Service-Dominant Logic: The Road Map to Value Co-Creation in Place Marketing

This paper presents a conceptualization of the utility of Service-Dominant Logic (SDL) in theoretically underpinning the value co-creation process that emerges from the interactions and relationships of place visitors with local resource integrators of destinations. Under the SDL of marketing, service becomes the ontological content of the place brand and a fundamental mechanism of the exchange of place-branded products. The work is based on the Vargo and Lusch (J Acad Mark Sci 36(1):1-10, 2008) premise, that service is the fundamental basis of exchange, and builds an argument about how operant resources can be deployed by place marketers, as a source of competitive advantage to sustain loyalty to place visitors. It proceeds to explain how to place marketers (i.e., hospitality services, tourist attractions, etc.) co-create value with place visitors (customers) to generate effects that stimulate visitor loyalty and build the place brand. The relationships that develop between the customers and place marketers are embedded in a service ecosystem, which appreciates the phenomenologically determined perceptions of value of the parties and stimulates place visitors to repeat customs. The paper argues in favor of the integration of the roles of the customers and service suppliers in the formation of a value output, which becomes input in the identity of a place.