British American Tobacco Services Marketing Mix - Essay Example

British American Tobacco Services Marketing Mix Introduction To enhance an efficient marketing strategy it would be necessary to coordinate and combine the various elements of marketing mix (Mowen 1995:19 and Hawkins et al. 2001:6). When an organisation like British American tobacco combines and synchronises elements of marketing mix, customers’ needs will be met as well as provision of customer value. Marketing mix has been predominated by the famous “4Ps” that include price, product, promotion and place. Conversely, because of intangible, heterogeneous, inseparable and perishability nature of services there was need to extend the ‘4Ps’ to accommodate this distinctive characteristics of services, which include physical evidence, people and process (Goldsmith 1999). British American Tobacco (BAT), operate in a highly controversial market since the main products offered are cigarette. It is due to this that the company has other incorporated other services apart from the cigarettes. The controversy that surrounds cigarettes has prompted BAT to come up with services that enhance their image such as Harm reduction, E-cigarettes. It has also come up with other functional services like marketing, IT, and supply chain. Since the company also provides services, this report aims at looking a marketing strategy that accommodates this services. Marketing is key factor when it comes to influencing consumer behaviour and value, especially if the three marketing mix for services are considered (people, physical evidence and process). PEOPLE CONSIDERATION People are very important in marketing of services, people means all the human players that are involved in delivering a particular service. In simple terms people can refer to the employees that the company has employed to deliver the services, a reputable service offered will highly depend on the type of employees. According to Goldsmith (1999), people are those who take a critical part in service delivery. Customers and personnel of a particular organization can also be classified as people (Booms and Bitner 1981). The attitudes, personal appearance and behaviour of these ‘people’ are influential factors on how customers will perceive the service (Du Plessis and Rousseau 2005). People strategy is very important to drive and boost the customer’s confidence in regard to the three marketing objectives that BAT is aimed to achieve. There are three dimension that can be adapted by BAT in respect to plan their people strategy: balancing employees and customer concerns, managing employees, and customer management (Jordan and Prinsloo 2004). Managing employees This dimension focuses on how an organization is positioned to manage its employees in order to make them satisfy all the customers need. The success of an organization will greatly be determined by the type of employees that are in that organization. If the employees are not motivated or the employees are unskilled then goods and services won’t be delivered (Webber, 2005). It is a prudent if employees could practice internal marketing for the employees who are much concerned with provision of services to customers (Robinson and Long 1987). Personnel whose job description will be mainly to deliver services should be well trained, supported, and rewarded (Goldsmith 1999). The three marketing objective would be greatly achieved if BAT employs a dedicated customer service team. Customer interface will be increased from the expertise and technical support that will be provided by the customer service team. Dealing with counterfeit products will be greatly enhanced by the customer service team since a contact will be established and need support will be issued (Yoon et al 2004). Harmonizing employee and customer interaction This dimension is aimed at harmonizing the interaction between the employee and the customer. Due to the nature of the marketing objectives that BAT has, there is a great chance that the employee and the customer will influence each other. Service provider-customer crossing point is likely to be influenced by a customer who is present in that environment of the service (Rafiq and Ahmed 1995). The marketing objectives require both the provider and the consumer to be participate, they can thus be said to be participatory. When the service context gears toward a participatory nature it will require the customers role to increase while the service provider decreases (Williams and Anderson 2005), a good example is the marketing objective which is aimed to implement measures of controlling the counterfeits and illegal trade. Management of customers It is very possible for customers to influence a service, this is because they participate to make the finished service a success (Irons, 1996). It is very important for organization to understand the customer’s decision-making process. This is very important as this will help the customers to patronize their experience with the service. The marketing objectives of BAT are aimed towards the customer experience, which means that the customers should be engaged in the decision making process. If it is the issue of counterfeit products it is the customers who will be affected, and the only way that they can be assured to be protected from these counterfeit product is by liaising with the organization. PROCESS CONSIDERATION This is aimed to analyze how the customers perceive a particular service product and the extent to which that process delivery of service.in simple terms it can be described as the process by which a customer is attended with the preferred product. Aspects such as procedures, routines and mechanisms that are incorporated in an organization (Palmer 2005). It can also be characterized by the way the consumer grasps the service (Webber 2005). Process has been defined as the system in which the organization uses to make sure that the service is delivered. Marketing mix describes process as the element of service that enhances the experience of the customer. If the service is run smoothly, then the organization will get a competitive advantage. There are those activities that can be seen by the customer, which are