Service Marketing – 571073

Unit – I Introduction:

Introduction :

The turn of the century has seen profound changes in the global economy.
Services had played a crucial part in these changes, because the services are
become the way organizations met with their market. Already organizations
discovered that their survival no longer exclusively depends on their products they
offer, but also on the additional offerings they make to their customers that
differentiate from their competitors innovative organizations, offering new
services as well as unique customer services, are now succeeding in markets where
established organizations have failed (Lovelock and Patterson, 1998:4).

Services marketing is not a self-enclosed task but is integral to service

organizations as a whole and the object of the activity is people, who are
reactive, not passive as compared with a product (Irons, 1997:18). Services
marketing concepts, frameworks and strategies were developed as the result
of interlinked the forces of many industries, organizations, and individuals
who have realized the increasingly important role services are playing in
the current world economy. Initially the development of services marketing
focused on service industries. However, manufacturing and technology industries
recognized services as a prerequisite to compliment their products, in order to
compete successfully in the market place. Therefore it can be argued that, in
most industries, providing a service is no longer an option but a necessity.
 Service definition

Kotler (1996) defines service as an activity that one party offers another
that is essential intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything.
Its production may or may not be tied to a physical product.

Grönroos (1990) identifies a service as an activity or series of activities of a

more or less intangible nature that normally, but not necessarily, takes
place in interaction between the customer and service employees and/or
physical resources or goods and/or systems of the service provider, which
are provided as solutions to customer problems.

The term “services” covers a heterogeneous range of intangible products and

activities that are difficult to encapsulate within a simple definition.
Services are also often difficult to separate from goods with which they may
be associated in varying degrees.

"Marketing is not an event, but a process... It has a beginning, a middle, but never
an end, for it is a process. You improve it, perfect it, change it, even pause it. But
you never stop it completely."
- Jay Conrad Levinson.

Difference between Goods and Services:

1. Higher Intangibility
2. Lack of Ability to store them for future Sale
3. Greater Interaction between the customer and the service Factory
4. Greater Variability in Service Delivery
5. Greater Variability among service customer’s Expectations

Service Economy:
Service economy can refer to one or both of two recent economic
developments. One is the increased importance of the service in industrialized
economies. Services account for a higher percentage of US GDP than 20 years
ago. The current list of Fortune 500 companies contains more service
companies and fewer manufacturers than in previous decades.

The term is also used to refer to the relative importance of service in a product
offering. The service economy in developing countries is mostly concentrated
in financial services, health, and education. Products today have a higher
service component than in previous decades. In the management literature this
is referred to as the sterilization of products. Virtually every product today
has a service component to it. The old dichotomy between product and service
has been replaced by a service-product continuum. Many products are being
transformed into services.

For example, IBM treats its business as a service business. Although it still
manufactures computers, it sees the physical goods as a small part of the
"business solutions" industry. They have found that the price elasticity of
demand for "business solutions" is much less than for hardware. There has been
a corresponding shift to a subscription pricing model. Rather than receiving a
single payment for a piece of manufactured equipment, many manufacturers
are now receiving a steady stream of revenue for ongoing contracts. James
Murrdock once said "When GDP are low...the service based economy must be
also."

Evolution and growth of Service Sector :

THE FIRST ERA:

SERVICES MARKETING Fisk, Brown and Bitner (1993) employed the

metaphor of biological evolution to describe the history of the services
marketing field. Biological evolution describes how species emerge and
develop, so Fisk, Brown and Bitner’s portrayal of the emergence and
development of the services marketing field involved three
‘evolutionary’ stages:

1) Crawling Out (Pre 1980) – when early services scholars created and
defended the services marketing field;

2) Scurrying About (1980 to 1985) – when a rapidly growing and

enthusiastic community of scholars quickly built the basic structure of
services marketing;

3) Walking Erect (1986 to 1992) – when the services marketing field

achieved a measure of respect and legitimacy within the marketing
discipline and beyond.

Before examining recent stages of service evolution, it is

worthwhile to ponder why marketing was the first area of
business and academe to “discover” and research services. We believe it is
because the marketing field is by necessity customer-centered. Hence,
marketing managers and marketing academics were the first to observe the
many service failures and inefficiencies experienced by customers
as the service economy expanded. Further, it is noteworthy that
marketing managers and academics in North America and Europe were
observing these problems nearly simultaneously. This customer-centric
orientation positions marketing well to address the future needs of
service customers.

THE SECOND ERA:

THE EMERGENCE OF A MULTIDISCIPLINARY FIELD

Remarkable change has occurred in the services marketing field since the
publication of Fisk, Brown and Bitner (1993). To portray these
changes in the services field, we continue with a metaphorical approach,
but we shift the nature of the evolutionary metaphor from
biological evolution to social evolution.

Recent Stages of Service Evolution

Making Tools

A tremendous technology infusion, especially of information technology made

it possible for most service industries to rapidly increase the
technological sophistication of the service they provide customers.

Prominent among these technology changes is the emergence of

the Internet and the many web-based services that are possible via the
Internet. Included in these technology changes are numerous self-
service technologies. These changes have prompted service
marketers to study technology infusion into services and
the role of self-service technologies in customer-firm relationships.

Creating Language

Language is itself one of the most sophisticated tools created by the

human species. Every new academic field must develop a technical language
for communicating knowledge that is created by the community of
scholars within the field.
Technical words and phrases that originated in services marketing have
become mainstream to the marketing field. These terms include: service
encounters, service quality, service theater, service experience,
servicescapes, and service recovery.

BUILDING COMMUNITY:

THE FUTURE OF THE SERVICE FIELD

Building Community is the next stage in the social evolution of the

service field. Academic disciplines play essential roles in the creation and
diffusion of knowledge. As the academic study of service phenomena has
steadily broadened its reach from its origins in the services marketing and
management fields, the rapid increase in the number of participants in
the services field creates both opportunity and peril. We believe that
the broader services field has reached a critical juncture. Sophisticated
social networking is needed to grow and disseminate service
knowledge.

