Product-Service Marketing and the Differentiation of Goals - Essay Example

? A campaign for school marketing, in order to be successful, must be built upon a foundation that accounts for the differences between services and physical goods, and accommodates the market presentation of school-based services in a way that allows the school to be competitive. In this brief paper, I will discuss these two factors – product-service differentiation and competitive service marketing – in regard to a generalized target high school at the request of a (hypothetical) school’s principal. Because the school itself has not been formally identified, nor have its demographic characteristics, the discussion will remain at a general level, detailing the principles involved in service marketing at the secondary education level. Product-Service Marketing and the Differentiation of Goals According to most accounts in the literature there is no such thing as a pure good or a pure service. Physical goods may be as objects, material devices, or things, whereas services are defined as efforts or performances relative to a consumer’s stated needs. In these definitions, the obvious factors that differentiate goods from services are delineated. Goods are tangible and substantial. Services are intangible and immaterial. It should be noticed in this construction that goods are best defined positively by what they are materially, while services are defined by what they are not, by their ephemeral and impermanent nature. Too much can be made of this distinction. However, it does point to a central tendency within the marketing, sale, and maintenance of services that is critical to acknowledge. Marketing of services revolves largely around relationships and the variables that are attached to them, such as trust, ethics, and mutual benefit, while goods revolve around the delivery of a specific material object. Of course, because there is no such thing as a pure good or service, the lines of distinction between the two concepts may be easy to blur. This is especially true in the modern marketplace in which a service economy often presents services as the primary fact of exchange. An example may shed light that will serve to differentiate the nature of the difference between goods and services. When a customer goes to purchase a car, the service that surrounds the customer’s experience of the car is critical to the buying decision. The offering and financing of the car through the sales experience and the maintenance of the car that follows post-sale may affect the customer’s enjoyment of the car to a degree that impacts on the customer’s decision to continue to do business with a given dealer. However, the customer is ultimately taking possession of a product that they will take home with them and become responsible for on a personal level. When a customer buys an airline ticket, on the other hand, the service that surrounds the experience of the trip is the ultimate and final value received. While the customer’s buying decision and value judgments may be influenced by the quality of the material meal served on the plane, for example, the customer takes possession of very little material benefit in the exchange, but rather benefits in the experience of getting from one place to another in the most convenient and enjoyable manner possible. The airline provides a service, with some minor goods afforded to support the buying experience. So, given these facts, is there anything that makes the marketing of an educational institution different as a service offered? For one possible answer to this question, consider that on a scale of tangible and intangible goods and services, teaching or education remains at the extreme ends of the intangible side. The value that is offered by the provider and received by the recipient in an educational environment revolves around psychological and sociological relationship variables. This is particularly true in a public school environment in which the customer is not only afforded the opportunity to participate in the service but compelled to do so. While there are certainly material goods that are provided on occasion in the exchange, the provision of a service from the teacher to the students, from the school to the community, is the ultimate value that is achieved. In a school-based marketing campaign, therefore, it is the nature of the delivery of this relationship that must be emphasized. Competitive Service Marketing for Schools As a provider of services the school has a special relationship with the communities, parents, students, and teachers served. They are both a provider of a specific service – the process by which students learn skills and concepts that prepare them to enter the community, the economy, and the political system – and (in the modern social and political environment) a clearinghouse for many additional forms of communication and participation that influence their various stakeholders. Their primary objective in marketing the services provided ought to be a communication to the communities served that they are providing the services they are tasked with serving in the best possible manner, with the highest degree of effectiveness and ethical awareness. Because they serve diverse communities, and because in the modern educational marketplace they compete with other institutional players for public and private dollars, legitimacy, and the like, a few specific goals ought to be keep in the forefront of the marketing campaign. These include, ease of access and ease of use, public accountability, educational excellence, and cultural sensitivity. The first goal of marketing the services that schools provide should be to encourage communication with the various stakeholders that a school serves, so that marketing serves as a catalyst creating innovation and higher performance expectations of the students within the school. Marketing of the school service is decidedly not a spin or a good face put on a school’s