Services are acts, efforts or performances exchanged from a producer to a user without ownership rights. They satisfy needs by providing pleasure, information, or convenience.
A firm can provide services to individuals or to other businesses. Also firms that manufacture products can have their own subdivisions that offer services: the subdivisions can offer services needed in the manufacturing process or even to the end users of their products.
Vibrancy in businesses and increased customer awareness of his rights has resulted in need for better service delivery. This has made the service sector to grow by leaps and bound.
Inspite of this growth, the service sector has had its fair share of challenges. Some of these challenges arise from the nature of services which pose distinct marketing challange.
There exists significant differences between products and services, this fact has lead to a situation where marketers of products and marketers of services are faced with different marketing challenges. Arguably, the challange is even more daunting for service marketers.
These are some of the characteristics of services that influence on how services are marketed.
Intangibility
Unlike in the case of products, customers can not smell, taste, or touch the services. This makes defining a relevant and graspable brand promise all the more difficult, yet all the more essential.
This makes marketing of services difficult due to absence of physical aspects which the customer would have otherwise used to distinguish the service.
The marketer must use vivid images and metaphors in advertising to create ' mental tangibility' .
Perishability
Services involves actions or performance and are transient in nature. Although facilities can be held in readiness to create the service, this does not represent the service itself but productive capacity, in the case of excess demand customers may be disappointed or asked to wait until later.
Service marketers must therefore come up with ways of matching demand for and supply of services through dynamic pricing, promotions, and reservations.
People may be part of the service experience.
Probably you have noted that the difference between one service provider and another lies in the attitude and skills of the employees.
Firms should devote special care to selecting, training, and motivating their employees as they are the people who will be responsible for serving their customers directly.
When a customer encounters other people; employees or other customers, at the service facility, this encounter can influence his satisfaction. How they are dressed, how they behave, or even who they are can reinforce or negate the service 'experience' the firm is trying to create.
Keeping the promise.
Many services are delivered in real time while customers are physically present. This can be defined as 'the moment of truth' ; the firm has to live up to its expectations by giving the best.
Real time interactions are opportunities to strenghten the brand by exceeding expectations or weaken it by under-delivering.
This poses a crucial challenge in marketing of services, unlike in products where goods are produced in a factory, under controlled conditions, and checked for conformance with quality standards.
Inconsistency.
Service is by defination experience-based and is produced and consumed concurrently. Service execution often differs among employees, between the same employee and different customers, and even from one time of the day to another. Also to note is that its execution is influenced by attitudes, moods, skills, emotions of the employee: this brings out the human aspect of services.
This leads to a situation where there are varied opinions regarding services offered by one firm to different customers.
A firm can adopt standardised procedures, train its employees, or even automate to reduce cases of inconsistencies.
By John Muchiri
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