CONCLUSION

The evolution of the service field from its beginnings in services

marketing to a much broader service field was described. We have
offered recommendations for the future of the service field. A
culture of multidisciplinary collaboration is needed for the service field
to build a community of scholars, business leaders and customers. Critical
to this are T-shaped people--including those from the arts--who can
communicate via a common language that bridges areas of service
endeavor. Such T-shaped people can move us from silos of knowledge to
webs of knowledge. Through it all, a customer- centric orientation
must be adopted and maintained. To that end, we argue that
the entire service field, not just service marketing, should be customer
centered.

Services in India

Today, the service sector contributes more than 50 percent to India's GDP.
This is a far cry from the situation a few decades back, when India was
basically an agricultural economy. This shift from manufacturing and
agriculture to services is being witnessed in countries all over the world. With
the increasing prominence of services in the global economy, Services
Marketing has become a subject that needs to be studied separately.
Marketing services is different from marketing goods because of the unique
characteristics of services, namely intangibility, heterogeneity, perishability
and inseparability.

These characteristics also require the marketing mix of services to be

extended, to include Process, People and Physical evidence, in addition to the
four traditional Ps of Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Services marketing
is a people-dependent activity, owing to the fact that there is often no
tangible product that is delivered to customers.

The importance of concepts like relationship marketing cannot therefore be

ignored in marketing services. These also help in branding the service.
Services Marketing discusses the unique features of services and their
significance to marketing, and examines each of the seven elements of the
marketing mix. The book also contains chapters on different service industries
in India like Information Technology and Retailing, which have been
experiencing tremendous growth in the recent years.

Nature and scope of Services:

The second level of the services address the nature of the services in terms of
the degree of tradability, to whom or what the action is directed, and the
degree of merchantability.

1. Tradability: Tradability is the relative involvement between goods and

services in the production of the services.
2. Merchantability: Merchantability is the relative distance the customer
and the service provider in the acquisition or performance of the service.

Learning Objectives:

1. Service process matrix.

2 .The service package.
3. Distinctive characteristics of a service operation.
4. The strategic classification of services.
5. The role of a service manager from an open-systems view of service.

Characteristics of a Service

What exactly are the characteristics of a service? How are services different
from a product? In fact many organisations do have service elements to the
product they sell, for example McDonald’s sell physical products i.e. burgers
but consumers are also concerned about the quality and speed of service, are
staff cheerful and welcoming and do they serve with a smile on their face?
There are five characteristics to a service which will be discussed below.

1. Lack of ownership.

You cannot own and store a service like you can a product. Services are used or
hired for a period of time. For example when buying a ticket to the USA the
service lasts maybe 9 hours each way , but consumers want and expect
excellent service for that time. Because you can measure the duration of the
service consumers become more demanding of it.

2. Intangibility

You cannot hold or touch a service unlike a product. In saying that although
services are intangible the experience consumers obtain from the service has
an impact on how they will perceive it. What do consumers perceive from
customer service? the location, and the inner presentation of where they are
purchasing the service?.

3. Inseparability

Services cannot be separated from the service providers. A product when

produced can be taken away from the producer. However a service is produced
at or near the point of purchase. Take visiting a restaurant, you order your
meal, the waiting and delivery of the meal, the service provided by the
waiter/ress is all apart of the service production process and is inseparable,
the staff in a restaurant are as apart of the process as well as the quality of
food provided.

4. Perishibility
Services last a specific time and cannot be stored like a product for later use. If
travelling by train, coach or air the service will only last the duration of the
journey. The service is developed and used almost simultaneously. Again
because of this time constraint consumers demand more.

5. Heterogeneity

It is very difficult to make each service experience identical. If travelling by

plane the service quality may differ from the first time you travelled by that
airline to the second, because the airhostess is more or less experienced.
A concert performed by a group on two nights may differ in slight ways because
it is very difficult to standardise every dance move. Generally systems and
procedures are put into place to make sure the service provided is consistent
all the time, training in service organisations is essential for this, however in
saying this there will always be subtle differences.

Challenges and Issues in Services Marketing:

Companies that are marketing a product face different challenges compared

with those that are promoting a service. If you’re transitioning from marketing
products to services or vice versa, you have to know and understand these
differences to effectively promote and sell. Understanding the different
challenges in product and service marketing can help you establish the right
approach.

Tangibility

A product is tangible, which means the customer can touch and see the product
before deciding to make a purchase. Items such as packaging and presentation
may compel a customer to purchase a product. Services, on the other hand, are
not tangible, which can make them more difficult to promote and sell than a
product.
Relationship and Value

Products tend to fill a customer's need or want, so companies can use this to
sell a product. A service is more about selling a relationship and the value of
the relationship between the buyer and seller of the service. For example, a
car is something a buyer can touch and see as well as use. A service, such as
lifestyle coaching, for example, is not tangible. A lifestyle coach may be able
to assist clients in creating a life plan and implementing steps to transform his
life into one that the client wants to live, but it is not something tangible that
the client can place in his home and look at every day. Therefore, the client
needs to perceive the value of the service, which can be harder to get across.

One Versus Many

Marketing products tends to involve multiple products that make up the line.
For example, cleaning product manufacturers tend to market not just one
cleaning product. Instead, they have a line of cleaning products to serve the
various needs of their customers. Services, on the other hand, typically have a
single option. It can be harder to promote and sell the reputation of one single
service over the benefits of many different products.

Comparing Quality
Measuring the quality of a product is easier than measuring that of a service. If
a customer buys a cleaning product to clean the kitchen sink and it doesn’t do
the job, the customer knows the value of the product is zero. On the other
hand, it is harder to measure the quality of a service.

