Marketing of Services - Assignment Example

MARKETING OF SERVICES by MARKETING OF SERVICES INTRODUCTION The United Kingdom service sector at the moment is experiencing some difficulties and challenges. These challenges tend to compromise the quality of the services offered. Whereas a service is a deed, act or performance, quality on the other hand refers to the degree of excellence in service performance. Service quality is, therefore, the degree and direction of discrepancy between consumer’s views and expectations in terms of different but relatively important dimensions of the service quality which can affect their future of purchasing behaviour. Consumers perceive the degree of quality of services by experiencing the consumption process and comparing their experience with their expectations. In light of this, the paper will propose appropriate measures of service quality for the face-to-face interaction between provider & potential customer, & for any interaction which is mediated by technology. A service quality is antecedent to consumer satisfaction while consumer satisfaction is antecedent to the purchasing power of the consumer (VERMA, H. 2012). Service organizations perceive quality service in terms of costs; profitability, consumer satisfaction, customer relations, behavioural intention and word of mouth. Service organizations ascertain service quality by taking either of the above. Services are mainly composed of three major characteristics such as intangibility, inseparability of production and consumption, heterogeneity and perishability. A recurring theme in the United Kingdom service companies is the difficulty manager’s experience in translating and understanding the customer’s expectations into service that employees can understand and execute. Customer expectation is the belief about service delivery that serves as standard of reference against which performance is judged. Customers evaluate service quality by comparing their perception of service with their expectations. Service quality and customer service expectations can be categorized into five overall dimensions: tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. Travellers for instance may expect no frill service for short domestic flight but would be dissatisfied with the same level of service on a full airline service flying a longer distance. It is therefore a key challenge for the travel agents and operation manager to understand customer expectation of the service that they are offering to their customers. Customers have different service expectations which are classified into two. They include the desired service level which is the service the customer hopes to receive. The other is the adequate service level which is the service the customer finds acceptable and it reflects the minimum performance level expected by the customer without being dissatisfied. These two service levels are the make the upper and lower boundary of the zone of tolerance by the customer. Therefore management has to find the best way to deliver quality services to their customers. Some of the appropriate measures of service quality for face-to-face interaction and technological interactions between the service provider and potential customer include; reliability, responsiveness, quality of communication, service attitude, empathy, quality information, ethics, speed of transactions and ability to correct transactions, availability, Problem solution, affordability, System quality and auditing of the system, ease of use and security concerns. Reliability This is the ability to deliver the promised service dependently and accurately. It includes the timeliness of service, range availability of service and confidentiality. When a customer purchases a car for instance he expects the services to adhere to timeliness, range availability among others. In internet banking transactions for instance, error free transactions, privacy and security are the main measures of reliability, Sincerity and competence are also necessary especially if it is the face to face interaction between the service provider and the potential customer. Responsiveness This is the Willingness to help customers and provide prompt services. Responsiveness can be used to measure service quality and ensuring customer satisfaction. It can be used to measure the quality of service especially in banking sector, hospital, tourism, and other industries. For example in health industries it is the degree at which the provider focuses attention at the user. According to Malhotra (2005), he considers responsiveness as the timely and substantive response to inquiries and complaints. In marketing for instance, the service quality will always vary depending on the interaction between customers and service providers. As hard as they try, even the best company can have occasional delays. Therefore, the company can engage in service recovery just in case such an incident occurs so that they can be able to turn angry customers to loyal customers and even win more customer purchasing power and loyalty than if things had gone well in the first place. In online shopping responsiveness is the promptness of reaction, availability of personnel and alternative communication channels and return policy on goods. Promptness also appears as essential component of determine service quality in the internet banking. Quality of communication Quality of communication is a construct based on various concepts such as acceptable speed of delivery of speech, accent, intonation, and clarity of pronunciation, clarity of instruction, explanation, and fluency in grammar, customer service and ability to understand the customer among others. Help desk services provided over the telephone, verbal communication takes place following a call to the help desk. Consumer satisfaction will depend on the type of the communication that he has come across, either maintenance or convergence style. Clarity of the communication and ability of the provider to understand the consumer’s issues will determine the consumer satisfaction. Clarity, intonation, fluency and perception of speech would determine comprehensibility of the information .For instance when a customer care on online based service calls a consumer, she should be clear, explain herself, be fluent and the accent and intonation should be good as this will affect the consumers attitude towards the purchase of a certain commodity. Service attitude Behavioural aspects such as respect, attitude, genuineness, understanding and demeanour are important measures of service attitude especially by travel agents. Others are concern, civility and congeniality. These attitudes have a considerable effect on consumer satisfaction in various industries or firms. Service attitude could be a predisposition of the service provider even before the customer discusses the issues of the service at hand and it continues during the service encounter. Therefore, the service providers should ensure that their attitude towards the customer is good, and they should also treat consumers with concern for instance