Paper info

IMP AND SERVICE DOMINANT LOGIC: DIVERGENCE, CONVERGENCE AND DEVELOPMENT

David Ford

The paper was published at the 25th IMP-conference in Marseille, France in 2009.

  The aim of this paper is to relate the research of the IMP (Industrial Marketing and Purchasing) Group to the ideas within the developing concept of SDL (Service Dominant Logic).  The paper compares and contrasts the origins and approaches of the two streams of work and then examines two important conceptual issues that appear to need further development by both areas:  The first of these issues is the nature of the business actor in an interacted business landscape and the second is the issue of value and its creation and delivery.  The paper then uses some of the IMP ideas on business interaction in an attempt to refine the central SDL concept of "service" between companies.  The paper attempts throughout to draw some tentative conclusions about the implications of this conceptual analysis for practitioners.