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 increasing prosperity means that companies, institutions and individuals increasingly become willing to trade money for time and to buy services rather than spend time doing things by themselves. The end result has been phenomenal growth in services industries, shown in the worldwide GDP.

b) The growth of the global service labor force: throughout the world, the growth and shifting of employment from agriculture to manufacturing to services is evident. The service industries not only have grown in size, but along the way they also have been absorbed all the jobs shed by traditional industries, such as agriculture or manufacturing. This growth could be justified because services employees on direct payroll of good companies are counted as a industrial employees. Nowadays, e-services are being more common and know as self-service technologies, which means technologically based services that help customer help themselves. The purpose of this is “the best service is self-service”, so the companies. Ideally, this purpose is created to automate routine interactions between customers and providers with the goal of providing convenience and efficiency for both parts. Ultimately, consumers often enjoy the convenience, speed and easy way of using self-service technology companies compared with to traditional services. As a negative point of view of this new kind of service, in some cases, the customer´s view of the advances of the self-service technology as a purpose of the company to distance itself from the customer, so this services firms employing this kind of service must carefully consider the customer overall experience. E-services play a critical role in the transformation of the customer´s online experience that progresses over time from a functional experience to a more personalized experience. In essence, e-services humanizes the net providing various customer services activities while simultaneously reducing the online firm´s operational cost.

c) Sustainability in the services: in recent years, it becomes trendy the concept of sustainability. We can define sustainability as the ability to meet current needs without hindering the ability to meet the needs of future generations in terms of economic, environmental and social challenges. It is possible to say that sustainability is a concept related with social responsibility. The cost the sustainability could be expensive. Thus, the companies have to be careful and focusing in the implementation of the sustainability practices to see the benefits in a long term and following this way, making commitment to being more sustainable can benefit the company in more than one way. The companies have to be able to demonstrate the benefit of being sustainable in financial terms.

Pursuing sustainable business practices allows companies to find a source of competitive advantages. There are four areas in which the companies can achieve such an aims:

- Eco-efficiency:

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