Return Factor
If a customer purchases a product and it doesn’t work as it is supposed to, the
customer can return the product for her money back or at least to receive a
store credit. A service is consumed as it is offered, so it lacks the return factor
that a product has. Some service providers overcome this by offering money-
back guarantees.
Ethics in Services Marketing

1. Aggressive Promotion through telemarketing and personnel selling

2. Invasion of Privacy
3. Misleading claims backed by poor service performance

Unit II – Service Marketing Opportunities

Assessing Service Marketing Potential:

Market Potential and Market Sizing Analysis

Market analysis services from Mapping Analytics help you know the
economic opportunity available to you in any geographic market. Whether
you sell to consumers, to businesses, or both, market sizing provides
intelligence you need to deploy sales and marketing resources effectively.

Benefits of Market Potential Analysis

• Understand market potential for a single store,
network of stores or a new market

• Deploy resources effectively by ranking markets in

priority order

• Forecast total opportunity in terms of number of

customers and revenue potential

• Estimate your market share

Market Potential Analysis: What We Can Do for You

Market potential analysis is a primary analytic service performed by
Mapping Analytics. We have the people, experience, tools, and data
required to perform sophisticated and accurate market sizing.

A market potential analysis from Mapping Analytics may include:

• A customer profile to understand where to

find more like them

• Market penetration and market share

reports showing performance in existing
markets and expected performance in new
markets

• Market ranking reports allowing you to

prioritize resource deployment into new
markets

• A geographic view of market opportunity on

detailed maps

Classification of Services:
 1. Nature of the organization

2. Nature of service

3. Customer relationship

4. Nature of demand

5. Service package

6. Delivery method

Expanded Marketing Mix

The traditional marketing mix is the most basic concept in

marketing and is defined as elements which organizations control
and use to satisfy or communicate with customers.

Service offerings (Product)

A product is anything that an organization offers to customers that might

satisfy a need, whether it is tangible or intangible (Palmer and Cole,

1995:15). In contrast, the decisions that face service marketers concerning

service offerings are very different from those related to goods. An

analysis of service offerings shows that it can be divided it into two

distinct components namely, a core service offering that represents the

intangible core benefits of services and a secondary service offering that

represents the tangible and augmented elements of the service offerings.

Price

In the determination of price, service marketers deal very much with the
same price issues as goods marketers. Subsequently, the differences present
itself when the intangible characteristic of services specifies that price
becomes a quality indicator. The art of successful pricing is to establish a
price level that is low enough for the exchange to represent good value to
customers, but high enough to allow service providers to achieve their
financial objectives (Palmer and Cole, 1995:222).

Distribution (Place)

The distribution decision refers to the availability and accessibility of service

offerings to customers. Availability from the customers’ point of view signifies

that services are on hand when they want them, while accessibility is the

relative ease with which customers can conduct service processes with

the service providers (Palmer,

1994:33). For pure services, the distribution decision is of little relevance,

though most services involve a tangible component. As a result, the

distribution decision involves physical locations and decisions which

intermediaries use to provide the services.

Promotions

The promotion mix for the traditional marketing mix is usually broken down

into four components namely advertising, sales promotions, public

relations, and personal selling. However, with the promotion of

services, there is a greater need to emphasise the tangible elements

of services such as packaging, brand name, corporate image, service

delivery, and service employees

 The development of a promotional mix for services relies on the detailed

specification of promotion objectives to ensure that that appropriate

messages are chosen and effectively channelled in a cost effective manner

to reach the target market. Typical service promotional objectives are:

• to develop an awareness or interest in the organization and its services

• to communicate the benefits of purchasing a service

• to build a positive image of the organization

• to differentiate the organization from its competitors

• to remind customers of the existence of the service and the

service organization (Palmer and Cole, 1995:260).

People

People as an element in the service mix include all the human actors - the
firm’s employees (internal customers), the buyers (external customers),
and other customers who play a part in service delivery and influence
customers.

Processes

Processes are the actual procedures, mechanisms, and flow of activities by

which services are delivered (Zeithaml and Bitner, 1996, 21). Customers judge
services on the operational flow or on the actual delivery thereof. The
inseparability characteristic of services requires customers to follow a series
of extensive or complicated actions to complete the process. Often the logic
of these actions escapes the customers. Whether the service process is
standardised or customised, it is used as evidence by customers to judge
service quality.

Physical evidence

The environment in which the service provider delivers the service and
where the customers and the organization interact, as well as any tangible
component that facilitates performance or communication of the service, is
referred to as physical evidence (Zeithaml and Bitner, 1996, 26).

Environment and trends :

Managers of the service companies must be aware of these companies :

Below are some trends that are shaping the marketing approach of service
companies:

• Focus on Customer Service and Customer Satisfaction. Companies of

the past focused too much on their internal being. Their capital
expenditures were geared towards expansion of network, technical
superiority, and market domination by size or scale. These companies
failed to recognize that unless customer needs are taken to account,
these initiatives will not bring success or profit.

• Focus on the Service Value. Customers want value for their money and
they expect that company’s offerings must be of prime quality at the
least possible price. This is opposite to the principle of business
operations. Companies will need more money to execute first-class
service because it requires investment on well-experienced employees
which eventually require higher salaries, high-end facilities, additional
 employee trainings which all boils down to an increase operational
expenditures. Managers of service companies are tasked to design a
service model that are valuable to their customers but priced reasonably.
In the past, companies believe that as long as they are “big” in terms of
scale, size, and resources, their perceived value is high. This is no longer
true today. The best judge of your company’s value is your customers.

• Focus on Information Technology. One of the best contributions of

technology is information. Technological advances led to the availability
of information in all sectors of the organization. Examples of information
are consumer’s purchasing behavior, consumer’s consumption pattern,
consumer’s data information and so on. Information made the decision
making process of top executives easy and later resulted to further
innovation and improvement on the company’s strategic direction.
Companies who failed to use information also failed to understand their
customers.