problematic areas. Nor is it necessarily and primarily public relations. Rather, it is about defining the role that the school plays in the community and encouraging inputs from internal and external sources, so that the school’s services are improved and the public confidence in the school as a service provider is maximized. Marketing research, unlike academic research, often proceeds on the basis of informal collection and analysis of data. Specifically, marketing research often utilizes nonprobability-based samples that select subjects not on the basis of randomized controls with the goal of making assessments regarding a sample that can then be used to extrapolate to a whole population, but rather on the basis of focusing on available or targeted data groups with the goal of learning the responses of the sample group both to inform company decisions and to influence the behaviors of those selected for participation in trials and observations. A taste test may be set up in a shopping centre, for example, to determine the purity of taste between various bottled waters on the marketplace. This test may be used both to assess the competitive performance of a given company’s new entry into the bottled water market and to increase brand awareness of the company’s new product. It is decidedly not a scientific test that is designed to analyze the quantitative performance of the new product in relation to other competitors on the market. In fact the very nature of the subject selection process prohibits making comparisons between the test subjects and the total population of all potential bottled water consumers. This is because while one may gather demographic data on the subjects involved in the test, one cannot ensure that they are representative of the population as a whole. Perhaps the people who happened to attend the shopping centre on that given day had very little representativensss in relation to the entire population. The point of the assessment therefore is not make scientific observation as such, but to gather data and analyze it with the best available expert analysis in order to inform decisions, and also to use the research process itself as part of the marketing plan. When developing a marketing research plan for the launch of a new bottled water product, keeping the above discussion in mind, it is critical to develop as many varied approaches to gathering data and releasing marketing information regarding the new product as possible. Marketing research entails a contact with a potential new customer, and therefore the goal of gathering data from the consumer should be combined with an appreciation of the opportunity to influence his or her long term buying behaviors. With this in mind, what are some ways that an effective marketing campaign may be formulated to inform the launch of the proposed new bottled water product? Two steps – in addition to the taste test outlined above – are described below. These are the focus groups and product surveys, both of which are designed to provide targeted means of achieving this objective. Focus groups. While an in-store taste test has already been described, having the goal both of asking consumers to identify which among several products they prefer, and achieving a follow-up process that ensures that customer they become aware of the new product and its imminent launch, the focus group is a more in-depth discussion. Diverse consumers from across a range of communities may be brought together and asked to hold a discussion about what drives their buying choices regarding a variety of refreshment beverages. Through this process, the company will be afforded an opportunity to gather information that shows them how to position their bottled water product against a wider marketplace of options that may ultimately impact upon their product’s success. Does bottled water normally compete against soda or energy drinks at the point of purchase for a consumer, and if so what factors drive the decision? Are cost and brand loyalty an influence, and what is likely to impact this decision? Focus groups are designed to answer these questions. Participants should be asked to provide a range of responses that are free-flowing, as well as answers to specific prompts, with content analysis used to categorize responses for later analysis and compilation. In addition to this general information-sharing, the session may include a taste test and packaging assessment in which consumers are asked to identify what they look for in a bottled water product. They should be given the opportunity to assess a variety of products on the market, including the new product, in both blind assessment and informed assessments. Following this segment, a presentation of various marketing approaches may be discussed in order to highlight a marketing approach for the new product that is likely to capitalize on the consumer group’s expectations. Product Surveys. Another method which should be included in the marketing research plan is a product survey attached to the actual product, either on labeling or through attached or separate promotional instruments. Consumers of the new product should be encouraged to give their feedback regarding the product, as well as product testimonials, that will serve to facilitate the fine-tuning of the both the product placement and marketing campaign used to launch the item. Here the goal is to assess what drove consumers to choose the product and also to derive information that allows the building of brand loyalty. Marketing research here is intended both as a honing device and as a further promotional approach that will serve to guide future marketing efforts. Conclusion. While marketing research for a product that involves complicated decision making and the weighing of many different variables – such as for example, that related to the purchase of a car – may involve much more sophisticated analysis, it is expected that the decisions revolving around purchase of a new bottled water