A Stakeholder-Unifying, cocreation philosophy for marketing

Marketing thought and practice is continuing its evolution from a largely goods-dominant logic to a service-dominant (S-D) logic. The authors argue that an S-D grounded logic is especially useful in a highly networked world. In a network world and organization, it is critical for enterprises to realize and operate as if marketing is no longer simply a separate business function but also a general management responsibility within a broad network enterprise where the interests of many stakeholders need to be unified with the customer and the enterprise. Furthermore, a value cocreation concept of strategy becomes increasingly relevant because it views value as not created by the business but by customers as they integrate resources. Importantly this includes firm-supplied resources, as well as other resources at the customer's disposal in order to improve their well-being by helping them develop or codevelop solutions to problems. Consistent with the S-D logic of marketing, the firm has to think not about optimizing the sales and/or profit of the firm and its activities but how to support customers in their resource integration and value cocreation activities. All enterprises should strive to be an effective and efficient service support system for helping all stakeholders, beginning with the customer, become effective and efficient in value cocreation.