The invisible water utility: employee behaviour and customer experience in service-dominant logic

Submission note: A thesis submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the College of Arts, Social Sciences and Commerce, La Trobe University, Melbourne.

Due to the monopolistic nature of the tap water services, limited marketing scholarship exists to account for the specific characteristics of water utilities. Service-Dominant Logic is an influential paradigm in marketing, but there is little research on its applicability to managerial practice, especially concerning the marketing of products, such as tap water. This dissertation develops a framework for water utility marketing based on the Service-Dominant Logic (S-D Logic) paradigm. These objectives are achieved through an anthology of four thematically related studies about water utility marketing guided by the axioms of S-D Logic. The first two studies explore the activities of water utilities from a macromarketing and services marketing perspective, corroborated by interviews with customer advocacy organisations and regulators, and a content analysis of industry literature. The third study analyses employee attitudes towards customer-centric service provision. The last study introduces the concept of Service-Dominant Quality, a Service Quality model based on the axioms of S-D Logic. The findings of these studies are synthesised to review the applicability of S-D Logic to marketing practice. The exploratory research defines a Marketing Mix for tap water services. Analysis of employee data provides insight into the relationships between engineers and marketers in water utilities. The SERVAQUA survey instrument was developed to measure Service Quality for tap water, based on S-D Logic. Synthesising these findings enhances understanding of how Service-Dominant Logic can be applied to a managerial context. The main contribution to theory is advancing S-D Logic as an informal system of logic to expand the paradigm into practice. The S-D Logic framework is modified to provide a better fit to the particular characteristics of marketing products. Main contributions to practice are a framework to implement marketing in water utilities, including an industry-specific Marketing Mix and Service Quality survey instrument.