Service System Well-being: Conceptualising a Macro-Level Concept

The relevance of improving individual well-being has recently gained traction within the marketing literature (e.g. Ostrom et al., 2015), for instance it is a key tenant of transformative service, consumer and social marketing research. The marketing literature on well-being investigates behaviours, attitudes, cognitive processes, interactions and social processes (e.g. Mendel and van Doorn, 2014) to understand how well-being manifests in individuals. While assessing individual well-being is crucial, understanding the larger contexts, such as the service system in which individuals are embedded, is also relevant. Adopting a holistic perspective on well-being is a neglected area of service research (Anderson and Ostrom, 2015). The socio-cultural systems where individuals and collectives immerse themselves have considerable influence on well-being; without incorporating elements of holistic well-being, we possess only partial knowledge about how to manage and improve individual and collective well-being (Anderson et al.,2013).