Explain the “Flower of Service” concept and identify each of the petals. What insights does this concept provide for service marketers? pg 108-109

MKT 3210 Services Marketing

 

Questions for Mid-Term Exam I (20%)

 

You will be given 2 or 3 questions from the list below (depending on the difficulty of questions). You will have seventy minutes to answer these questions.

 

Read carefully all questions!

 

Good luck!

 

 

1. “The 4Ps are all a marketing manager needs to create a marketing strategy for a service business.” Prepare a response that argues the contrary and justify your conclusions. Apply the 7Ps marketin mix model. (Pg44-45)

There are 4 basic strategic elements or 4 Ps that developing strategies to market manufactured goods. Actually 4 Ps of goods marketing are not good to deal with the issues arising from marketing services and have to be adopted and extended. Also,marketing mix doesn’t cover managing the customer interface. In order to extend the marketing mix by adding 3Ps connecting with service delivery; process, physical environment,people. So,in all these 7 elements called 7Ps of service marketing which represent the ingredients required to create viable strategies for meeting customer needs profitably in a competitive marketplace.

Product elements. Planning the marketing mix begins with creating a service concept that will offer value to target customers and satisfy their needs better than competing alternatives. Service products consist of product that responds to the customer’s primary need and an array of supplementary service elements that are mutually reinforcing value-added enhancement that help customers to use the core product more effectively.

Place and Time.

Pg44-47

 

Explain the “Flower of Service” concept and identify each of the petals. What insights does this concept provide for service marketers? pg 108-109

What is so distinctive about services marketing that it requires a special approach, set of concepts, and body of knowledge (explain eight common differences between services and goods, their implications and marketers action to deal with these differences)?

There is a major difference between goods and services based on both tangible as well as intangible factors. Goods are basically objects or products which have to be manufactured, stored, transported, marketed and sold. Lays chips, BMW, Adidas are some companies manufacturing goods.

Thus the difference between goods and services is based on tangibility. Where goods are tangible in nature, services are mostly intangible. The classic rules which defined services were intangibility, heterogeneity, perishability and variability. However, there are several new rules to define the difference between goods and services.

Ownership-is not transferred – When buying a service, the service ownership is not transferred to the end customer. If you buy a car then the car is yours. But if you buy a ticket for an airline, then the airline is definitely not yours.

Intangibility – How do you measure service? In a restaurant, the dish can be measured, but the efforts gone in making the same dish by two different chefs cannot be measured from the customer end. Same goes for large service corporates like Accenture and Infosys. The time and effort gone for giving service to the customer is intangible. Both ownership and intangibility are old

school differences between goods and services.

Service marketing» Difference between goods and services

Quality – In case of products, mass manufacturing is common. And mass manufacturing means uniformity. However, services involve a lot of manual labour due to which the quality may vary each time. Uniformity in services is a factor which each service owner tries for. For example – The major challenge of food chains like Subway, Pizza hut and dominos is to give the same quality over and over again, whereas in local restaurants the quality of food may vary time to time from the same restaurant.

Evaluation of services is tougher – As quality varies from time to time and the involvement of customer is maximum, evaluation of different services becomes tougher. For example – HDFC has more number of ATM than SBI. Thus we can evaluate that HDFC service is better because they have more reach to the end customer. But how do we evaluate how a barber cuts your hair.

Inventories are absent – Production and consumption of services happens at the same time. This does not mean that the raw material is not present to provide the service. For example in a restaurant, a dish is made only after you order it. The raw material and the chef might be present. But the production does not begin unless and until there is a customer to consume the service.

Time is very important in services – Because inventories are absent in services, and because production and consumption is at the same time, time is a very important difference between goods and services. The keyword here is “delay”. There should be no delay in providing the service. Thus the cab should arrive on time, the food should be prepared by time and the trains should run on time. Because time is important.

Thus the difference between goods and services is based on many different factors. These factors are become more and more acute as the services sector rises in demand.

 

What are the implications of the fact that service environments are perceived by customers holistically (no dimension of design can be optimized in isolation, because everything depends on everything else)? Give examples of match and mismatch (don’t use examples from the text book).

 

MKT 3210 Services Marketing

 

Questions for Mid-Term Exam I (20%)

 

You will be given 2 or 3 questions from the list below (depending on the difficulty of questions). You will have seventy minutes to answer these questions.

 

Read carefully all questions!

 

Good luck!

 

 

1. “The 4Ps are all a marketing manager needs to create a marketing strategy for a service business.” Prepare a response that argues the contrary and justify your conclusions. Apply the 7Ps marketin mix model. (Pg44-45)

There are 4 basic strategic elements or 4 Ps that developing strategies to market manufactured goods. Actually 4 Ps of goods marketing are not good to deal with the issues arising from marketing services and have to be adopted and extended. Also,marketing mix doesn’t cover managing the customer interface. In order to extend the marketing mix by adding 3Ps connecting with service delivery; process, physical environment,people. So,in all these 7 elements called 7Ps of service marketing which represent the ingredients required to create viable strategies for meeting customer needs profitably in a competitive marketplace.

Product elements. Planning the marketing mix begins with creating a service concept that will offer value to target customers and satisfy their needs better than competing alternatives. Service products consist of product that responds to the customer’s primary need and an array of supplementary service elements that are mutually reinforcing value-added enhancement that help customers to use the core product more effectively.

Place and Time.

Pg44-47

 

Explain the “Flower of Service” concept and identify each of the petals. What insights does this concept provide for service marketers? pg 108-109