S-D Logic

The purchasing goods & services have throughout the years begun to lead to a new perception of consumer relationship and in ways businesses conduct their operations. Not only is a business concerned with the buying and selling of goods & services but to further maintain that relationship with their customers to correlate between both parties. As this being the prime functionality of businesses, each business must differentiate themselves with other businesses offering different and wholesome services, which overwhelms their competitors, thus adding their own individualistic value to the marketing

Product and service marketing are highly related. Take the success of a company like Apple, for example. The technology giant operates nearly 400 retail stores, employs more than 42,000 people and hosts more than a million visitors each day. In 2012, Apple’s retail operations generated nearly $19 billion. Furthermore, it’s estimated that Apple’s Fifth Avenue store generates more than $35,000 per square foot, making it the highest grossing retailer in New York – ever. Those statistics reinforce the company’s product and service strategies of those of a highly successful company. Apple continues to hold a number one spot on a list of the world’s most admirable companies. However, the success of Apple hasn’t always been so great. It wasn’t

Tangible goods, or rather manufactured goods, have been the dominant medium of exchange for centuries. However, recent decades have proved that it is no longer the case as there has been a prevalence of being service oriented (Vargo and Lusch, 2004:1-2). Services, as defined by Vargo and Lusch (2004), are  “the application of specialized competences (knowledge and skills) through deeds, processes, and performances for the benefit of another entity or the entity itself (p.2).” Utilizing services gives businesses an edge, a competitive advantage, particularly in an evolving competitive market, something which Metalfrio is definitely part of (Vargo and Lusch, 2004:9).  Those businesses that learn to adapt tend to do well. In addition, Vargo and Lusch (2004) write this shift to services is also a shift from producer perspective to a customer perspective (p.2). Thus, it leads to more of a collaborative effort where co-creation leads to adding value to the service rather than a product having value (Vargo and Lusch, 2004:6). Also, customers rather develop relationships with those that can provide a range of related services over an extended period of time, thus allowing businesses retain their clients for the long term (Vargo and Lusch, 2004:13). Overall, service oriented marketing is a direction that businesses should be headed towards to ensure that they can remain relevant and competitive in the

As outlined in my earlier research, Porter's work on value chain stems from his efforts to take his lessons of Competitive Strategy (Porter, 1980) forward, and provides a prescription for Competitive Advantage (Porter, 1985). There are two generic strategies—cost advantage and differentiation with the focus on broad or narrow market, differing the mix—and value chain is seen as the model that throws up the opportunities for implementing such strategies. With every pointer towards value chain and the definition of the same not clearly stated by Porter (Porter, 1985), it becomes imperative not only to understand the value chain but also to see how it provides the

Whereas recently, literature has proposed the concept of a Service Dominated (SD) logic where the customer and the firm are involved in co-creating value-in-use, rather than value-in-exchange, within a service system (Vargo et al 2008). In this SD logic Vargo & Lausch

Today, customer relationship management is very important to the business world. Most of the companies established a department and the programs to manage their relationship with the customers. Customer relationship management (CRM) is a business strategy which designed to help a company to understand and look forward to the needs of its potential and current customers (Anderson & Stang, 2000). Customer data is being collected in several different areas of the company, stored in a central database, analyzed, and distributed to key points (Anderson & Stang, 2000).The business world once was “product-centric”, the companies just provided what they could produce. However, it is now become “customer-centric”, they provide products and service

An effective Customer Relationship Management (CRM) program can be used to identify, retain, satisfy and obtain customers by using technology to optimize strategies for understanding customers’ needs to manage business interactions with current, former, and prospective customers. Additionally, CRM also enables companies to maximize internal, external, marketing and customer service operations to better address the needs of the customer building a better relationship with customers that a more profitable. (Ahmad & Buttle, 2001)

Customer relationship system or we called it CRM, which is the one of the information system that has been used by Prudential Assurance Malaysia Berhad. Customer relationship management is a type of software application. Employees can manage customer information by using CRM. The relationship between company and their customers can be grown in long-term and stable. This system’ primary concept is to keep the business operational through finding and maintaining clients. All departments in the same building can keep track of other department processes such as customer service. Technology is required for customer relationship system to organize and analyze business processes.

Today, more and more companies find that cultivating customer loyalty is a key factor to achieve success. Customer relationship management (CRM) focuses on the relationship between customer and company. Due to this feature, many companies are trying to establish their own CRM system for helping them to connect new customers and boost old customers’ long-term loyalty. CRM systems include operations and analysis, and relationship marketing strategy and supporting, customer-centric business processes (Buttle 2004). With the development of information technology (IT), using CRM system

The way of creating unique value on service business (Grӧnroos 2011) determine that the perspective of service marketing were transformed from goods to service scenery (Vargo and Lusch 2004). Where value be regarded as symptom or phenomenon part to obtain customer needs and expectation (Vargo and Lusch 2008a). Hence companies mapping more strategies on innovative offering, elaborate it with all stakeholders including suppliers and employee to increase the level of customer engagement (Vargo et al. 2008b). The service dominant logic stated the customer co-creating with the companies on process of value framing (Grӧnroos 2011).

Porter´s value chain model shaped our way of understanding and analyzing industries for the past 30 years. It explores the links between the activities to be undertaken in order to commercialize a product in the market and how these activities add value to the final delivery (Peppard and Rylander, 2006). It focus on the value creation processes within the firms, not on the inter firms links in the value chain (Kothandaraman and Wilson, 2001) and how the different links influence the competitiveness of the industries (Peppard and Rylander, 2006).

The value chain approach was developed by Michael Porter in the 1980s in his book “Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance” (Porter, 1985). The concept of value added, in the form of the value chain, can be utilised to develop an organisation’s sustainable competitive advantage in the business arena of the 21st C. All organisations

A product can be a product or a service. If your product provides sufficient value to customers, they will buy - no matter how good or bad the economic situation is, if they perceive value they will pay the price (Wood, 2010).

Christian Grönroos and Annika Ravald (2010) analyzed the scope, content and nature of value co-creation in a service logic based view of value creation, considering the customer perspective in a supplier-customer relationship. They published their findings in the Journal of Service Management vol. 22 no. 1, 2011, pp 5–22. They emphasized to keep apart production and value creation, as according to them they are different constructs. Production is the course of making the resources consumers integrate in their consumption or usage procedures. Value creation is the process of generating value-in-use out of such resources. They say that hence the value is not produced; resources out of which value can be generated are produced. Due to the interactive nature of service activities, where manufacturing and consumption are partly concurring processes, customers involve themselves in the production process and become contributors in that process. The character of customers as co-producers of service activities was recognized already in the early days of service marketing research (Eiglier and Langeard, 1976; Grönroos, 1978, 1982). As Gummesson (1998, p. 247) declares, “a service provider without consumers cannot produce anything”.

2) Scurrying About (1980 to 1985) – when a rapidly growing and enthusiastic community of scholars quickly built the basic structure of services marketing;