The Relationship Marketing View of the Customer and the Service Dominant Logic Perspective

Based on the concept of service-dominant logic as the emerging organizing logic of marketing that would replace the traditional goods-dominant view, Vargo and Lusch (2004) originally proposed that among several other approaches to research and marketing practice that had emerged, relationship marketing would be subsumed by this broader view. More recently, however, Vargo (2009) suggested that because relationship marketing focuses on increasing the series of on-going transactions with a customer, coupled with the goal of enhancing their long-term patronage, that relationship marketing extends the goods-dominant perspective, rather than transcending into the service-dominant logic. This article counters that the relationship marketing view of the customer has already transcended the goods-dominant view to the to service-dominant view based on the way that customers are brought into the relationship as active participants in the service creation, and act as “co-producers” of value. To address the apparent goods-dominant approach in two widely used relationship marketing practices and measures, customer relationship management and customer lifetime value, this article proposes that these tools can be used from a goods-dominant view, but they can also serve as essential steps towards the practice of relationship marketing from the service-dominant logic.