Marketing and the Logic of Service: Value Facilitation, Value Creation and Co-creation, and Their Marketing Implications

The discussion of a service-dominant logic has made the findings of decades of service marketing research a topic of interest for marketing at large. Some fundamental aspects of the logic such as value creation and its marketing implications are more complex than they have been treated as so far and need to be further developed to serve marketing theory and practice well. Following the analysis in the present article it is argued that although customers are co-producers in service processes, according to the value-in-use notion adopted in the contemporary marketing and management literature they are fundamentally the creators of value for themselves. Furthermore, it is concluded that although by providing goods and services as input resources into customers’ consumption and value-generating processes firms are fundamentally value facilitators, interactions with customers that exist or can be created enable firms to engage themselves with their customers’ processes and thereby they become co-creators of value with their customers. As marketing implications it is observed that 1) the goal of marketing is to support customers’ value creation, 2) following a service logic and due to the existence of interactions where the firm’s and the customer’s processes merge into an integrated joint value creation process, the firm is not restricted to making value propositions only, but can directly and actively influence the customer’s value fulfilment as well and extend its marketing process to include activities during customer-firm interactions, and 3) although all goods and services are consumed as service, customers’ purchasing decisions can be expected to be dependant of whether they have the skills and interest to use a resource, such as a good, as service or want to buy extended market offerings including process-related elements. Finally, the analysis concludes with five service logic theses.

Incentive Compatible Influence Maximization in Social Networks with Application to Viral Marketing

Information diffusion and influence maximization are important and extensively studied problems in social networks. Various models and algorithms have been proposed in the literature in the context of the influence maximization problem. A crucial assumption in all these studies is that the influence probabilities are known to the social planner. This assumption is unrealistic since the influence probabilities are usually private information of the individual agents and strategic agents may not reveal them truthfully. Moreover, the influence probabilities could vary significantly with the type of the information flowing in the network and the time at which the information is propagating in the network. In this paper, we use a mechanism design approach to elicit influence probabilities truthfully from the agents. Our main contribution is to design a scoring rule based mechanism in the context of the influencer-influencee model. In particular, we show the incentive compatibility of the mechanisms and propose a reverse weighted scoring rule based mechanism as an appropriate mechanism to use.

Optimal incentive timing strategies for product marketing on social networks

We consider the problem of devising incentive strategies for viral marketing of a product. In particular, we assume that the seller can influence penetration of the product by offering two incentive programs: a) direct incentives to potential buyers (influence) and b) referral rewards for customers who influence potential buyers to make the purchase (exploit connections). The problem is to determine the optimal timing of these programs over a finite time horizon. In contrast to algorithmic perspective popular in the literature, we take a mean-field approach and formulate the problem as a continuous-time deterministic optimal control problem. We show that the optimal strategy for the seller has a simple structure and can take both forms, namely, influence-and-exploit and exploit-and-influence. We also show that in some cases it may optimal for the seller to deploy incentive programs mostly for low degree nodes. We support our theoretical results through numerical studies and provide practical insights by analyzing various scenarios.

Aquiculture and Marketing of the Florida Bay Scallop in Crystal River, Florida

The overall goal of this study was to develop a new fishery resource product through open-water aquaculture for the west coast of Florida that would compete as a non-traditional product through market development. Specific objectives were as follows: I. To grow a minimum of 50, 000 juvenile scallops to a minimum market size of40 mm in a cage and float system in the off-shore waters of Crystal River, Florida. 2. To determine the growth rate, survival, and time to market size for the individuals in this system and area to other similar projects like Virginia. 3. To introduce local fishermen and the aquaculture students at Crystal River High School to the hatchery, nursery, and grow-out techniques. 4. To determine the economic and financial characteristics of bay scallop culture in Florida and assess the sensitivity of projected costs and earnings to changes in key technical, managerial, and market related parameters. 5. To determine the market acceptability and necessary marketing strategy for whole bay scallop product in Florida. (PDF has 99 pages)

Aquaculture and marketing of the Florida Bay Scallop in Crystal River, Florida

The overall goal of this study was to develop a new fishery resource product through open-water aquaculture for the west coast of Florida that would compete as a non-traditional product through market development. Specific objectives were as follows: I. To grow a minimum of 50, 000 juvenile scallops to a minimum market size of40 mm in a cage and float system in the off-shore waters of Crystal River, Florida. 2. To determine the growth rate, survival, and time to market size for the individuals in this system and area to other similar projects like Virginia. 3. To introduce local fishermen and the aquaculture students at Crystal River High School to the hatchery, nursery, and grow-out techniques. 4. To determine the economic and financial characteristics of bay scallop culture in Florida and assess the sensitivity of projected costs and earnings to changes in key technical, managerial, and market related parameters. 5. To determine the market acceptability and necessary marketing strategy for whole bay scallop product in Florida. (PDF has 99 pages.)

