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.

Strategic Marketing and Innovation Performance of Indian MSMEs

Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) is an integral part of the Indian industrial sector. The distinctive features of MSMEs are less capital investment and high labour absorption which has created unprecedented importance to this sector. As per the Development Commissioner of MSME, the sector has the credit of being the second highest in employment in India, which stands next to agricultural sector. The MSMEs are very much needed in efficiently allocating the enormous labour supply and scarce capital by implementing labour intensive production processes. Associated with this high growth rates, MSMEs are also facing a number of problems like sub-optimal scale of operation, technological obsolescence, supply chain inefficiencies, increasing domestic and global competition, fund shortages, change in manufacturing & marketing strategies, turbulent and uncertain market scenario. To survive with such issues and compete with large and global enterprises, MSMEs need to adopt innovative approaches in their regular business operations. Among the manufacturing sectors, we find that they are unable to focus themselves in the present competition. This paper presents a brief literature of work done in MSMEs, Innovation and Strategic marketing with reference to Indian manufacturing firms.

El consentimiento informado en el sistema jurídico italiano actual

Resumen: La presente contribución aborda la problemática del consentimiento informado en los tratamientos médicos desde el punto de vista de la filosofía moral y el sistema jurídico italiano actual. En tal análisis pueden vislumbrarse los principales tópicos que esa problemática implica: la relación médico-paciente, los requisitos que debe reunir todo consentimiento dado por el paciente para que sea legítimo, la implicancia o no del principio de autonomía de la voluntad y la cada vez mayor ausencia de la humanización de la medicina. Un recorrido por la más reciente jurisprudencia italiana permite vislumbrar las soluciones que los tribunales han ido otorgando a tales problemáticas.

El pensamiento filosófico-jurídico de Juan Alfredo Casaubón

Resumen: En el presente trabajo se estudia y analiza el pensamiento iusfilosófico de Juan Alfredo Casaubón, unos de los autores iusnaturalistas más significativo de la Argentina en el siglo XX. Heredero de la tradición clásica que conocerá en los famosos Cursos de Cultura Católica y, posteriormente, en la Pontificia Universidad Católica Santa María de los Buenos Aires, de la cual será uno de sus profesores fundadores. Abogado, docente, juez, investigador, padre y esposo. Su pensamiento, si bien se puede encuadrar en la Tradición Central de Occidente, tendrá diversas particularidades que le darán a su pensamiento una nueva impronta a la filosofía jurídica. Se ha tratado de sintetizar el pensamiento casaubiano en diez tesis principales que reflejan en su estricta medida todo el corpus de este filósofo argentino. Previo al desarrollo iusfilosófico del autor, se ha tratado de encuadrar su posición filosófica general y, luego, jurídica, a través de su concepción iusnaturalista. Por último, se hará un pequeño homenaje a este gran pensador en el marco de la filosofía argentina del siglo XX.

The question of ethical decision in marketing and ethics

Resumen: Mientras que el marketing está asociado con prácticas negativas que involucran la explotación y la deshonestidad, Anton Jamnik afirma la necesidad de crear una teoría ética para éste. El artículo intenta brindar, por un lado, un breve bosquejo de las principales corrientes de la literatura de la ética del marketing y, por otro, participar de su desarrollo. El autor analiza los desafíos éticos que sur girán en el futuro, provenientes de tres fuentes distintas: las innovaciones tecnológicas, la influencia de la competencia global y la expansión de las actividades de mercado en áreas no tradicionales. Esto requerirá el desarrollo de una ética normativa realista. Para concluir, explica que la ética del marketing debería analizar hasta qué punto ha sido exitosa a la hora de resolver los desafíos éticos del mundo actual.

Las citas de leyes y otras normas : legislación comparada y nuevo digesto jurídico argentino

Decía Tomás de Aquino que “lex non est ipsum ius, proprie loquendo, sed aliqualis ratio iuris” 1: “[…] la ley no es el mismo derecho, propiamente hablando, sino cierta racionalización del derecho”. En concordancia con esto, entre nosotros enseñaba Alberdi que “saber, pues, leyes, no es saber derecho”, dado que “las leyes no son más que la imagen imperfecta y frecuentemente desleal del derecho que vive en la armonía viva del organismo social”, del cual hay que “conocer su genio, su misión, su rol”, porque “es el alma, la vida, el espíritu de las leyes” 2. Esto lleva, según el maestro argentino, a que “en materia de leyes, no se puede hacer nada, si no se sabe el derecho”3. El derecho no es la ley, entonces, pero sin embargo la ley tiene una relación estrecha con el derecho, del cual a veces es su causa eficiente, como ocurre con las materias de mero Derecho Positivo, y otras, es una suerte de causa ejemplar, cuando refleja la justicia natural de las cosas. La causa final inmediata de toda ley, por otra parte, debe ser el derecho, y la mediata, el bien común. El hecho, entonces, de que las leyes tengan una función segunda con respecto al derecho no las vuelve menos importantes. El conocimiento de las leyes, así, no es algo ajeno al oficio del jurista, sino que es un elemento fundamental para la búsqueda de la justicia en los casos concretos...