Service Marketing Questions - Assignment Example

 Service Marketing Take Home Exam 1. Briefly describe how the unique service characteristics of intangibility, inseparability, heterogeneity, and perishability apply to your educational experience in your Service Marketing class I believe that the unique tenets of service marketing have aided me immensely at understanding what exactly service is all about. These tenets have largely assisted me in understanding how to differentiate a service from a product and hence the basis of comprehension is made easier all this while. I would like to add here that the unique service characteristics have made me come to terms with the features in such a way that I have realized how different the services are from products and what advantages there are with respect to the services that are made available today when one compares the same with the products thronging the markets far and wide. My educational experience has therefore been benefited by these unique characteristics as I have gained a realization of the solitary strengths that remain within the midst of service marketing. I am sure that this will make me realize even more differentiating features in the coming times. 2. Service firms can learn a great deal from other firms in other industries. Based on the text, what four strategies appear to be predicted keys to success across the service sector? Service firms need to have a clear cut direction as to what exactly they want to achieve since services keep on changing with the advent of time. Further, these service firms must realize that they need to give something extra and not just focus on the provision of service alone. The customers look up to these service firms for quality and hence value addition is indeed the order of the day. Moreover these service firms must ensure that they meet the needs of the time and have a very significant niche within the competition that becomes fast every now and then. Lastly, in order to achieve success across the service domains, it is very important that the service firms make use of products from time to time so that an element of tangibility remains with the customers of the service. This is important as the changing times will witness added features for the sake of service firms. 3. Explain why consumers of services tend to be more brand loyal. (Include a minimum of three reasons). Services are usually appreciated by people because these are more personal in nature and hence suit the needs of the people. The element of person-centric forms the basis of their liking and disliking in the long run. Thus it would be correct to state that services are usually dependent on the people in a number of different ways, all of which lead towards brand loyalty and associations. Another reason is that the service domains change over a period of time and usually the element of improvement forms the cornerstone of any service, which indeed is a plus point when spoken about the brand loyalty aspects of service firms. The last reason is that services tend to change on the basis of consumers’ moods, behaviors, time and so on, which appeals to the consumers in a very appreciable way. Hence consumers of services are very brand loyal and tend to remain that way no matter how difficult it is to achieve a service. 4. Discuss the reasons that make consumers particularly more vulnerable to ethical misconduct within the service sector. Ethical misconduct comes about as a major problem within the service firms because there is no element of keeping a check on the dealings of consumers with the service stewards and sales clerks. Usually small favors are done here and there which go unchecked and hence leave a bad taste in the mouth as far as the entire service sector is concerned. This is a very difficult scenario for the service marketers as they have to actually gauge whether or not business is being carried out in an ethically clean way. Often it has been seen that close circuit cameras have been installed at the service sites to ensure that there are no problems when dealing with consumers who want extra favors or ask the service firms to go out of their way to bring about a service or deal which is uncalled for and not really allowed. Thus the service sector has suffered from the same anomaly on quite a few occasions. 5. What are the factors that influence desired and adequate customer expectations? The customer expectations are usually shaped up by the consumer benefit that is marketed by the organization itself. Hence the consumer is given food for thought by the company and hence it is the duty of the organization to ensure that the desired and adequate customer expectations are in line with what has been offered in essence. This is a very interesting phenomenon and one that warrants a great deal of attention on the part of the marketers since measuring the consumers’ expectations is to this day, a very difficult process. One of the factors is in properly defining what exactly the aspects which the organization will cover are and what must be left uncovered, meaning the consumers would have to find an alternative in the form of products and/or services in order to meet that very need/requirement. These factors therefore embody the exact significance of the relationship between the consumers and the marketers (Bateson & Hoffman 2005). 6. You have been hired by a firm to develop the firm’s service quality information system. What are the components of this system? The components of such a system would include the expected levels of service that the consumers would get from the standpoint of the organization that is making the service available in the first place. It will also cover the exact features of the service that is on offer and would provide a differentiating version from the competitors’. This would make the service stand out in its own league and ask the company to have a definitive place for its own clientele. Other components would comprise of the pricing index, the size and quantity related information, the speed of delivery of service, the outlet where this service is offered and so on. It is important that I am given the margin to experiment so that consumers would receive added benefits in the form of their desired expectations from the service that is on offer. I would also take their inputs and ensure that a few of these are added into the service quality information system, which at the end of the day would produce return customers. 7. What are the pros and cons of complaining customers? The complaining customers offer the organization the much needed know-how about what is missing from the business ranks and how products and services could be improved drastically so that business would grow and more customers would throng the organization. The disadvantages lie that some customers complain for the sake of complaining and their solitary bad experience with the company could mean that they reveal endless sorry sagas about the company, which is not entirely true. However the organization must take all forms of feedbacks and responses from the customers and take their complaining in a positive way so that the business could grow and develop in an exponential manner. Once again the pros include the advancement of business operations in the coming times while the cons are that the disgruntled customers would come back and forth to haunt the basis of the organization, which indeed is not a good thing at all. 8. Discuss the steps associated with frequency marketing as they relate to frequent-flier programs. Frequency marketing is indeed a long term relationship building mechanism with the customers. It aims to look at building the much needed bridge between the organization and the customers on an even keel. The customers come back and fly the same airline and hence benefit the airline in essence. The airline, in return offer services which are unmatched, different from the competitors and thus provide benefits to the customers which would not be available elsewhere. This is a two-way, symbiotic relationship, where each of the two parties benefits from the other. The frequent-flier programs are aimed to target the business class travelers because they travel on a regular basis, which would mean that any airline would cherish the idea of their loyalty towards their company. What is most important is the fact that relationship marketing looks to solve the shortfalls within the related equation and thus target the areas which would provide the best return for money, not only for the airline but also for the customers. References Bateson, J. & Hoffman, K. (2005). Services Marketing: Concepts, Strategies, & Cases. South-Western College Publication Word Count: 1,443 Read More