ABSTRACT
Vargo and Lusch (V&L) argues that marketing has evolved from a goods-dominant, discreet-transaction logic to a service-dominant view that emphasizes intangibility, exchange processes, and relationships. The V&L thesis is a bold interpretation of what a service-centered view of marketing encompasses. It casts a spotlight on several concepts that are important to the fabric of current marketing theory and that can benefit from frequent restatement. The chapter focuses primarily on the ontological questions, but this discussion inevitably covers issues in epistemology. The service-centered argument is that there is only one unit of exchange in marketing and that is a service, whether a human provides it or it is provided by a product. The language of economics might be about goods, but economic theories define concepts in such abstract terms that they are little bound to the tangible objects we call goods or consumers or firms or technology.
