Service marketing

1. Marketing of Services
• How are services defined & classified?
• What are distinctive characteristics of services
as opposed to goods?
• How can service firm improve their
differentiation, quality & productivity?
• How can goods producing companies improve
their customer support services?

2. Service Definition
• A service is any act or performance that
one party can offer to another that is
essentially intangible & does not result in
the ownership of anything. It’s production
may be or may not be tied with physical
product .

3. SIX categories of offer
• Pure tangible products.
• Tangible goods with accompanying services.
• A hybrid.
• A major service with accompanying minor
goods.
• Equipment based or people based.
• Some services require client base.

4. Characteristics & marketing
implications
• Intangibility.
• Inseparability.
• Variability.
• Perish ability.

5. I. Intangibility
• Tangibalizing the Intangibles by –
1. Place.
2. People.
3. Equipment.
4. Communication material.
5. Symbols.
6. Price.

6. II. Inseparability
• Service providers can learn to work with
larger groups.

7. III. Variability
• Three steps towards quality control.
1. Investing in good personnel selection &
training.
2. Standardizing the service – Performance
Process.
3. Monitoring customer satisfaction through
suggestions & complaint system.

8. IV. Perish ability
• Strategies for balancing demand & supply.
 On demand side.
- Differential Pricing.
- Non peak demand can be cultivated.
- Complementary services.
- Reservation system.
 On Supply side.
- Part time employees.
- Peak time efficiency routine.
- Shared services.
- Increased customer participation.
- Facilities for future expansion.

9. Marketing strategies for service
firms.
Company
Internal
Marketing
External
Marketing
Interactive
Marketing
Customer
Employee

10. • External Marketing.
Normal work done by the company to
prepare price, distribution & promote
services to customer.
• Internal Marketing.
The work done by company to train &
motivate it’s employees to serve customers
well.
• Interactive Marketing.
It describes the employees skill in serving
clients.

11. Strategies of service firms.
• Managing differentiation.
• Managing service quality.
• Managing productivity.

12. I. Managing Differentiation
• The offer can include innovative features
to distinguish it from competitors offers
what the customer expects is called
Primary service package & to this can be
added secondary service features.
• Service innovations are easily copied.

13. • Service company can differentiate it’s
service in three ways –
1. Through people.
2. Through physical environment.
3. Through process.
• Service company can also work on
differentiating their image through
symbols & branding.

14. II. Managing service quality.
• Five gaps that cause unsuccessful
service delivery –
1. Gap between consumer expectation &
management perception.
2. Gap between management perception &
service quality specification.
3. Gap between service quality specification
& service delivery.

15. 4. Gap between service delivery & external
communication.
5. Gap between perceived service &
expected service.
• Five determinants of service quality
–
1. Reliability.
2. Responsiveness.
3. Assurance.
4. Empathy.
5. Tangibles.

16. • Common practices among best
managed service companies –
1. A strategic concept.
2. History of top management commitment
to quality.
3. Setting of high standards.
4. Systems for monitoring service
performance.
5. Systems for satisfying complaining
customer.
6. Satisfying the employees as well as
customers.

17. III. Managing productivity
• Six approaches to improve service
quality –
1. Service providers work harder or more
skillfully.
2. To increase quantity of services by
surrendering some quality.
3. Industrialize the service by adding
equipment & standardizing production.

18. 4. To reduce or make obsolete the need for
service by innovating product solution.
5. To design a more effective service.
6. To present customers with incentives to
substitute their own labor for company
labor.