Reconfiguration of the conceptual landscape: a tribute to the service logic of Richard Normann

Stefan Michel, Stephen L. Vargo, Robert F. Lusch

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science · 2008 · Volume 36 · Issue 1

Abstract

This article is a tribute to the late Richard Normann, whose call for a “service logic” (Normann, Reframing Business: When the Map Changes the Landscape, Wiley, Chichester, p. 99, 2001) both parallels and enriches service-dominant (S-D) logic (Vargo and Lusch, J. Mark, 68:1–17, 2004a). Like Vargo and Lusch, Normann shifted the focus of theofferingfrom an output to a process of value creation and perceived the firm as an organizer of this process, with thecustomeras a co-producer, rather than a receiver of value. He also argued that offerings are “frozen knowledge,” similar to Vargo and Lusch’s contention that the basis of exchange is applied operant resources (service) and suggested that the ‘dematerialization’ of resources increases their ‘liquidity’, which allows increased “density” for value creation. Thus, he suggested that firms need to “reframe business”—rethink the logic of value creation—to reveal opportunities in reconfiguring thevalue constellationsof which they are part. This tribute explores these and other similarities and differences between Normann’s work and the evolving S-D logic.

Keywords

Service-dominant logic, Value co-creation, Liquification, Density, Value constellations

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