Integrating the 3 Pillars of the 2011 Naples Forum on Service: S-D logic, Network & Systems Theory and Service Science

New approaches to service and marketing have been brewing for the past four decades challenging the 1960s marketing management and marketing mix (which were once a challenge to microeconomic theory focused solely on price). The new approaches included service marketing and management, relationship marketing and CRM (Customer Relationship Management), and relational and network applications in B2B (business-to-business) marketing. But we were left with a fragmented and confusing view. Service research had been growing worldwide, but after a few decades of pioneering contributions we felt that it had reached a state of complacency. The focus was on the past with a backpack of intersubjectively approved but often doubtful assumptions. The disciplines of business and management had reached a turning point calling for more systemic and integrative theory with scholars who dare address real world complexity with adequate methodology. In the 2000s service has become the unifying concept for a new way of perceiving not only business but also the role of governments. The new millennium began well by presenting new approaches: service-dominant (S-D) logic, service science, and the more general theories many-to-many marketing and the Viable Systems Approach (VSA) based on a systemic view and relationships, networks and interaction. These recognize the weaknesses of the mainstream service research and offer new conceptualization. They open up for complexity, context, interdependencies, and theory generation. Some of this was already there but it had been held back in the literature and at conferences. We now refer to the foundation of service theory as the 3 Pillars of Service.