Services marketing: taking up the sustainable development challenge

Abstract

There is a window of opportunity within the area of design for sustainability for services marketing academics and practitioners to offer their knowledge and experience to manufacturing companies and academics. Over the last decade there has been a growing interest in services within the field of sustainable development. Services are viewed as a dematerialized alternative to existing products, with reduced environmental impact (i.e. less material and less energy use to fulfil a certain need). The services considered by academics in the field of sustainable development are those related to products or those substituting products. These services are often called “eco‐efficient services”. Academics focusing on the development of eco‐efficient services can use elements of theory and experience available within the services marketing discipline. Services marketing academics and practitioners can help in developing blueprints and processes to facilitate manufacturing companies to shift towards a more service‐intensive way of doing business. This paper calls for cross‐disciplinary collaboration.