• Focus on Globalization. Globalization has swept companies from all

over the world by storm. Local markets are already saturated by local
players and the best way to expand their sales is to tap emerging
international markets. However, internationalization approach is not as
simple as transporting your service to another country. If your
company’s service model is effective in your local market, it is not a
guarantee that it will also be effective in other countries. Culture, social
behavior, and customs of the foreign country must always be taken into
account. Many companies who jumped in the globalization band wagon
failed to adjust their service approach when setting-up a foreign
franchise. In the fast-food industry for instance, MC Donald’s beef burger
may not be a hit in countries like India because cows are sacred in this
country. Some American fast-food chains that established franchise in
the Middle East or some parts of Asia changed the ingredients of their
food products and modify the service orientation of their staff in order
to adapt to the taste and customs of the locals.
These are just some of the emerging trends that managers of service
companies must consider. Companies that did not recognize these signs and
failed to adapt to these trends have suffered and send millions or even billions
of their resources in to the trash bin.

Service Market Segmentation:

Attributes of Effective Segmentation :

1. Identifiable
2. Accessible
3. sizeable
4. profitable
5. unique needs
6. Durable
7. measurable
8. compatible

Reasons for marketing Segmentation:

1. Facilitating proper choice of target markets

2. Higher Profits
3. Facilitates tapping of the market, adapting the offer to the market
4. stimulating Innovation
5. Makes the marketing effort more efficient and economic.
6. Benefits the customer as well
7. Sustainable customer relationship in all phases of the customer life cycle
8. targeted communication
9. Higher market share

Bases of Segmentation

1. Geographic
 2. Demographic
3. Psychographic
4. Behaviouralistics

Advantage

Evaluation of market Segmentation:

Target Marketing:

Process of Choosing the Target Market

Positioning

Approaches of Positioning

Unit – III Service Design and Development

Service Life Cycle

1. Introduction
2. Growth
3. Maturity
4. Saturation
5. Decline

New Service Development

A hierarchy of New Services Categories

1. Major Service Innovation

2. Major Process Innovation
3. Product – Line Extensions
4. Process-Line Extensions
5. Supplementary Service – Innovations
6. Service Improvements
 7. Style Changes

Stages in New Service Development

Process
Front-end Planning
1. Business Strategy Development (or) Review
2. New Service Strategy Development
3. Idea Generation
4. Concept Development & Evaluation
5. Business Analysis

Implementation
6. Service Development and Testing
7. Market Testing
8. Commerlisation
9. Post Introduction Evaluation

Blue Printing

A service blueprinting is a picture or a map that accurately portrays that

service system, so that the different people involved in providing it can
understand and deal with the objectivity regardless of their role or their
individual point of view.
Blue Printing Components
1. Customer action
2. On stage contact employee action
3. Back stage contact employee action
4. Support process

The above 4 key actions areas are separated by 3 horizontal lines are

1. Line of interaction
2. Line of visibility
3. Line of internal Interaction
 4. Vertical line cutting across

Service Blue Print

Blueprint Components
There are five components of a service blueprint. Our example shows a simple
blueprint for a one-night stay in a hotel. They are:

■ Customer actions. This include all the steps a customer takes during the
service delivery process. In a Service Blueprint, customer actions are usually
depicted in sequence, from start to finish. Customer actions are central to the
Service Blueprint, so they are described first.

■ The onstage visible actions taken by employees. Onstage visible actions by

employees are the face-to-face contacts with the customer during the service
delivery. These are separated from the customer by the line of interaction.
Service delivery actions by frontline customer contact employees are shown
here. Each time the line of interaction is crossed through an interaction
between a customer and contact employee (or self service technology), a
moment of truth occurs. During these moments of truth, customers judge your
quality and make decisions regarding future purchases.

■ Backstage actions taken by employees that are not visible to the customer.
The next part of the Service Blueprint is the “backstage” invisible actions of
employees that impact customers. Actions here are separated from onstage
service delivery by the line of visibility. Everything above the line of visibility is
seen by the customer while everything below it is invisible. In our hotel
example, these actions included taking the food order (accurately) and
preparing a quality meal.

■ Company support processes used throughout the service delivery. The

fourth critical component of a Service Blueprint is the “support processes” that
customer contact employees rely on to effectively interact with the customer.
These processes are all the activities contributed by employees within the
company who typically don’t contact customers. These need to happen,
however, to deliver the service. Clearly, service quality is often impacted by
these below-the-line of interaction activities.
■ Physical evidence of the service. Finally, for each customer moment of
truth the physical evidence of the service delivery at each point of customer
contact is recorded at the top of the blueprint.

Vertical lines are drawn on the blueprint to show how various activities and
processes interact to deliver the service to the customer.

Building the Blueprint

Now that you have a basic understanding of the parts of a Service Blueprint,
and what one looks like, think about developing a blueprint for a precision
agriculture service for your business. The first step will be to define all the
steps in delivering the service you want to blueprint. If you are trying to
differentiate your service offering to different customer segments, it will be
helpful to blueprint each approach. Once you have chosen the service you want
to blueprint, all the customer actions involved in the service are placed on the
blueprint in the Customer Actions section.

Getting this done in sufficient detail may be challenging because most of us

have never broken services into their individual parts. But I guarantee the
effort is worth it. Part of the challenge will be deciding where the service
starts and stops from the customer point of view. Once the customer actions
are determined, the onstage and backstage actions of contact employees can
be placed on the blueprint. Then identify the supporting processes that
employee actions draw on and put these on the blueprint, too. Now link up
each customer action to the onstage and backstage employee actions and
support processes. I suggest you complete the physical evidence section last.

My example of a hotel stay blueprint shows only the basic steps in the customer
experience. An overview blueprint like this is a good place to start, but you will
likely need to add more detail at key steps where you suspect improvement
could occur. Blueprinting is a very flexible tool, and you can add additional
detail as you identify potential shortfalls and hopefully moments of delight in
the delivery of the service. Remember — you want to capture the end-to-end
customer service experience from the customer’s point of view in the blueprint.

