The Four Service Marketing Myths: Remnants of a Goods-Based, Manufacturing Model
Abstract
Marketing was originally built on a goods-centered, manufacturing-based model of economic exchange developed during the Industrial Revolution. Since its beginning, marketing has been broadening its perspective to include the exchange of more than manufactured goods. The subdiscipline of service marketing has emerged to address much of this broadened perspective, but it is built on the same goods and manufacturing-based model. The influence of this model is evident in the prototypical characteristics that have been identified as distinguishing services from goods—intangibility, inseparability, heterogeneity, and perishability. The authors argue that these characteristics (a) do not distinguish services from goods, (b) only have meaning from a manufacturing perspective, and (c) imply inappropriate normative strategies. They suggest that advances made by service scholars can provide a foundation for a more service-dominant view of all exchange from which more appropriate normative strategies can be developed for all of marketing.
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Value cocreation is viewed as an appropriate customer-centric mechanism for health care organizations in which value is created with customers rather than for customers.
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From Improving the Theoretical Understanding Toward Patient-Driven Health Care Innovation Through Online Value Cocreation: Systematic Review (2020) · cites this paper as [8]
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- Authors
- Vargo, S. L., & Lusch, R. F.
- Affiliations
- University of Maryland,
- Texas Christian University (US)
- Venue
- Journal of Service Research
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2004-05
- Volume
- 6
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 324-335
- ISSN
- 1094-6705 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-7379
- OpenAlex
- W2140497364
- Cited by
- 1,338
- References
- 34
- Citations by year
- 2026: 76 · 2025: 43 · 2024: 47 · 2023: 82 · 2022: 72 · 2021: 63 · 2020: 85 · 2019: 64 · 2018: 47 · 2017: 46 · 2016: 56 · 2015: 61 · 2014: 100 · 2013: 64 · 2012: 87
- FWCI
- 102.94
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Service Research (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Marketing › Service and Product Innovation
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management › Customer Service Quality and Loyalty
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Marketing › Marketing and Advertising Strategies
- Keywords
- service marketing, service-dominant logic, marketing myths, intangibility, inseparability, heterogeneity, perishability, exchange
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