Friday, June 11, 2010

Service Marketing Mix


Having discussed the characteristics of a service, let us now look at the marketing mix of a service.

The service marketing mix comprises off the 7’p’s. These include:
Product
• Price
• Place
• Promotion
• People
• Process
• Physical evidence.


Let’s now look at the remaining 3 p’s:

People

An essential ingredient to any service provision is the use of appropriate staff and people. Recruiting the right staff and training them appropriately in the delivery of their service is essential if the organization wants to obtain a form of competitive advantage. Consumers make judgments and deliver perceptions of the service based on the employees they interact with. Staff should have the appropriate interpersonal skills, attitude, and service knowledge to provide the service that consumers are paying for. Many British organizations aim to apply for the Investors In People accreditation, which tells consumers that staff are taken care of by the company and they are trained to certain standards.

Process

Refers to the systems used to assist the organization in delivering the service. Imagine you walk into Burger King and you order a Whopper Meal and you get it delivered within 2 minutes. What was the process that allowed you to obtain an efficient service delivery? Banks that send out Credit Cards automatically when their customer’s old one has expired again require an efficient process to identify expiry dates and renewal. An efficient service that replaces old credit cards will foster consumer loyalty and confidence in the company.

Physical Evidence

Where is the service being delivered? Physical Evidence is the element of the service mix which allows the consumer again to make judgments on the organization. If you walk into a restaurant your expectations are of a clean, friendly environment. On an aircraft if you travel first class you expect enough room to be able to lie down!
Physical evidence is an essential ingredient of the service mix, consumers will make perceptions based on their sight of the service provision which will have an impact on the organizations perceptual plan of the service.


To summaries service marketing looks at:

The Characteristics of a service that are:
(1) Lack of ownership
(2) Intangibility
(3) Inseparability
(4) Perishability
(5) Heterogeneity.

The Service marketing mix involves analyzing the 7’p of marketing involving, Product, Price, Place, Promotion, Physical Evidence, Process and People.

To certain extent managing services are more complicated then managing products, products can be standardized, to standardize a service is far more difficult as there are more input factors i.e. people, physical evidence, process to manage then with a product.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Does the website provide useful Information?