SERVICES MARKETING

Services????
?
 • Service is an act or performance that one party can
offer to another that is essentially intangible and does
not result in any ownership of anything. Its production
may or may not be tied to physical products.(Philip
Kotler) or
• Work that is done for others as an occupation or
business
 CHARACTERSTICS OF SERVICES
1.Intangibility
• When thinking about the characteristics of services, intangibility
may come to your mind first. Service intangibility means that
services cannot be seen, tasted, or smelled before they are bought.
You cannot try them out. For instance, airline passengers have
nothing but a ticket and a promise that they will arrive at a certain
time at a certain destination COMFORTABLY. But there is nothing
that can be touched.
2.Lack of Ownership .
Lack of ownership may be one of the most obvious ones of the characteristics
of service. It refers to the fact that you cannot own and store a service like
you can a product. This characteristic is strongly linked to several other
characteristics of services, such as intangibility, perish ability,
inseparability.
CUSTOMER HAS ACCESS TO SERVICES, BUT NO OWNERSHIP
EX- LUXORY SUIT IN SHANGRILA HOTEL , YOU CAN STAY BUT CANNOT OWN THE HOTEL ROOM,
OLA CABS
• 3.Inseparability: Services are generally created or supplied
simultaneously. They are inseparable. For an e.g., the
entertainment industry, health experts and other professionals
create and offer their service at the same given time. Services and
their providers are associated closely and thus, not separable.
Therefore inseparability is an important characteristic of services
which proves challenging to service management industry.
4.Perishability – Characteristics of Services
• Perish ability means that services cannot be stored for later sale or
use. In other words, services cannot be inventoried. This is one of
the most significant characteristics of services, since it may have a
major impact on financial results When demand is steady, the
perish ability of services is not a problem.

• EX- WHEN YOU CANCEL A RAILWAY /FLIGHT TICKET SOME MONEY

IS BEING CHARGED. . The value existed only at that particular point
and disappeared when the traveler did not come.
6.Variability/Heterogeneous
services will always differ
• Variability does also belong to the important
characteristics of services. It refers to the fact
that the quality of services can vary greatly,
depending on who provides them and when,
where and how. Because of the labour-intensive
nature of services, there is a great deal of
difference in the quality of service provided by
various providers, or even by the same providers
at different times.
The 7 P’s of Services Marketing
Product (i.e. Service )
refers to the activities that a marketer offers to perform , which results in satisfaction of a
need or want of the target customer. Planning for service product in many ways similar to
the planning of tangible goods, although establishing the nature of service is difficult. The
service product consists of core product –which is the primary benefit the customers seek
from the service and peripheral services that are secondary benefits the customer seek.

The management often tries to integrate core and peripheral services into a competitive
strategy. since services are intangible the service marketers must tangibles the intangible
aspect. Superior quality , trusted brand image , extended guarantees , courteous staff ,
prompt service all from the part of managing the service offering.
• Price
• The price of the services, is the value attached to it by service provider
and this must correspond with the customer’s perception of the value .
Service pricing decision are made in more varied environment than
product pricing decisions. Demand for service tend to be less elastic than
for goods , meaning that , as prices rise the consumption of the service
will not decrease as fast as goods. he methods of pricing for services can
not be scientific as those for products.
• Demand oriented method is difficult because of the uncertainty in
projecting service demand .

• Cost oriented method is more common but this is also difficult to

implement because it is hard determine the cost of people based services.
• In some cases competitor based pricing may be suitable, where the
service is price sensitive, for example pricing airlines, during long
weekends.
• Whatever the method of price determination, the price of service usually
influences image . Since services are more ambiguous than goods ,
consumers are likely to associate the price of a service with quality.
• Promotion
Promotion is used to communicate information about
goods and services to target market audience .There is
a need to make services more tangible by linking them
to objects in promotion.
The traditional promotion mix include various methods of
communicating the benefits of a service to potential
consumers or advertising ,sales promotion , personal
selling and public relations .
• Place
The place decision refers to the ease of access that potential
customers have to a service. They can , therefore , involve physical
location decision-e.g. Where to place a hotel, decision about what
intermediary to use in making a service accessible to a customer-
e.g. Whether a tour operator uses a travel agent or sells it holiday
package directly to the customers.
The simultaneous production and consumption of service indicate the
channel of distribution is is generally limited.

Franchising of service is growing rapidly especially in the fields

of health club ,accounting and tax services , restaurants, schools
etc. Franchising lends itself to any service that can be standardized
–a major problem with heterogeneous services.
• People
In any service , it is people who play a vital role in the service encounter. This
includes both employees and other customers. The attitudes and action of
the employees can certainly affect the success of service encounter. It is
also likely that the behavior of other customers , in a movie theatre,
restaurant or class room can affect an individual service experience.
• Process

• The important objective of marketing is to identify the needs and wants in

the market place so that the service may be designed to fulfill these
needs. This include the design of the service process and how the service
is delivered .Ultimately , it reflects how all the marketing mix elements are
coordinated to provide consistent and quality service to the customer.

• Therefore, most companies have a service blue print which provides the
details of the service delivery process, often going down to even defining
the service script and the greeting phrases to be used by the service staff.
• Physical Evidence
• The intangible nature of service means that potential customers are unable
to judge a service before it is consumed, increasing the risk involved in the
purchase decision. An important element of marketing mix strategy is ,
therefore, to reduce this level of risk by offering tangible evidence of the
nature of the service..
• It is apparent that some services communicate heavily through physical evidence (e.g. hospitals, resorts,
child care), while others provide limited physical evidence (e.g. insurance, express mail).
• Role of service evidence:
• A distinction is made in services marketing
between two kinds of physical evidence:
(a) Peripheral evidence;
(b) Essential evidence.
• Peripheral evidence ‘adds to’ the value of essential
evidence only as far as the customer values these symbols
of service.
The hotel rooms of many large international hotel groups
contain much peripheral evidence like directories, town
guides, pens, notepads, welcome gifts, drink packs, soaps
and so on. These representations of service must be
designed and developed with customer needs in mind.
They often provide an important set of complementary
items to the essential core service sought by customers.
• (b) Essential Evidence:
• Essential evidence, unlike peripheral evidence, cannot be
possessed by the customer. Nevertheless essential evidence may
be so important in its influence on service purchase it may be
considered as an element in its own right. The overall appearance
and layout of a hotel; the ‘feel’ of a bank branch; the type of
vehicle rented by a car rental company; the type of aircraft used
by a carrier are all examples of physical evidence.
 MOMENT OF TRUTH

• In customer service, instance of contact or interaction

between a customer and a firm, service provider
(through a product, sales force, or visit) that gives the
customer an opportunity to form (or change) an
impression about the firm.
• Moments of Magic:

• Favorable moments of truth have been termed as ’moments of magic’.

These are instances where the customer has been served in a manner that
exceeds his expectations.
• Eg: An airline passenger being upgraded to from an economy to a business
class ticket or the 100th (or 1000th) customer of a new department store
being given a special discount on his purchase. Such gestures can go a long
way in creating a regular and loyal customer base. However, a moment of
magic need not necessarily involve such grand gestures. Even the efficient
and timely service consistently provided by the coffee shop assistant can
create a moment of magic for the customer
 MOMENT OF MISERY

Moment of Misery: These are instances where the customer interaction has a negative
outcome. A delayed flight, rude and inattentive shop assistants or poor quality of food
served at a restaurant all qualify as moments of misery for the customers. Though
lapses in service cannot be totally avoided, how such a lapse is handled can go a long
way in converting a moment of misery in to a moment of magic and creating a lasting
impact on the customer.
Difference Between Goods and
Services
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