product will involve fewer variables and less sophisticated consumer choice variables. For this reason, the steps outlined here are designed to walk a fine line between promotion and market research. An ethical approach to analysis, as well as the competitive needs of the company’s executive decision-making, requires that formalized controls be in place when selecting focus group participants. It makes no sense to go through the troubles of scheduling and paying for a focus group trial, for example, if no beneficial and comparative data is gathered, or if such data is not analyzed with a respect for objective analysis. However, other means of measuring consumer responses, -- specifically the taste test and the product survey should be used as both means of gathering data that can be useful in an informal sense to tweak marketing approaches and to announce product launch. Additionally marketing research should have a secondary goal of promoting the product and encouraging customer buy-in that will leads to ongoing brand loyalty. This brief essay will address consumer behavior as regards purchasing decisions involving a new dishwashing liquid, specifically addressing how marketers can approach consumer behavior realities in order to achieve a successful selling strategy. Consumer behavior is defined as the set of characteristics that influence the overt behavior of consumers regarding their purchasing choices and actions. It involves many different variables including pre-existing personal and cultural attitudes, referent inputs such as family, friends and word of mouth, and marketing stimulus and response. Such behavior is ultimately conditioned and learned behavior, either resting on the subjects’ own psychological proclivities, or on some other set of motivational drivers. In considering consumer behavior, marketers attempt to make use of product, promotion, and pricing strategies that are likely to influence both short-terms and long-term behaviors in an attempt to build brand and product loyalty. Many different models for consumer behavior have been developed as explanatory causes. There is perhaps no final word on the matter as, for example, it is sometimes unclear even whether attitudes affect behavior or the other way around. Nevertheless, it is important for marketers to have a broad approach to influencing consumer behavior because the final purchasing decisions of consumers are driven by these various considerations. Marketers must attempt to approach consumer behaviors in ways that are likely to reach the broadest portion of the market and to affect the long term behavior of the greatest number of consumers. According to many accounts, there is a five step process for consumer purchase decision-making, consisting of the following: 1. Problem Recognition, characterized by the recognition of a perceived need by a consumer in which he sees a gap between his actual state and a desired state, 2. Information Search, characterized by the consumer attempting to gather data from experience and referents that will help him to satisfy the perceived need, 3. Evaluation of Alternatives, characterized by a weighing of different options in which the consumer attempt to find an optimal solution according to his or her set or altering priorities, 4. Purchase Decision, characterized by the consumer coming to a conclusion to make a purchase that addresses the perceived need, and 5. Postpurchase Behavior, characterized by the consumer entering a recursive process in which he or she evaluates the decision against the need end the search criteria and is either satisfied, leading to likely repeat behavior in the future, or unsatisfied leading to changed behavior. In the case of a consumer making a purchasing decision regarding a dishwashing liquid, the marketer must first weigh the possibility that the consumer will not particularly feel any new felt need regarding the decision of various possible dishwashing liquids. In fact, the consumer will likely already have established patterns that will lead him or her to habitual behaviors and otherwise derived brand loyalty. However, this decision seems to be one that may also ultimately be driven by pricing considerations. The marketer must therefore attempt to make inroads into the consumer behavior so that the new product will be tried and then new brand loyalty can be established and nurtured. A marketing campaign for a new dishwashing liquid may therefore proceed along the following lines, paralleling the consumer behavior five-step process: 1. A promotional trial may be sent through the post or offered as an add-on to another related product (or in a small-sized) bottle. Alternately, coupons may be distributed that attempt to obtain an initial trial. The goal here is to attempt to prompt the customer to perceive a new need regarding the purchasing of dishwashing liquid. Change the playing ground from habit or brand loyalty to price, with the goal of influencing the customer to use the new product for the first time. 2. With onsite promotional and marketing materials, stress the benefits and competitive advantages of the new product, so that the consumer gets ready information that will influence the decision. 3. Product demonstrations of commercial related to the new product should point out the advantages of the new product relative to other alternatives on the market. 4. Coupons on the bottle may reward the customer for point-of-sale decisions to use the new product. 5. Brand loyalty is established with effective commercial campaigns following product launch to make the new product a household name. This step can be the most difficult to achieve with a product of this type, because often brand longevity is a determiner or loyalty. However, with customer testimonials incorporated into marketing campaigns, the consumer be brought to a place wherein the new product is associated with effectiveness or value or some other competitive advantage that the company decides to build upon. Read More