Services Marketing

Services Marketing.

1. Introduction to Services Marketing.

Nowadays, services are in everywhere around us, and the most of the industrialized countries find that the gross domestic product is generated by their services sectors. Traditional goods producers are turning to the services aspects in their operations to establish different advantages in the marketplace and generate additional sources of revenue for their companies. These kinds of companies, which use to compete in marketing of the tangible goods, have turned their competitive focus to the customer services.

Overall, this new vision about the services is characterized by:

• Economies and labor forces that are dominated by services sector

• Products that are increasingly market-focused and more responsive to the changing needs of the market place

• More customer involvement in strategic business decision

• The development of technologies that assist the customer and employees in the provision of services

• Employees who have been provided with more discretionary freedom to develop customized solutions to special customer request and solve customer complaints on the spot with minimal inconvenience, and

• The emergence of new service industries and marketing imperative where the intangible aspects of the products are becoming the key features that differentiate products in the marketplace.

Services provide a big volume of wealth and are an important source of employment and exports for many countries. In fact, there are countless examples of firms using services imperative to drive their business forward to profit and growth.

So, let´s define what it is a service. Actually, it could be difficult to define what a good o service is because a pure good doesn´t contained elements supplied by services and a pure service doesn´t contained tangible elements but, in reality, many services contains some tangible elements and the most of the goods contain, at least, delivery service. These definitions can be:

• Goods: objects, devices or things.

• Services: deeds, efforts or performances.

• Product: it could be both, goods and services.

The main difference between services and goods is the property of intangibility. By definition, intangible products lack physical substance. So, intangible products face a host of services marketing problems that are not always adequate solved by traditional goods-related marketing solutions.

An interesting point of view regarding the differences between goods and services is provided by the scale of market entities, which is scale that displays a range of product along a continue based on their tangibility ranging from tangible dominant to intangible dominant. In one hand, the main benefit of the tangible dominant product typically involves a physical possession that contains services elements to a lesser degree. In the other hand, the intangible product dominant don´t involve physical possession of a product and can only be experienced.

From the scale o f market entities we can obtain two conclusion, first of all, there is no such thing as pure good or pure service because of the majority of the product are a mix between goods and services in different degrees. The second, and last one, is that the tangible aspects of the intangible dominant product and the intangible aspects of tangible dominant product are an important source of product differentiation and new revenue streams. To define the business in a narrowly way, these companies have been created the services marketing myopia, which is a condition of the firms that produce tangible products and overlook the services of their products.

Another way to analyze the differences between goods and services is using the molecular model, which is a conceptual model of the relationship between the tangible and intangible components of a firm´s operation. The main benefit obtained by using this model is that we can visualize the firm´s entire bundle of benefits that its product offers customer. The molecular model demonstrates that the consumers´ services knowledge and goods´ knowledge are not obtained in the same way. With tangible dominant product the knowledge is obtained focusing in the physical aspects, but with the intangible dominant product, the consumers obtain the knowledge focusing in the experiences that surround the core benefit of the product.

An aspect to have in mind in the marketing services that involves the customers´ experiences in the contact personnel and the services providers that directly interact with the consumers. Technically, we can define contact personnel as employees who briefly interact with the customers and services providers as the primary providers of a core services. In general, the services personnel perform the dual function of interacting with customers and reporting back to the internal organization. As a strategy, services personnel are an important source of product differentiation.

Other customers can have a profound impact in the individual´s services experiences. Some researches had shown that the presence of other customers can enhance or detract for individual’s services experience. Though many customer actions that enhance or detract from the services experience are difficult to predict, services organization try to manage the consumers´ behavior so that they coexist peacefully.

Until now, we have spoken about the visible components of the services model but those must be support by invisible components that tie together the organization and systems. The invisible organization and systems is the part of the firms that reflects the rules, regulations and process about which organization is based. The invisible components for the customers have a profound effect on the customers´ services experiences and, drive the services companies´ processes. As a conclusion, the components of the services model combine to create the experience for the customer, and it is the experience that creates the bundle of benefits that the customer receives.

1.1. The importance of study services marketing.

As we could see, there are a number of reasons to study services but we have to keep in mind other economical reasons like:

a) The growth of the global service economy: The service sector is one of the three main categories of the develop economies. Traditionally, economies throughout the world tend to transition from agricultural economy, to industrial economy, to a service economy. The increased rate of transformation from agricultural economy to a manufacturing to a services-based economy has caused because of the highly competitive international marketplace. Worldwide economic growth has fueled the growth of the services sector, as

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