The Marketing of Service-Dominant Logic: A Rhetorical Approach

​Service-Dominant logic can be described as a mind-set for a unified understanding of the purpose and nature of organizations, markets and society. A concept that was first introduced by Vargo and Lusch in 2004, S-D logic has generated not just a vast host of journal articles and books but has established an expanding sphere of influence across marketing scholarship.

In this book, the author uses a rhetorical approach to investigate the ’marketing’ of Service-Dominant logic, asking how the formulation and presentation of the logic aids in its persuasive promotion. In doing so, the book explores the lexicon choices, metaphors, symbols, and persuasive gambits that have resonated so strongly with marketing academia, with the aim of understanding how these elements work together in a compelling narrative that delivers the logic’s core value proposition of transcendence. The author investigates how these rhetorical strategies have evolved as the S-D logic framework has developed, examining the revisions to its foundational premises and axioms and the introduction of new perspectives such as systems theory. It is the first book-length rhetorical analysis of a single strand of marketing discourse and as such, it serves as a showcase for the methodology, the insights it can provide, and its value for marketing scholarship.

Chris Miles is a Senior Lecturer in Marketing & Communication at Bournemouth University, where he is also Programme Leader for the BA (Hons) Marketing Communication undergraduate pathways. He has published extensively on the use of rhetoric in marketing scholarship and practice in journals such as Marketing Theory, European Journal of Marketing, and Journal of Marketing Management. He has also published research on the rhetoric of Cornelius Agrippa (Rhetoric Society Quarterly), the agonistic style of Trump’s tweets (Public Relations Inquiry), and a systems approach to the literary (Cybernetics & Human Knowing).