Contextualization and value-in-context: How context frames exchange Jennifer D. Chandler University of Hawaii at Manoa Stephen L. Vargo University of Hawaii at Manoa Abstract The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of context in service provision and, more broadly, in market co-creation. We oscillate foci from an individual actor at the micro level to a market at the macro level to make the scaleable influence of context more salient. This reveals the meso level, which is nestled between the micro and macro levels. We discuss how these market levels influ- ence one another. We conceptualize markets as simultaneous, continuous exchanges that are bounded by each of these levels of context. Keywords service-dominant logic, value-in-context, value-in-use, value networks Most contemporary marketing scholars (e.g. Bagozzi, 1975; Hunt 1991; Vargo and Lusch, 2004a) consider the study of marketing and, by implication, markets to be concerned with exchange. The purpose of exchange is to access resources that have value potential – that is, that provide benefit – to actors from within their own particular contexts. However, marketing scholars disagree about where and how value is created through exchange and, thus, about the role of exchange in the value-creation process itself. One perspective views value creation as the joint integration of resources by the multiple actors associated with an exchange. Specifically, service-dominant logic (Vargo and Lusch, 2004, 2008) emphasizes value as co-created by multiple actors (Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004), rather than viewing value as created by a single actor. In this way, the simultaneous exchange processes that occur across actors during service provision – which Vargo and Lusch (2004) define as resources Corresponding author: Jennifer D. Chandler, Shidler College of Business, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2500 Campus Road, Honolulu, HI 96822 Email: jenc@hawaii.edu Marketing Theory 11(1) 35–49 ª The Author(s) 2011 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1470593110393713 mtq.sagepub.com