Purpose -The paper seeks to introduce to a new perspective on the roles of customers and companies in creating value by outlining a customer-based approach to service. The customer's logic is examined in-depth as being the foundation of a customer-dominant (CD) marketing and business logic. Design/methodology/approach -The authors argue that both the goods-and service-dominant logic are provider-dominant. Contrasting the provider-dominant logic with CD logic, the paper examines the creation of service value from the perspectives of value-in-use, the customer's own context, and the customer's experience of service. Findings -Moving from a provider-dominant logic to a CD logic uncovered five major challenges to service marketers: company involvement, company control in co-creation, visibility of value creation, scope of customer experience, and character of customer experience.Research limitations/implications -The paper is exploratory. It presents and discusses a new perspective and suggests implications for research and practice. Practical implications -Awareness of the mechanisms of customer logic will provide businesses with new perspectives on the role of the company in their customers' lives. It is proposed that understanding the customer's logic should represent the starting-point for the company's marketing and business logic. Originality/value -The paper increases the understanding of how the customer's logic underpins the CD business logic. By exploring consequences of applying a CD logic, further directions for theoretical and empirical research are suggested.

Addresses customer‐relationship economic issues, more specifically the link between service quality and profitability from a relationship marketing and management perspective. In this perspective the task of marketing is not only to establish customer relationships, but also to maintain and enhance them in order to improve customer profitability. In the service quality literature higher quality is assumed to lead to customer satisfaction, which leads to customer loyalty and this drives customer profitability. The framework highlights factors that, in addition to service quality and customer satisfaction, influence the links between service quality and profitability. Also discusses aspects of improving the profitability of relationships, such as enhancing relationship revenues through higher degrees of patronage concentration, and reducing relationship cost by changing the episode configuration of customer relationships.

Traditionally only cognitive measures, such as the disconfirmation of some comparison standard or perceived service performance, have been used to explain perceived service quality and satisfaction. Suggests that emotions could play an important role in determining satisfaction with a service. The results from an empirical study of customers’ experiences of the services of a labour force bureau show that customers experience different positive and negative emotions in connection with the service, and that these emotions influence service satisfaction. Finds that, on an aggregate level, direct disconfirmation of adequate service, together with positive emotions, explain satisfaction best. Identifies four groups of customers with different emotional profiles. Analyses of emotions in these groups show that negative emotions have the largest impact on customer response.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to extend current discussions of value creation and propose a customer dominant value perspective. The point of origin in a customer‐dominant marketing logic (C‐D logic) is the customer, rather than the service provider, interaction or the system. The focus is shifted from the company's service processes involving the customer, to the customer's multi‐contextual value formation, involving the company.Design/methodology/approachValue formation is contrasted to earlier views on the company's role in value creation in a conceptual analysis focusing on five central aspects. Implications of the proposed characteristics of value formation compared to earlier approaches are put forward.FindingsThe paper highlights earlier hidden aspects on the role of a service for the customer. It is proposed that value is not always an active process of creation; instead, value is embedded and formed in the highly dynamic and multi‐contextual reality and life of the customer. This leads to a need to look beyond the line of visibility focused on visible customer‐company interactions, to the invisible and mental life of the customer. From this follows a need to extend the temporal scope, from exchange and use even further to accumulated experiences in the customer's life and ecosystem.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper is conceptual. It discusses and presents a customer‐dominant value perspective and suggests implications for empirical research and practice.Practical implicationsAwareness of the mechanism of the customer value formation process provides companies with new insight on the service strategy, service design and new service innovations.Originality/valueThe paper contributes by extending the value construct through a new customer dominant value perspective, recognizing value as multi‐contextual and dynamic based on customers' life and ecosystem. The findings mark out new avenues for future research.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the theoretical and practical implications of adopting customer-dominant logic (CDL) of service, focusing on how firms can become involved in the customers’ context. Design/methodology/approach – Inspired by the conceptual discussion of service logic and service-dominant logic, this paper focuses on the conceptual underpinnings of CDL. CDL is contrasted with other service perspectives in marketing; CDL is a marketing and business perspective dominated by customer-related aspects instead of products, service, systems, costs or growth. It is grounded in understanding customer logic and how firms’ offerings can become embedded in customers’ lives/businesses. Findings – The conceptual analysis challenges the prevailing assumptions of key phenomena in service research, including interaction, co-creation, service value and service. The paper presents five essential foundations of CDL: marketing as a business perspective, customer logic as the central concept, offering seen through the customer lens, value as formed and not created and the prevalence of customer ecosystems. Research limitations/implications – The paper differentiates CDL from other marketing perspectives. Further empirical research is needed in different empirical settings to provide guidelines for adopting the perspective on a strategic and operational business level. Practical implications – As a firm’s holistic and strategic foundation, marketing is based on understanding how providers participate, at a profit, in customers’ value formation. The paper suggests how firms can successfully conduct business in dynamic markets with empowered customers. Originality/value – This paper expands marketing and business logic based on customer dominance. It accentuates the importance of understanding customer logic and stresses the presence of providers in the customer ecosystem.