Some philosophical problems for service-dominant logic in marketing

Vargo and Lusch, 2004, Vargo and Lusch, 2008 and Vargo and Lusch, 2009 developed a synthesis of service-dominant logic and called for a major shift towards service thinking, which has been well received by the academic marketing community. However the arguments to date have overlooked issues of testability, over-explanation, and normative power, and they are undermined by a definitional slide in the justification of service-dominant logic. We discuss these issues and suggest that they may create problems for service-dominant logic in its current form. We call for further conceptual development to address these points, and to enable discriminative tests between alternative service-based interventions.

► Service-dominant logic is a major theoretical innovation, yet has received little critical scrutiny.
► We identify four potential philosophical problems with service-dominant logic, namely.
► Testability, over-explanation, normative power, and a definitional slide in ‘service’.
► We recommend further conceptual work and identification of boundary conditions.
► We also recommend tests of the impact of service interventions.