Paper
A Service Lens on Value Creation
Bettencourt, Lusch, and Vargo. (2014)
California Management Review 57, no. 1 pp 44–66
DOI: 10.1525/CMR.2014.57.1.44.
Marketing needs a new mindset to fulfill its proper role in creating and sustaining strategic advantage. To extend its influence beyond the boundaries of current offerings, the firm, and conventional practice, marketing and markets must be viewed through a service lens. This lens allows marketing to take a lead role in assisting the enterprise to enable value co-creation by customers who have jobs to be done. This article offers four new premises to guide marketing thought and practice for achieving and sustaining strategic advantage. (Keywords: Corporate Strategy, Value Creation, Marketing, Strategic Planning, Innovation, Management Philosophy)
“While the customer always participates in value creation, the customer can have a more or less active role in the service provision itself. Thus, in matching its resources and capabilities, a company must decide where on a continuum of “enabling” to “relieving” service it will be because this impacts the service role of the customer.
In an “enabling” service, the customer is a job (co-)executor who acts in conjunction with the firm to provide service to get a job done.
In a “relieving” service, in contrast, the customer is a beneficiary who mostly “uses” service(s) provided by the firm to get more holistic jobs done.”
“