• Blueprint: Overnight Hotel Stay

Thinking about the precision agriculture service you selected, who are the
onstage employees that deliver the service? No doubt there are several, from
sales agronomists who consult with the customer to your office staff who
schedule the service to applicators who drive equipment in the customer’s field.
What are the behind-the-scenes processes they rely on to deliver a memorable
experience to the customer? Where can gaps occur that prevent a smooth
trouble-free experience? Are there places that appear to meet customer needs,
but could still be improved anyway to begin exceeding needs?

Service blueprinting will identify areas where a service could be refined. If you
introduced new elements into the service delivery, would that create more
customer satisfaction and help you differentiate yourself from competitors?

We will return to Service Blueprinting in future columns because this customer-

focused business tool can help you grow your business. Putting your service
delivery under a microscope can help you increase customer satisfaction and
increase loyalty. Service blueprinting will also help you differentiate yourself
from competitors.

GAPS model of Service Quality

The five gaps that organizations should measure, manage and minimize:

• Gap 1 is the distance between what customers expect and what

managers think they expect - Clearly survey research is a key way to
narrow this gap.
• Gap 2 is between management perception and the actual specification
of the customer experience - Managers need to make sure the
organization is defining the level of service they believe is needed.
• Gap 3 is from the experience specification to the delivery of the
experience - Managers need to audit the customer experience that their
organization currently delivers in order to make sure it lives up to the
spec.
• Gap 4 is the gap between the delivery of the customer experience and
what is communicated to customers - All too often organizations
exaggerate what will be provided to customers, or discuss the best case
rather than the likely case, raising customer expectations and harming
customer perceptions.
 • Finally, Gap 5 is the gap between a customer's perception of the
experience and the customer's expectation of the service - Customers'
expectations have been shaped by word of mouth, their personal needs
and their own past experiences. Routine transactional surveys after
delivering the customer experience are important for an organization to
measure customer perceptions of service.

Each gap in the customer experience can be closed through diligent

attention from management. Survey software can be key to assisting
management with this crucial task.

Measuring Service Quality

Measuring the quality of a service can be a very difficult exercise. Unlike
product where there are specific specifications such as length, depth, width,
weight, colour etc. a service can have numerous intangible or qualitative
specifications. In addition there is there expectation of the customer with
regards the service, which can vary considerably based on a range of factors
such as prior experience, personal needs and what other people may have told
them
As a way of trying to measure service quality, researchers have developed a
methodology known as SERVQUAL – a perceived service quality questionnaire
survey methodology. SERVQUAL examines five dimensions of service quality:

• Reliability

• Responsiveness

• Assurance;

• Empathy, and

• Tangible (e.g. appearance of physical facilities, equipment, etc.)

 Unit – IV Service Delivery and Promotion

Positioning of Service

Positioning your service is the first step in the marketing process. More
specifically - defining your best target client. Once you do that tailoring the
rest of your marketing mix becomes pretty straight forward.

When defining a target niche, identifying too wide a base, means you specialize
in none. Think of Sears.. the original low cost department store. In their
Halcyon days they dominated the landscape... but over the years Sears added
more and more services to appeal to more and different clients... adding
better fashions to their lower cost items for example. Next thing they knew,
along came Walmart, Target, and Home Depot. These new competitors all
focused and stole customers from Sears. The take away - narrowing your sights
can establish a beach head and increase your success.
One more thing about niches - do the difficult thing. That is, focus on being
able to service the niche that requires greater skills. It reduces competition for
those specific clients... and prospects in all the niches that are easier to serve
will implicitly know you can fulfill their needs... So focusing can actually
broaden your prospect pool.
Designing Service Delivery System

Design

We are surrounded by things that have been designed—from the utensils we eat
with, to the vehicles that transport us, to the machines we interact with. We
use and experience designed artifacts everyday. Yet most people think of
designers as only having applied the surface treatment to a thing conceived by
someone else. Eli Blevis created an illustration to emphasize the gulf between
the general public’s notion of design and designer’s views of design (Blevis et
al., 2006) (see Figure 19.1).
Figure 19.1 – A caricature of the popular conception of design vs. all other
concepts.

Ultimately, everything that has not come from nature has been designed—it
just may not have been consciously designed. As early as 1938, Moholy-Nagy
described design as more than just facade making. He suggested that design
was “a complex and intricate task … and the integration of technological,
social and economic requirements, biological necessities, and the
psychophysical effects of materials, shape, color, volume, and space’’ (Moholy-
Nagy, 1938). Most design definitions also include planning as a critical element.
Janet Murray, author of Hamlet on the Holodeck, describes the designer’s role
as making ‘‘something new that fits in with what already exists or changes it in
a positive way.’’ This description of design is consistent with Herbert Simon’s
seminal work in which he says, ‘‘Everyone designs who devises courses of
action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones’’ (Simon, 1996).
Marty Neumeier simplifies further by suggesting that ‘‘design is change’’
(Neumeier, 2009). Of course, change (or the process of change) can be changed.
That is, change can be designed; thus, design can be designed.

The Five Major Stages in Designing for Service.

There are many models of the design process, and many service design
organizations opt for their own variations, while others prefer not to be
confined to a single process. We have refined our process through practice, but
admit that it is fluid and should change according to the design challenge
(Evenson, 2005). The activities in the stages of our current process are
described briefly in Table 19.1.
Table 19.1 – Process Overview

Service designers must account for the complexity of service resources that
must be accessible to the appropriate participants to design the service
experience for themselves. Methods that service designers use to address this
complexity in particular are service ecologies, experience prototyping, and
service blueprinting. Service ecologies are maps of the participants and entities
affected by a service and the relationships between them. Ecologies or
mappings of the research findings reveal new opportunities and inspire ideas,
and they help to establish the overall service concept (livejwork, 2004).
Experience prototyping brings the service experience to life. First designers,
and then stakeholders in the experience, act out the service experience with
specific roles and rough props. This is similar to Brenda Laurel’s design
improvisation (Laurel, 2003). The goal is theater that enables the designers to
better understand the contextual level of the design experience. This
understanding is crucial because experience emerges from the activity of
persons acting in a setting and is embedded in context and ongoing social
practices.
G. Lynn Shostack developed service blueprinting. She states, ‘‘a service
blueprint allows a company to explore all the issues inherent in creating or
managing a service.’’ She goes on to explain that there are four aspects to the
blueprint. They are process identification, isolation of fail points, establishing
the time frame, and analyzing profitability (Shostack, 1984). We have extended
this approach to include opportunities for service innovations that are derived
from immersive research.