when a customer appears in a certain shop or on the online transacting base, the service provider should keenly listen to him or her with concern and respond to her needs appropriately. Empathy This is the caring and individualized attention provided to the customer; it has a strong correlation to the quality of services offered to the customer. Empathy has a positive significant influence on listening, trust in salesperson, and customer satisfaction. Empathy covers six aspects, urgency, listening patiently, trustworthiness, friendliness, and attentiveness. Urgency refers to an earnest and persistent quality, while trustworthiness is whereby the service provider can be able to be relied on with his dealing and he is honest too. Quality information Quality has four combinations, these are, relevance, timeliness, reliability, and accuracy of information to the customer. Quality of information encompasses providing up to date information, accurate, useful and timely information. Quality of information has a significant influence on consumer satisfaction. The provider should provide relevant information for instance on the closing and opening hours of a business, more so, he should also meaningful, it should emphasize on the required information so that the potential customer is able to retrieve the information in time( Folinas, D. 2013). Ethics The ethics combine four aspects such as expectation of security, privacy, non-deception, and fulfilment of promise. There should be distributive justice as it is a predictor of consumer satisfaction, followed by interactional and procedural justice. The customer expects that privacy of their transactions is upheld, for instance the provider should not disclose to other third parties about the transaction that has just occurred by a certain customer, be it online basis or through face –face interaction so that incidences such as theft should not occur. In terms of non-deception, the provider of a certain service should not lie to potential customers concerning certain products, either in terms of price or quality, they should avoid incidences of compromising the quality of a service so as to make profit while compromising the service quality. Travel firms should not use approaches such as window dressing their accounts such that they hide liabilities and expose only what the general public wants know about them, this is unethical issue and it should not occur. Speed of transactions and ability to correct transactions Refers to the prompt processing of transactions. Customers should not be kept waiting for transactions. Transactions on internet banking are normally fast. If transactions are conducted manually, they should be corrected by tearing and filling some other form. It is therefore important for customers to use internet banking for instance knowing that the mistakes can be corrected or they can cancel a transaction and begin afresh. Availability This is the uptime of the internet, internet banking is supposed to be a solution of convenience to traditional banking; it is expected to be on throughout the week and on twenty four hour basis. For instance the Automatic Teller Machine in the banking sector should be kept open throughout the week and a twenty four hour basis, the hospital too should be left open so that it caters for the need of individual just in case they fall ill, others are hotels, shops and supermarkets among others. Accessibility This entails the evenness of the website. Guidance should be arrange for instance on each and every step that is supposed to be taken on the website. All essential information should be given on the website such that the customer does not have to ask for assistance every time. For instance the website should have navigation sites like home, about us, customer care services, where to log in or out and the search options which help in searching for information quality. It should also have various links that can help one access to other links .Therefore it should be user friendly at all means. Problem solution As an internet banking provider, the bank has to arrange for problem solution options for the customer. They could have a well-trained customer care personnel or online customer care centre so that they can guide individuals even at night. This measure enables the potential customer be attracted to the service as they will always find an easy way out whenever they get stack while performing or conducting something like online purchase. They will be able to ask questions and their problem is resolve without wastage of time. Affordability E-banking services should be rationally priced as compared to other alternatives so that customers can easily adapt to them. Internet banking is one of the examples of the e-banking channels. The pricing must catch the interest of the customer who is trying to use the service for the first time. Hence the provider of such services that are new should have a low price so that it can even capture those with minimal income (Reid, R. & Bojanic, D. 2010). Ease of use and security concerns Customers should be assured of there will be security in the use of a service by the provider, Assurance is the ability of the company and its employees to inspire confidence and trust in its customers (Wankhade, L. & Dabade, B. 2010). The site should be well organized such that it is easy to use or understand. Online use should be secure and trustworthy. Customers should feel that their money or whatever transactions are secure and that no third parties have access to their finances and their financial info System quality and auditing of the system In addition to many measures of information processing system, such as reliability, timeliness, ease of use, flexibility, and accessibility among others, the individual informational system should provide a cost benefit, the system should be easy to use and provide necessary information when required. The system should be audited for instance so as to detect some of the defects that comes with it (Reid, R. & Bojanic, D. 2010). The services should also follow the auditing so that they show if the service provider is conducting them in an efficient manner. This enables one determine whether the services are following the right procedures or they are being performed haphazardly. The shops for instance should have different personnel’s who specialized in different areas, those in charge of stores, cashiers, those in charge of the system among others so that the service provider ensures that there are no customer delays or complaint hence customer satisfaction. Reference Folinas, D. (2013). Outsourcing management for supply chain operations and logistics services. Hershey, PA, Business Science. Reid, R. D., & Bojanic, D. C. (2010). Hospitality marketing management. Hoboken, N.J., John Wiley & Sons. Verma, H. V. (2012). Services marketing: text and cases. New Delhi, Pearson Education. Wankhade, L., & Dabade, B. (2010). Quality uncertainty and perception information asymmetry and management of quality uncertainty and quality perception. Berlin, Phylsica-Verlag. Read More