Malaysian school engages in bullfrog and turtle farming

A brief description is given of the culture methods used in the Sepang Today Aquaculture Centre, a private aquafarming training school in Malaysia, regarding American bullfrog (Rana catesbeiana) and the soft-shelled turtle (Trionyx sinensis). Seed production, grow-out, marketing and future potential are discussed, referring to the school s training brochures for both culture methods.

E-marketing and SMEs: Operational lessons for the future

Gilmore, A.; Gallagher, D.; and Henry, S. (2007). E-marketing and SMEs: Operational lessons for the future. European Business Review. 19(3), pp.234-247 RAE2008

Transforming relationship marketing via subversive readings

Where is the consumer represented within the discourses of Relationship Marketing? In our paper we deconstruct and critically (but productively) interrogate current Relationship Marketing discourse; and we argue for reconceptualising RM as a field of study through a transformatory process which involves the subversive reading of its academic texts. We argue that the consumer is silenced within relationship marketing discourse in a way that is fundamentally analogous with the gynopia (absence of women) in early sociological enquiry. Given that the means of transformation can potentially be found within contemporary feminist research, one of the main aims of this paper is to examine the parameters of feminist research and theory by presenting and explaining three representative frameworks (Fonow & Cook 1991, Maynard & Purvis 1994 and Harding 1988). The interrogative questions generated from the reading of feminist texts provide a framework to enable a close reading of RM ‘texts’. Using a form of discourse analysis, we read both ‘with the text’ and ‘against the grain’ (Tonkiss 1998:258) looking for ‘silences and gaps’ and making ‘conjectures about alternative accounts which are excluded by omission’ as well as those deliberately ‘countered by rhetoric’ (Tonkiss 1998:258). By striking together feminist methodology and a selected Relationship Marketing text to see if they spark (Brown 1999) our stance is activist and our purpose is to accelerate a restoration of the consumer’s voice as a central theoretical concern of this branch of Marketing.

Feminist epistemology meets the masculinity of marketing and consumer knowledge: a contemporary rendering of a decade-long debate

In this paper I outline possibilities for, and issues arising from, opposition towards the dominant ideologies and practices of marketing knowledge (Hirschman 1993) through an engagement with feminist epistemology (Longino 1991, Harding 1987). Feminist epistemology is a political branch of naturalised epistemology (Quine 1969) primarily concerned with critique of constructions of gender, gender norms and gendered interests within the production of knowledge (Anderson 1995) and with theorising, grounding and legitimating feminist knowledge making practices (Harding 1987). It is most often associated with the feminist critique of science, and with feminist science and technology studies (Haraway 1987, Wajman 1997). Feminist epistemology asks the question, ‘what is the nature of the feminist critical project as a way of knowing?’ (McLennan 1995:392). This paper outlines the basis of the feminist critique of knowledge generally, and as applied to marketing knowledge, offers description of the three main epistemological approaches to this question and suggestions for their application in practice. The paper progresses important work by consumer behaviour theorists (Bristor and Fischer 1993, Hirschman 1993) on the potentials of feminist ways of knowing for marketing and consumer behaviour by moving beyond the tripartite of feminist approaches outlined, and extending the discussion to take into account the development of situated knowledges theory (Haraway 1989, 1997), which has become so important in the decade since these papers were written. It joins ongoing conversations in consumer behaviour and marketing that share similar feminist concerns (Catterall et al 1997, 2000, 2005, Bettany and Woodruffe Burton 1999, 2005, and Hogg et al 1999, 2000) but in this contribution it takes a slightly tangential approach, seeing marketing knowledge in terms of its epistemic culture by using a model of masculinity in academic cultures from feminist theory (Wagner 1994) to help conceptualise it as such. The dominant masculine ideology of marketing knowledge both in execution (Penaloza 1994, Bristor and Fischer 1994, Fischer and Bristor 1993, Woodruffe 1996), and values (Hirschman 1993, Brown 2000, Desmond 1997) has been well documented over the past fifteen years. However, although the basis of this, how is it manifested and how a feminist informed marketing knowledge could be achieved, have been addressed somewhat in the literature (Bristor and Fischer 1993, Hogg, Bettany and Long 2000) an updated rendering is necessary which focuses specifically on epistemology and situates this discussion within a cultural framework. To do this I use the notions of cultural masculinity in academic disciplines developed by Wagner (1994) of ‘organisational egocentrism’, ‘fake collectivity’ and ‘de realisation’. With these, I raise important and specific issues around the notion of the masculinity of marketing knowledge, and then present an outline of feminist epistemologies to illustrate how different feminist approaches to knowledge would address these concerns.