Strengths-based service solutions: mapping a way forward in marketplace vulnerabilities

Definitions of vulnerability are increasingly contested, engaging scholars across many disciplines. The many definitions and debates point to the multifaceted nature of the service challenges associated with the multiple dimensions of experienced vulnerability. Importantly, the deficit discourse that underpinned much of the work on vulnerability in different domains is increasingly changing to a strengths-based perspective. A strengths-based approach seeks opportunities for risk reduction, adaptation, and coping solutions for actors in service delivery and value creation. Thus, service managers and researchers must address both assets and adaptive capabilities of actors within the service system (process, design, and delivery) and within actors’ own contexts. This chapter therefore explores contemporary thinking to support actors experiencing vulnerability in the marketplace. We seek to promote debate on ways to enhance equitable service sustainability, particularly in light of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A lack of focus on sustainable transformative service as per the SDGs, limited strengths-based thinking, together with potentially unmet customer needs that stem from experienced vulnerability (or related to it), exacerbate existing vulnerabilities. These complex factors threaten progress on the SDGs’ agenda to reduce inequalities triggered by service systems. Service scholars and practitioners are therefore urged to consider sustainability and strengths-based approaches in their research and service design. In reviewing contemporary thinking, the chapter concludes with a new research agenda for considering strengths-based approaches to service delivery; service sustainability; and enhancing service inclusion for any actor in the system/network experiencing vulnerabilities.