purposeful management of relationships to enhance value creation by both.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a reflective account of the emergence of new marketing theory as seen through the lens of the Nordic School of Service.

The paper is based on documents and the authors' self‐lived history and current involvement (“management action research”).

Northern European scholars, especially from Finland and Sweden, have felt free to design their own theory, at the same time collaborating internationally. Contributions include an early alert to services and business‐to‐business (B2B) marketing being neglected; dissatisfaction with service quality; that the service economy is more than the service sector; and the insight that relationship marketing and many‐to‐many network marketing better represent service reality. A novel service logic abandoning the divisive goods/services, B2B/B2C (business‐to‐consumer), and supplier/customer categories, based on commonalities and interdependencies is arriving. Nordic School methodology is characterised by induction, case study research, and theory generation, to better address complexity and ambiguity in favour of validity and relevance. In the 2000s, the synthesis provided by service‐dominant (S‐D) logic, IBM's service science, and network and systems theory have inspired a lively international dialogue.

The hegemony of the marketing management of mass‐manufactured consumer goods was challenged when services entered the marketing agenda in the 1970s. During the 1980s and 1990s the differences been goods marketing and service marketing were explored and the understanding for relationships, networks and interaction developed. It gradually laid the ground for the integrated goods/services approach that is now the major challenge for service researchers and practitioners alike.

It is unfortunate if developments of marketing in the USA are perceived as a universal standard for marketing. By studying contributions from many cultures and nations in other countries the paper enhances the understanding of the diversity of marketing. This article presents such a case from Northern Europe.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to analyse the implications generated by a service perspective.

A conceptual analysis of two approaches to understanding service perspectives, service logic (SL) and service-dominant logic (SDL), reveals direct and indirect marketing implications.

The SDL is based on a metaphorical view of co-creation and value co-creation, in which the firm, customers and other actors participate in the process that leads to value for customers. The approach is firm-driven; the service provider drives value creation. The managerial implications are not service perspective-based, and co-creation may be imprisoned by its metaphor. In contrast, SL takes an analytical approach, with co-creation concepts that can significantly reinvent marketing from a service perspective. Value gets created in customer processes, and value creation is customer driven. Ten managerial SL principles derived from these analyses offer theoretical and practical conclusions with the potential to reinvent marketing.

The SDL can direct researchers’ and managers’ views towards complex value-generation processes. The SL can analyse this process on a managerial level, to derive customer-centric, service perspective-based opportunities to reinvent marketing.

The analysis and principles help marketing break free from offering only value propositions and become an organisation-wide responsibility. Firms must organise service-influenced marketing and create a customer focus among all employees, beyond conventional marketing.

A service perspective on business has key managerial implications and enables researchers and managers to find new, customer-centric, service-influenced marketing approaches.

In the Western world we are already living in a service economy. Services do not only account for a substantial part of gross national product, but they are also becoming the basis for a competitive advantage for many firms. Moreover, it is not only important to manage services successfully in the service sector of the economy. For manufacturers of goods, the service elements in their customer relations are becoming increasingly important. A competitive advantage can be developed by managing these services well. Implementing a service strategy requires a new “service know‐how”. Five rules of service are put forward and discussed in the present article. These rules cover demand analysis, quality control and marketing.

The field of service research has devoted considerable attention to the customer’s role as value creator, but there is a lack of research on understanding customers’ psychological processes in value creation. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of psychological distance in value-creation processes. Psychological distance is the customer’s perceived distance from service interactions in terms of spatial distance, temporal distance, social distance and hypothetical distance. Critically, psychological distance influences cognitive processes and can influence how customers think and feel about the service interaction. An appreciation of psychological distance within service contexts can help managers to tailor the interaction in order to facilitate value creation.

In this conceptual paper, the authors build on psychology research and service research to develop seven propositions that explore how psychological distance can operate within service interactions and how this might influence value creation.

The authors divide the propositions into three sections. The first concerns how perceived psychological distance from the service interaction can act as a barrier to entering a service interaction. In particular, the authors consider the influence of social distance and spatial distance within the context of service interactions. The second section examines how psychological distance to the expected point of service use can influence how customers construe the service and the value creation. The third aspect addresses customer-specific characteristics that can impact on value creation by influencing perceived psychological distance toward the service.

Existing research suggests that customers ultimately decide if value is created in the interaction. This paper proposes that perceived psychological distance influences customers’ value creation by examining the service interaction from the customer perspective. The authors suggest that complex context-specific features of the service interaction can be understood by considering psychological distance from the service interaction and from the service itself and evaluating how this impacts on value-creation processes.

