Services Marketing

What is services marketing?

A service is the action of doing something for someone or something. It is largely intangible (i.e. not material). You cannot touch it. You cannot see it. You cannot taste it. You cannot hear it. You cannot feel it. So a service context creates its own series of challenges for the marketing manager since he or she must communicate the benefits of a service by drawing parallels with imagery and ideas that are more tangible.

Search quality is the perception in the mind of the consumer of the quality of the product prior to purchase through making a series of searches. So this is simple in relation to a tangible product because you might look at size or colour for example. Therefore search quality relates more to products
and services.

Experience quality is easier to assess. In terms of service you need to taste the food or experience the service level. Therefore your experiences allow you to evaluate the level and nature of the service. You remember a great vacation because of the food or service, but by the same token you remember an awful vacation because of the hopeless food or poor service.

Credence quality is based upon the credibility of the service that you undertake. This is down to the reputation of a dentist or of a decorator. Credence is used where you have little knowledge of the topic and where you rely upon the professionalism of the expert.

Perishable

Perishable – in that once it has occurred it cannot be repeated in exactly the same way. For example, once a 100 meters Olympic final has been run, there will not be another for 4 more years, and even then it will be staged in a different place with many different finalists. You cannot put service in the warehouse, or store in your inventory. An interesting argument about perishability goes like this, once a flight has taken off you cannot sell that seat again, hence the airline makes no profit on that seat. Therefore the airline has no choice but to price at peak when it sells a seat at busy times in order to make a profit. That’s why restaurants offer vouchers to compensate for quieter times, and it is the same for railway tickets and matinees in Broadway during the middle of the week.

Variable

Variability- since the human involvement in service provision means that no two services will be completely identical, they are variable. For example, returning to the same garage time and time again for a service on your car might see different levels of customer satisfaction, or speediness of work. If you watch your favourite/favorite music group on DVD the experience will be the same every time you play it, although if you go to see them on tour when they are live no two performances will be identical for a whole variety of reasons. Even with the greatly standardized McDonalds experience, there are slight changes in service, often through no fault of the business itself. Sometimes Saturday lunchtime will be extremely busy, on other days you may have to wait to go via the drive through. So services tend to vary from one user experience to another.

Homogeneous

Homogeneity is where services are largely the same (the opposite of variability above). We considered McDonald’s above which is a largely homogeneous service, so now let’s look at KFC and Pizza Hut. Both of these businesses provide a homogeneous service experience whether you are in New York, or Alaska, or even Adelaide. Consumers expect the same level of service and would not anticipate any huge deviation in their experience. Outside of the main brands you might expect a less homogeneous experience. If you visit your doctor he or she might give one interpretation, whereas another doctor might offer a different view. Your regular hairdresser will deliver a style whereas a hairdresser in the next town could potentially style your hair differently. Therefore standardization is largely embodied by the large global brands which produce services.

Right of ownership is not taken to the service, since you merely experience it. For example, an engineer may service your air-conditioning, but you do not own the service, the engineer or his equipment. You cannot sell it on once it has been consumed, and do not take ownership of it.

Western economies have seen deterioration in their traditional manufacturing industries, and a growth in their service economies. Therefore the marketing mix has seen extended and adapted to create the services marketing mix, also known as the 7P’s or the extended marketing mix – physical evidence, process and people.

A product is tangible (i.e. material) since you can touch it or own it. A service tends to be an experience that is consumed at the point where it is purchased and cannot be owned since it quickly perishes. A person could go to a café one day and enjoy excellent service, and then return the next day and have a poor experience. Marketers talk about the nature of a service as being inseparable, intangible, perishable, homogenous and variable.

Inseparable

Inseparable – from the point where it is consumed, and from the provider of the service. For example, you cannot take a live theatre performance home to consume it (a DVD of the same performance would be a product, not a service). The consumer is actually involved in the production process that they are buying at the same time as it is being produced, for example an eye test or a makeover. One benefit would be that if you are unhappy with you makeover you can tell the beautician and that instant feedback means that the service quality is improved. You can’t do that with a product. Another attribute is that services have to be close to the person consuming them i.e. goods can be made in a central factory location which has the benefits of mass production. This localization means that consumption is inseparable from production.

Intangible

Intangible – cannot have a real, physical presence as does a product. For example, motor insurance may have a certificate, but the financial service itself cannot be touched i.e. it is intangible. This makes it tricky to evaluate the quality of service prior to consuming it since there are fewer attributes of quality in comparison to a product. One way is to consider quality in terms of search, experience and credence.