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The service environment is becoming increasingly turbulent, leading to calls for a systemic understanding of it as a set of dynamic service ecosystems. This paper advances this understanding by developing a typology of service ecosystem dynamics that explains the varying interplay between change and stability within the service environment through distinct behavioral patterns exhibited by service ecosystems over time.

This study builds upon a systematic literature review of service ecosystems literature and uses system dynamics as a method theory to abductively analyze extant literature and develop a typology of service ecosystem dynamics.

The paper identifies three types of service ecosystem dynamics—behavioral patterns of service ecosystems—and explains how they unfold through self-adjustment processes and changes within different systemic leverage points. The typology of service ecosystem dynamics consists of (1) reproduction (i.e. stable behavioral pattern), (2) reconfiguration (i.e. unstable behavioral pattern) and (3) transition (i.e. disrupting, shifting behavioral pattern).

The typology enables practitioners to gain a deeper understanding of their service environment by discerning the behavioral patterns exhibited by the constituent service ecosystems. This, in turn, supports them in devising more effective strategies for navigating through it.

The paper provides a precise definition of service ecosystem dynamics and shows how the identified three types of dynamics can be used as a lens to empirically examine change and stability in the service environment. It also offers a set of research directions for tackling service research challenges.

Service design is a multidisciplinary approach that plays a key role in fostering service innovation. However, the lack of a comprehensive understanding of its multiple perspectives hampers this potential to be realized. Through an activity theory lens, the purpose of this paper is to examine core areas that inform service design, identifying shared concerns and complementary contributions.

The study involved a literature review in two stages, followed by a qualitative study based on selected focus groups. The first literature review identified core areas that contribute to service design. Based on this identification, the second literature review examined 135 references suggested by 13 world-leading researchers in this field. These references were qualitatively analyzed using the NVivo software. Results were validated and complemented by six multidisciplinary focus groups with service research centers in five countries.

Six core areas were identified and characterized as contributing to service design: service research, design, marketing, operations management, information systems and interaction design. Data analysis shows the various goals, objects, approaches and outcomes that multidisciplinary perspectives bring to service design, supporting them to enable service innovation.

This paper supports service design teams to better communicate and collaborate by providing an in-depth understanding of the multiple contributions they can integrate to create the conditions for new service.

This paper identifies and examines the core areas that inform service design, their shared concerns, complementarities and how they contribute to foster new forms of value co-creation, building a common ground to advance this approach and leverage its impact on service innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of meaning as a relevant but missing link in understanding the building blocks of service innovation informed by service-dominant (S-D) logic. In exploring the role of meaning in service innovation, especially related to new value propositions, resource integration and new value cocreation, the authors suggest using the conceptualization of meaning within human-centered design, which has an established body of knowledge on addressing how actors engage and interact.

The paper builds an actionable conceptual framework that relates meaning to central tenets of service innovation, such as resource integration, value propositions and cocreation of value. It delineates the central building blocks of service innovation and conceptually integrates them with meaning to explain the underlying mechanisms of service innovation related both to its development and adoption.

The findings highlight how and why meaning precedes value creation and directs resource integration. Indicating that meaning is driven by experience of earlier interactions it delineates its relationships with new value formation and positions resource interpretation as a driver of this process.

This paper extends the understanding of service innovation in relation to S-D logic, with meaning as a conceptual link to aspects of S-D logic that claim a phenomenological nature. Meaning contributes to S-D logic by providing an understanding of how beneficiaries form intentions to engage in value creation and resource integration. Additionally, by integrating service and design research domains, this paper suggests possibilities for multidisciplinary contributions in future research.

Customer experience research predominantly anchors the customer journey on a specific offering, implying an inherently firm-centric perspective. Attending calls for a more customer-centric approach, this study aims to develop a goal-oriented view of customer journeys.

This study interprets the results of a phenomenological study of a transformative journey toward a sober life with the self-regulation model of behavior to advance understanding of customer journeys.

The consumer's journey toward a higher-order goal encompasses various customer journeys toward subordinate goals, through which consumers engage in iterative cognitive and behavioral processes to adjust or maintain their experienced situation vis-à-vis the goal. Experiences drive behavior toward the goal. It follows that negative experiences may contribute to goal attainment.

This study highlights the importance of looking at the consumers' higher-order goals to obtain a more holistic understanding of the customer journey.

Companies and organizations should extend their view beyond the immediate goals of their customers to identify relevant touchpoints and other customer journeys that affect the customer experience.

This study proposes conceptualization of the customer journey, comprising goal-oriented processes at different hierarchical levels, and it demonstrates how positive and negative customer experiences spur behaviors toward the higher-order consumer goal. This conceptualization enables a more customer-centric perspective on journeys.