From a practical point of view, the paper helps managers to better understand how to manage the service interaction with customers by identifying psychological antecedents of customer value creation.

The paper introduces the notion of psychological distance into service research about value, proposing that the customer’s role in creating value in interactions with the service provider is influenced by the psychological distance to the interaction and to the service offered in this interaction.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the ontological and semantic foundations of consumer-dominant value creation to clarify the extent to which the call for a distinct consumer-dominant logic (CDL) is justified. This paper discusses consumer-driven value creation (value-in-use) across three different marketing logics: product-dominant logic (PDL), service-dominant logic (SDL) and CDL. PDL conceptualises value as created by firms and delivered to consumers through products. SDL frames consumer value as a function of direct provider-consumer interaction, or consumer-driven chains of action indirectly facilitated by the provider. Recently, the research focus has been turning to consumer-dominant value creation. While there is agreement on the significance of this phenomenon, there is disagreement over whether consumer-dominant value creation is an extension of SDL or calls for a distinct CDL.

This is a conceptual paper, which is informed by five cases of consumer dominance. The cases are used to clarify rather than verify the analysis of the ontological and semantic underpinnings of consumer-dominant value creation.

The ontological and semantic analysis demonstrates that PDL and SDL have insufficient explanatory power to accommodate substantial aspects of consumer-dominant value creation. By implication, this supports the call for a distinct CDL.

This paper contributes to the ongoing theoretical debate over the explanatory power of SDL by demonstrating that SDL is unable to accommodate important ontological and semantic aspects of consumer-driven value creation.

The purpose of the paper is to explore how service marketing knowledge is applied in practice. It introduces some ideas about how to bridge the gap between scholarly knowledge and business practices, and thereby opens up the conversation between service marketing scholars and management practitioners.

This qualitative study focusses on four concepts of service marketing (service quality, servicescape, internal marketing and augmented service offering). Knowledge use is studied according to the degree service marketing knowledge is applied at symbolic, conceptual and instrumental levels. Four firms are involved.

Service marketing knowledge was acknowledged within the firms. However, the application of the knowledge in practice was limited, resulting in shortcomings and negative consequences in terms of marketing outcomes. Hence, the knowledge was used mainly symbolically and conceptually, and the instrumental use of the knowledge was limited.

By comparing the current use of knowledge to the levels of knowledge, the findings contribute to the understanding of why shortcomings of knowledge use develop and the study introduces ideas about how to bridge the gap between service marketing knowledge and business practices. Using this approach, the study contributes to the debate on knowledge “translation,” transfer, exchange and sharing between scholars and practitioners.

The study shows how management practitioners could understand and analyze their own practices as they develop their services and customer-oriented practices. It offers insights for scholars who seek to share scholarly knowledge for practical use.

The study contributes to the discussion on the use of scholarly knowledge by focussing on knowledge related to service marketing. Moreover, it focusses on not only the use of service marketing knowledge but also how it is used. By applying the three usage levels, the study recommends systematic means to detect gaps and shortcomings in knowledge use.

The objective of the article is to discuss a framework of central processes in relationship marketing. The framework includes an interaction process as the core, a planned communication process as the marketing communications support through distinct communications media, and a customer value process as the outcome of relationship marketing. If the interaction and planned communication processes are successfully integrated and geared towards customers' value processes, a relationship dialogue may merge.

The collective, interactive aspects of service experience are increasingly evident in contemporary research and practice, but no integrative analysis of this phenomenon has been conducted until now. The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize service experience co-creation and examines its implications for research and practice.

To map the multi-approach research area of service experience co-creation, the study draws on literature in the fields of service management, service-dominant logic and service logic, consumer culture theory, and service innovation and design, together with invited commentaries by prominent scholars.

A conceptualization is developed for “service experience co-creation,” and multiple dimensions of the concept are identified. It is postulated that service experience co-creation has wider marketing implications, in terms of understanding experiential value creation and foundational sociality in contemporary markets, as well as in the renewal of marketing methods and measures.

The authors call for cross-field research on service experience, extending current contextual and methodological reach. Researchers are urged to study the implications of increasing social interaction for service experience co-creation, and to assist managers in coping with and leveraging the phenomenon.

For practitioners, this analysis demonstrates the complexity of service experience co-creation and provides insights on the aspects they should monitor and facilitate.

As the first integrative analysis and conceptualization of service experience co-creation, this paper advances current understanding on the topic, argues for its wider relevance, and paves the way for its future development.