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 |  Marketing A McGraw Hill and QUT Custom Publication
Managing Services
Learning ObjectivesChapter 18 - Outline
AFTER READING THIS CHAPTER YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO:
- Describe four unique elements of services.
- Recognize how services differ and how they can be classified.
- Understand the way in which consumers purchase and evaluate services.
- Develop a customer contact audit to identify service advantages.
- Understand the important role of internal marketing in service organizations.
- Explain the role of the four Ps in the services marketing mix.
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Chapter 18 - Summary
- Services have four unique elements: intangibility, inconsistency, inseparability, and inventory.
- Intangibility refers to the difficulty of communicating the service benefits. Inconsistency refers to the difficulty of providing the same level of quality each time a service is purchased. Inseparability means that consumers cannot separate the deliverer of the service from the service itself. Inventory costs for services are related to the cost of maintaining production capacity.
- Services can be classified in several ways. The primary distinction is whether they are provided by people or equipment. Other distinctions of services are in terms of tax status (profit versus nonprofit) or whether the service is provided by a government agency.
- Consumers can evaluate three aspects of goods or services: search properties, experience properties, and credence properties.
- A gap analysis determines if consumers' expectations are different from their actual experiences.
- A customer contact audit is a flowchart of the points of interaction between a service provider and its customers. Interactions are opportunities for relationship marketing.
- Internal marketing, which focuses on an organization's employees, is critical to the success of a service organization.
- Because services cannot be patented, unique offerings are difficult to protect. In addition, because services are intangible, brands and logos (which can be protected) are particularly important to help distinguish among competing service providers.
- The inseparability of production and consumption of services means that capacity management is important in the service element of the mix. This process involves matching demand to meet capacity.
- The intangible nature of services makes price an important cue to indicate service quality to the consumer.
- Distribution has become an important marketing tool for services, and electronic distribution allows some services to provide global coverage.
- Historically, promotion has not been viewed favorably by many nonprofit and professional service organizations. In recent years this attitude has changed, and service organizations have increased their promotional activities.
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2003 McGraw-Hill Higher Education