Service Channels

Although it might appear that physical distribution of products or goods is more

tedious, however the presence of a marketing channel is felt even in the case
of the service sector. Thus services such as Banks, Hospitals and Education have
their own service marketing channel to deliver value.

Hospitals need to be established in places where regular supply of medication

is available, Fire stations must be able to give rapid access to geographical
areas and at the time of elections, ballot boxes should be properly located to
allow easy voting.

Services too therefore have multiple channel levels. To know about each level
you can view my post on Channel levels – Consumer and industrial marketing
channels. The same marketing channel system applies to services as well as
products.

However a new concept being especially used in the services sector is the
Information highway channels. Simply said these information highways combine
multiple forms of data carrying capacity (Internet = Videos + Software + Audio
+ Images whereas Phone = Voice)

Thus service sector channels and their establishment for a service based
organization also presents its own challenges.

Service Pricing
Pricing Your Services

The good news is you have a great deal of flexibility in how you set your prices.
The bad news is there is no surefire, formula-based approach you can pull off
the shelf and apply in your business. Pricing services is more difficult than
pricing products because you can often pinpoint the cost of making a physical
product but it's more subjective to calculate the worth of your counsel, your
staff's expertise, and the value of your time. You can, however, use some of
the same underlying pricing guidelines to figure out your costs and operating
expenses plus your target profit in setting your price for services.

Factors to consider in pricing

When pricing services, there is a bit more leeway than pricing products. "The
price of a product is more objective. The price of a service is more subjective
so that there is a gray area," Toftoy says. "Pricing is both an art and a science."
Here are the factors that experts say you should consider when trying to
determine what price to charge for a service:

• Cost-plus pricing. This standard method of pricing in business seeks to

first determine the cost of making a product or, in this case, providing a
service, and then add an additional amount to represent the desired
profit. To determine cost, you need to figure out direct costs, indirect
costs, and fixed costs. "With the cost-plus approach, the thing to
remember is that if you're paying someone $11 an hour, you may think
you should charge $11 an hour for the service they provide, but you have
to factor in all your costs," says Jerome Osteryoung, a professor of
Finance at Florida State University and outreach director of the Jim
Moran Institute for Global Entrepreneurship. Those costs include a
portion of your rent, utilities, administrative costs, and other general
overhead costs. "When I make a deal to sell a service," he says, "I have to
make sure to cover all my costs."
 • Competitors' pricing. You need to be aware of what competitors are
charging for similar services in the marketplace, Osteryoung says. This
information could come from competitor websites, phone calls, talking
to friends and associates who have used a competitor's services,
published data, etc. "I don't think it's a good idea for any entrepreneur
to compete on price if you can avoid it. Compete on service, ambiance,
or other factors that set you apart," Osteryoung says. If you have to
compete on price to win a customer, you may ask yourself whether that
customer will be loyal to you if they find someone offering a service at a
lower price. You want to establish long-term relationships in the
marketplace. "You need to convince the customer that you are giving
them tremendous value in terms of service and quality," Osteryoung says.
"You just need to be aware of what the competition is charging."
• Perceived value to the customer. This is where a lot of the subjectivity
comes in when setting a price for a service. When you have a product,
you may decide to use keystone pricing, which generally takes the
wholesale cost and doubles it to come up with a price to charge and
account for your profit. With a service, you can't necessarily do that. To
your customer, the important factor in determining how much they are
willing to pay for a service may not be how much time you spent
providing the service, but ultimately what the perceived value of that
service and your expertise is to them, Osteryoung says. That is where
pricing becomes more of an art form.

Calculating your costs

Before you set a price for the services your company will provide, you need to
understand your costs of providing these services to customers. The U.S. Small
Business Administration advises that the cost of producing any service is made
up of the following three parts:

• Materials cost. These are the costs of goods you use in providing the
service. A cleaning business would need to factor in costs of paper
towels, cleaning solutions, rubber gloves, etc. An auto repair business
 would tally up the cost of supplies, such as brake pads or spark plug,
which are being installed by service people. You may want to include the
material list with your estimate in bidding for a job.
• Labor cost. This is the cost of direct labor you hire to provide a service.
This would be the hourly wages of your cleaning crew and/or a portion
of your mechanic's salary and benefits while they were providing the
service for your customer. The SBA recommends using a time card and
clock to keep tabs on the number of hours of labor involved in providing
each service for a customer.
• Overhead costs. These are the indirect costs to your business in
providing services to customers. Examples include labor for other people
who run the firm, whether administrative assistants or human resources
personnel. Other overhead costs include your monthly rent, taxes,
insurance, depreciation, advertising, office supplies, utilities, mileage,
etc. The SBA suggests that a reasonable amount of these overhead costs
should be billed to each service performed, whether in an hourly rate or
a percentage. One important thing to note: don't just depend on figures
from last year to determine your overhead costs. You need to charge
customers rates that cover your current costs, including higher salaries
to employees, inflation, etc.

Determining a fair profit margin

Once you determine your costs, you need to mark up your services to ensure
that you achieve a profit for your business. This is a delicate balance. You want
to ensure that you achieve a desirable profit margin, but at the same time,
particularly in a down economy, you want to make sure that your business
doesn't get a reputation for overcharging for services. Osteryoung suggests that
you look for resources in your industry, such as the annual statement studies on
small and mid-sized business financial benchmarks from Risk Management
Associates, to help you determine whether your profit margin is on target. "The
net profit margin for a specific industry might be 5 percent, so if I'm sitting on
2 percent I need to come up a bit," Osteryoung says. "I need to sell services,
give value, and make sure the firm runs a fair rate of return."