called front stage activities and there are those activities that cannot be seen by the customer, which are referred to as backstage activities. It is therefore the obligation of organizations to plan a process that will ensure that a service product created is personalized. That moment when a customer interacts with the organization is called a service encounter (Du Plessis and Rousseau 2005). It is therefore recommended that if the service encounter will be understood properly, an organization should identify and create a list of crucial incidents. This will make sure that the management is able to identify the problems that are likely to occur in the course of the process. Technology can be greatly be used to enhance service delivery (Jordan and Prinsloo 2004), for example to encourage the customer to report via email, toll-free lines and website any incident of counterfeit products. Sometimes things may turn ugly, it will therefore be the responsibility of the organization to react towards the disappointed customers. The second objective of BAT that is aimed to increase alternative nicotine-based products, these products can end up not accepted by the customers. The process that can be applied is the process of service recovery, the possibility of service recovery will at large extent depend on the principle (Jordan and Prinsloo 2004). The customer service team should be able to empathise with the customers, and it will be also the customer service team to behave proper remedies for the problem that has occurred. Achievement of the marketing objectives of BAT will depend on how effective they respond to the customer, which can entail the procedure that they take to handle a customer’s complaint. Service recovery will be more effective if it is characterized by courtesy and tangible rewards as this will ensure that the customer won’t bad-mouth the organization (Hocutt et al 2006). It is also prudent for the organizations to have different channels of filing complaints, since customers who seek redress prefers an interactive channel while those that want to aperture their frustrations will prefer channels such as letters and emails (Mattila and Wirtz 2004). THE PHYSICAL EVIDENCE CONSIDERATION It is very difficult for a customer to know the quality of a service before a purchase is done, and certain physical clues will help the customer to make the decision. It due to such reason that the customer service team should try to give some element of physical evidence. Intrinsic product clues will be very important for very high intangible products (Brandy et al. 2005). Physical evidence can be described as the physical assets that that complement and surrounds the service, such as signage, reports, smells and music (Goldsmith 1999). There are various aspects that help to create a physical evidence such as design, ambience, communication and social factors. The ambience has a very great impact to the psychology of customers and include things such as lighting, sounds, and the quality of that air. Design will incorporate factors such as architectural and exterior appearance as well as the interior decors. If the customer perceives design and ambience positively, a customer to customer interaction will be enhanced (Moore and Capella 2005). It is therefore recommended that the physical set up of the organization should be changed to enhance customer interaction and allegiance positively. The last dimension which is social factor is characterized by aspects such as interaction of the customers with the organization. The quality and type of art used to decorate the offices can communicate different things, and can communicate positive message to the customers (Jordan and Prinsloo 2004). The image that the organization is aiming to portray or other factors such as brand name, corporate identity should be enhanced through physical evidence such as signage, building and décor (Du Plessis and Rousseau 2005). A strong brand should be created for the non-nicotine products that BAT is aiming to release to the market, the brand should synonymous to a household name. A well-established brand will ensure that the company will be success in all dimensions (Toma and Morphew 2000). There are various roles that are played by physical evidence and include; socializing, packaging, managing trust and facilitating (Jordan and Prinsloo 2004). Packaging in service marketing is different but it means the environment to which that service is been offered. In the case of BAT it could comprise factors such as the systems that are put in place to ensure that the services are well felt by the customers. Socializing will enable the customer to project a positive behaviour. It is therefore the function of the physical evidence to make sure that the customer has the right attitude towards the organization. Physical evidence is also a technique that can be applied by organizations to reinforce their positioning (McColl-Kennedy 2003). It is a very important aspect since the customers will use tangible clues to access the quality of the service product (Rafiq and Ahmed 1995). If the surrounding of the organization is not pleasant there will be no an iota of good impression of the organization that the customer will have (Pheng and Ming 1997). CONCLUSION There is a great need for British American Tobacco (BAT) to implement the service market mix in addition to the common ‘four Ps’ that are considered as traditional marketing mix. The marketing objectives of the company be highly achievable if the three considerations are taken to account. An objective such as combating counterfeits and illegal trade in order to ensure that the market share of the international brand will be highly achievable, first the company should form a brand that will be difficult to forge this will be physical evidence consideration. The process that should be used to communicate the zones that have counterfeit products should be enhanced by means of technology such as email and social media platform. Finally the company should employ qualified and motivated staff who are going to ensure that the perpetrators of counterfeits products are brought to book. 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