Abstract:
Service dominant logic offers a general structure and paradigmatic lens to discover and interpret emerging market and marketing phenomena. While S-D logic resonates with today’s contemporary business environments, a logical next step to advance as a metatheory is to bring its narrative closer to business practice and evidence-based research. Midrange theories connect metatheories, such as S-D logic, and empirical research, and as such enable metatheories to be operationalised in specific contexts. Midrange theories emerge through a context of theory discovery, where the conception of emerging phenomena arise, and a context of theory justification, that is the empirical investigation of these phenomena. This chapter analyses how S-D logic as a metatheory can inform, and be informed by midrange theory development, using the example of engagement that is one of the central emerging research streams of contemporary marketing. We track the key phases of engagement research and the primary conceptual sources contributing to the evolving conceptualization, and thereby identify different development paths of engagement research. This chapter provides a rich example for the development of S-D logic informed midrange theory through an iterative multi-level theorizing process, which combines systematically the theoretical and empirical domain of knowledge.