Different Pricing Models

Now that you understand what it costs you to provide a service, what your
competitors are charging, and how customers perceive the value of your
services, it's time to figure out whether to charge an hourly rate, a per-project
rate, or try to negotiate a retainer for your services. This may be
predetermined by your industry and the type of service pricing that
predominates in your sector. For example, lawyers tend to charge hourly rates
for their services, although those rates can vary. Many construction firms
charge a project fee and require that one third be paid up front, another third
be paid at the half-way point, and the remaining third be paid upon completion.

• Charging an hourly rate. For many businesses, pricing services on an

hourly rate is preferred. This ensures that you are achieving a rate of
return on the actual time and labor you invest in servicing each
customer. Hourly rates are often used when you are pricing your own
consulting services, instead of pricing a service that uses labor and
materials from others. Your rate should be determined by your amount
of expertise and seniority; a more senior consultant will generally be
paid a higher hourly rate than a less experienced or junior consultant.
The SBA recommends that one's travel time be included as an extra
charge. Sometimes even consultants are asked to price a service on a
project or contract basis. That contract needs to factor in clerical
support, computer or other services, and overhead expenses, the SBA
advices.
• Charging a flat fee. In tough economic times, many businesses are
concerned about keeping costs down and may agree to hire your business
for services only on a fixed-rate or flat-fee basis. "Customers want a
fixed rate," Osteryoung says. "Entrepreneurs want an hourly rate. It's a
question of who is going to bear the risk. If I charge a flat rate, I am
 bearing the risk." If a project takes longer than expected to complete,
you may risk losing money on the client. If you have a customer that
insists on a flat fee, you may want to see if they are amenable to putting
a cap on the number of hours involved in the project or agree to pay
additional fees if the project runs over that time.
• Variable pricing. In addition to determining a fair price for your services,
you have to determine whether you will practice a fixed-price policy and
charge all your customers the same amount or whether you want to
institute variable pricing, in which bargaining and negotiation help set
the price for each customer. "Should you charge different customers
different rates? I have a hard time with that," Osteryoung says. "The
exception is if someone comes in and says that they will book 1,000
hours of time, you may want to give them a price break for quantity. But
in general, charging different prices to different customers will create ill
will. People will talk about it and they will find out." One thing a
business can not afford to lose is its integrity and respect among
customers.

Monitoring and Changing Your Price

In a service business, your biggest costs are usually your people costs -- salaries,
benefits, etc. If you are having a hard time selling services at an acceptable
profit, the problem may be that your employee costs are too high rather than
the price is too low. You may want to also re-evaluate your overhead costs to
determine whether there are other cuts you can make to bring your price down
and your profit margin up. "Look at your expenses and see where you can cut,"
Toftoy advises.

Service marketing involves 3 types of marketing:

1. EXTERNAL MARKETING
2. INTERNAL MARKETING
3. INTERACTIVE MARKETING
1. External Marketing : "Setting the Promise"
· Marketing to END-USERS.
· Involves pricing strategy, promotional activities, and all communication with
customers.
· Performed to capture the attention of the market, and arouse interest in the
service.
2. Internal Marketing : "Enabling the Promise"
· Marketing to EMPLOYEES.
· Involves training, motivational, and teamwork programs, and all
communication with
employees.
· Performed to enable employees to perform the service effectively, and keep
up the
promise made to the customer.
3. Interactive Marketing : (Moment of Truth, Service Encounter)
· This refers to the decisive moment of interaction between the front-office
employees
and customers, i.e. delivery of service.
· This step is of utmost importance, because if the employee falters at this
level, all prior
efforts made towards establishing a relationship with the customer, would be
wasted.

An Integrated Service Design Process

An integrated service design and implementation process is key to the success

of any service experience. We have found a multidisciplinary effort with a
modeling-centric approach to be most effective for service design. The process
is illustrated in Figure 19.5 in the context of the previously described people-
centered research model. Though the process as shown is illustrated in a linear
fashion in practice, it is fluid and iterative.

Some of the integrated marketing services we provide are:

• Database Development and Maintenance:

o Identification of your best markets to pursue, and your best
prospects in those markets.
o List building and on-going communications campaigns.
• Relationship Building and Maintenance through:
o Direct Mail Marketing Services
o Email Marketing List Campaign
o Public Relations Campaign
o Outbound Telemarketing
o and other proven tactics
• Internet Services
o Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - Website Strategy
o Search Engine Optimization
o HTML E-mail Marketing
o Usage Tracking and Analysis
 o and other proven tactics
• Industry Exposure Planning through:
o Trade Show Marketing
o Trade Journal Articles
o Press Releases
o Search Engine Optimization & Pay-Per-Click Ads
o and other proven tactics
• Print & Multimedia Collateral Creation
o Graphic Design and Layout
o Brochures and Flyers
o Lead Generation Advertising
o Direct Mail Advertising Campaign
o Digital Photography
o Video and Audio Production
o Newsletters
o Product Sheets
o Flyers and Mailers
o and other corporate communications media
• Business Plan & Marketing Plan Development
• Corporate Identification and Branding
o Corporate Identity Design
o Product Naming and Due Diligence
o Stationery and Business Cards
o Instructional Design and Training Materials
o HR Manuals and Forms
o and other brand services
• Writing Services
o Trade Journal Articles
o Newsletters
o Press Releases
o Advertising & Direct Mail Copy
o Video Scripts
 o Government Grant Proposals
o Sales Proposals
o Multimedia Programs
o and more
• Customer Retention Programs
o Mailing and Email Programs
o Customer Follow-up Calls
o Loyalty and Discount Program Development

Building Relationships Through Integrated Marketing Communications Is

Crucial

Building relationships with your prospects, as well as with your existing

customers, is crucial for success in a highly competitive market. The tasks
required to build and maintain business relationships are neither expensive
nor extremely complicated, but they do require resources and expertise
that your company may not have available.
 Unit – III Service Strategies

Service Marketing Strategies for Health

Derived from content analyses of advertising from 1950 to date, marketing

communications programs founded on an intangible positioning strategy—about
60% of brands today—attempt to reinforce the perceptions it would like buyers
to have of its brands. The feeling a consumer has about a brand—as opposed to
functional attributes or benefits of its products/services—becomes the implicit
reason to buy.

By all appearances, Coach, Coke, JetBlue, McDonald's, Starbucks, W Hotels,

and XBox have adopted an intangible strategy. So have New England Baptist
Hospital, "official hospital of the Boston Celtics," and Cedars-Sinai, "leading the
quest for health."

Unfortunately, as noted in the table above, econometric analyses reveal that

the majority of marketing communications campaigns rooted in intangible
positioning produce zero or negative returns on investment. This occurs
because intangible, some would say ethereal messages, fail to imprint a strong
reason to buy. They are, moreover, hard to remember. Again, the goal of these
campaigns is to evoke a feeling or attitude and relate it to a brand, thereby
inspiring a purchase. This is a far more difficult feat than citing a
product/service's ability to solve a serious consumer problem as the reason to
buy—particularly when buyers are saturated with marketing information and
have increasingly less time or inclinations to sort through it all.

Resurrecting a Relic
Marketers claim that tangible positionings, those based on functional attributes
and benefits, worked well back in the '50s and '60s—when buyers were
generally more open to marketing and advertising, there were fewer brands
and less marketing clutter, and positioning possibilities were limitless. They
argue that intangible positionings were born out of necessity in the '90s when
product differences seemed to disappear in many categories and all brands
started to look the same. And they maintain that marketing communications
rooted in an intangible positioning can be just as effective as tangible
positionings were decades ago. We don't argue that intangible positionings are
by definition problematic, but we do argue that marketers are missing
significant opportunities if they a priori eliminate tangible positionings from
consideration. It is a misguided notion that they aren't relevant any more.

n fact, some of the most powerful, category dominating brands have tangible
positionings: Disney with wholesome family entertainment, ExxonMobil with
fast and friendly service, FedEx with guaranteed next-day delivery, Grey Goose
with the best-tasting vodka, and Southwest with no frills/low priced air travel.
Other challenger brands are the envy of their competition: Apple with easy-to-
use products, Citizens Bank with rapid and responsive service, Green Mountain
Energy with clean and green power, and Target with fashionable but affordable
goods. Marketing communications founded on a tangible positioning can yield a
return on investment of 10%-15% and higher (significantly higher than we've
seen with intangible campaigns), exactly as it did in the '50s and '60s.

The Real Deal

The question isn't whether marketers should pursue a tangible or intangible
strategy, but what positioning of all the tangible/intangible options will inspire
consumers to choose their brands (e.g., hospital, medical practice, hospice,
home care, visiting nurses group, healthcare service) instead of their
competitors' brands. Four steps are required to develop a compelling
positioning.

Compile an inspired list of tangible/intangible attributes and benefits. A

hospital's tangible attributes might be "well-trained nurses," "conveniently
located," and "doctors from the best medical schools." Its tangible benefits
might be "personalized attention and treatment" and "does everything to make
you feel comfortable."

A hospital's intangible attributes might be "recommended by friends and

relatives," "in the U.S. News & World Report top 50," and "treating people for
100 years." Its intangible benefits might be "makes you feel in control of your
disease" and "makes you feel important."

The list shouldn't be limited under any circumstance. Even consider seemingly
nutty ideas such as "impresses my neighbors" and "official hospital of the
Pittsburgh Steelers."

Conduct research among your target buyers, to determine which attributes

and benefits are the most motivating. What rises to the top will differ by
health services category. Although consumers might rank "new and modern
facilities" and "cutting edge medical technology" as the most motivating
attributes for an orthopedic hospital, "recommended by friends and relatives"
and "specializes in treating the most difficult conditions" will prove most
motivating for a pediatric cancer treatment center.

At this stage, don't mistake what people state is important for motivating
power; they are different. Researchers often ask respondents to rate
characteristics of a hospital or medical practice on a 5-point scale, ranging
from (1) not important at all to (5) extremely important. This is a surefire way
to a marketing misfire. The reason is simple: People tend to grade the most
generic, tangible, rational, socially acceptable characteristics (e.g., "has four
wheels" for a car, "has doctors who really care" for a hospital) as the most
important. Using importance scores as a guide to positioning will more often
than not send marketers in the wrong direction.

We recommend an alternate three component approach to measuring

motivating power. It begins by asking people about desirability, not importance.
"How desirable is it that a car go from zero to 60 miles per hour within six
seconds?" Or, "How desirable is it that a hospital have doctors from the top
medical schools?" A desirability scale such as the following one encourages
respondents to think "outside the box," without biases.

+4 Extremely desirable
+3 Very desirable
+2 Somewhat desirable
+1 Slightly desirable
0 Neither desirable nor undesirable
-1 Slightly undesirable
-2 Somewhat undesirable
-3 Very undesirable
-4 Extremely undesirable

Compare your brand with your competitors' brands, on the most motivating
attributes and benefits. The best positioning opportunities are those that are
highly motivating and on which a brand enjoys advantages relative to
competitors. The brand strategy matrix below illustrates how to use motivating
power and brand perceptions to identify the best opportunities. The value of
the strategy is ranked from 1 (the most valuable) to 7 (the least valuable).
Evaluate the feasibility and profitability of different opportunities. Carefully
go through the short list of positioning options that emerges from the analysis,
and assess each one in these terms. Having "doctors from the best medical
schools" might be highly motivating, but not affordable or realistic for a
hospital to implement.

Without a strong positioning, health services firms risk becoming just another
indistinguishable drop in a sea of choices. Developing a positioning guided by
consumers' insights—not conventional wisdom about what kind of strategy
works best in today's marketplace—is the key to moving them toward your
brand.
Service Marketing Strategies for Hospitality, Tourism, Financial, Logistics,
Educational, Entertainment and public utility information technique
services – Case Studies