What is a service in the context of marketing?

Service

A service is an activity is an activity or benefit that can be offered to another this s essentially intangible and does not result in ownership of anything. Its production may or may not be tied to a physical product (Kotler 1997). Palmer (1994) also defines services as the production of an essentially intangible benefit either in its own right or as a significant element of a tangible product which through a framework of exchange satisfies human needs. Regan (1963) introduced the idea of services being ‘activities, benefits or satisfaction which can be offered for sale or are provided in connection with the sale of a good. It can therefore be deduced, from the definitions, that a service is an intangible product involving a deed of performance or an effort that cannot be physically possessed and that a service is an abstraction that cannot be examined before being purchased. In addition, services are usually provided through the application and at times the mechanical efforts directed at people and their possessions.

Pure services have their own distinctive characteristics that differentiate them from physical goods and these are intangibility, inconsistency, inseparability and perishability. To a greater extent their nature and characteristics justify the need for their own marketing and management frame work. However it is important to note that services and the physical goods are all products.

Services are intangible, un like products, they cannot be touched, felt, heard, smelt before they are bought where as goods can be touched, felt, and smelt before they are bought. Services are rather an expression that can only be enjoyed only after purchasing the product .Levitt (1981) proposed intangibility as a means of distinguishing services from products. The intangibility nature of services results in customers having difficulties in evaluating competing services where as in the case of physical goods these can be evaluated before the purchase. Due to the intangibility of services, customers tend to associate services with high risk and would seek third part information. That is to say they would rely on testimonials.  For example a customer wanting to have a haircut cannot evaluate the results from various saloons or barbershops before purchasing the service. The customers would draw inferences about service quality from the service equipment, company employees, price, symbols and communication material that they see. (Kotler. pg 469)

The intangibility of services therefore merits their own marketing and management frame work. Management would then respond in form of reducing services complexity by “tangibilising” the services. For example the complexity of banking services can be reduces by a bank through communications that stress on the tangible aspects of the bank. A bank can also add tangible products and focus on developing strong brand names. The complexity of the service may be reduced by fine tuning the marketing mix so as to differentiate the services from the competitors. For example a bus operator might offer refreshments for its customers and a saloon might offer beauty therapy to its loyal customers.

However other studies indicate that tangibility cannot be used clearly to distinguish all goods from services. Bowen (1990) suggests that the intangible-tangible concept is difficult for people to grasp. In addition, Onkvisit and Shaw (1991) argue that the importance of intangibility has been over emphasized, they believe that service providers’ offer is their productive capacity not the intangible nature of their offer.

Inseparability occurs when the production of the product cannot be separated from the actual consumption of the product. Regan (1963) postulates that inseparability is taken to reflect the simultaneous delivery and consumption of the service. Zeithaml (1981) also alludes further and says ‘this is, therefore, believed to enable consumers to affect or shape the performance and quality of the service’. In case of services, it is not possible to separate the production of services from the consumption of services where as goods are produced at a separate location and consumption at a different location. For example, Baker’s Inn bread in produces in Bulawayo and this bread can be consumed by customers as far as Nkayi. On the other hand, for a customer in Binga to enjoy the services Rainbow in Bulawayo the customer has to travel to Bulawayo. This shows that the producer of the service should directly interact with the customer for the customer to enjoy the benefits derived from consuming a service. In addition, the producer of a service must meet with the consumer at a place convenient for both the customer and the producer.

Customers become co-producers of a service due to their inseparability nature and this also results in customers being co-consumers of a service. For example, students in a class co-consume the services from the teacher and co-produce the service through participating in class. Hence the co-production and co-consumption can hinder and/or enhance service quality. Service quality, for example, can be enhanced when students in a class actively participate in a lecture such that everyone gains on the other hand a rowdy and un-cooperative group of students can result in poor service quality.

In some cases this can result in management responding through attempting to separate production of services from their consumption, management of consumer-producer interaction and improvement of service delivery systems. In some cases it is possible to separate consumption from production of services. For example, in a restaurant, food can be prepared in the kitchen and the consumers are only served with the food when it is ready. This reduces the negative impact of having the customer having to actively take part in the actual preparation of the food especially where the customer might not go well with how the food is prepared.

The interaction of the producer and the consumer is high in high contact services especially where the service is carried out on the body of the customer. In this instance the quality of service is crucial and the employees have only one chance to deliver quality service. Hence there is need for intensive investment in training employees in customer care and service delivery and manpower development. Employee motivation remains a critical tool in ensuring employee morale at all times. Well motivated employees tend to deliver quality service.

Service delivery systems can also be improved so as to reduce the lead time between the production of the service and the consumption of the service. For example, banks like the Zimbabwe Allied Banking Group (ZABG) have reduced congestion in banking halls through computerising its operations and the introduction of ATM cards which can be used in selected supermarkets within Zimbabwe. That way, customers can directly use the ATM cards in retail outlets to make purchases instead of going to the bank first. Therefore inseparability merits a distinctive way of marketing and management of services.

Heterogeneity reflects the potential for high variability in service delivery (Zeithmal et al 1985). Rathmell (1966) also says that this is common in labor intensive organisations and that performance of people can vary from day to day. Equipment based services tend to vary less as compared to people based services. For example the performance of Highlanders Foot Club’s players is inconsistent from match to match as seen from varying results from each match they play. On the other hand physical goods tend to be standardised and variability is barely noticeable, for example 500 grams Ingrams Camphor cream manufactured by Datlabs is the same and any variations are barely noticeable by the customer because any variations in product quality are corrected at the factory before the product is dispatched to the customer. However in high contact services, the service provider has limited chances, if any, for second chances to delight the customer through delivering quality service.

Onkvisit and Shaw (1991) consider heterogeneity to offer the opportunity to provide a degree of flexibility and customisation of the service. The variability of services lives the producer with a choice between standardising the service and customising it.

Marketing managers are then confronted with varying consumer needs and needs; Wyckham et al (1975) suggest that heterogeneity can be introduced as a benefit and point of differentiation. Management can then offer customised services to suit the needs and expectations of individual customers. In instances where there is need for great consistency and less variability in service delivery, management can replace human labor with machines and equipment. Management can also encourage the customers to participate in the delivery of the service, for example, in the United Kingdom, customers fill their own cars with fuel at fuel filling stations. This tends to reduce the element of variability. Systems and procedures has been put in place to make sure that the service is consistant all the time, training of service employees in service organizations is essential frr this, hence there will always be differences between services marketing management amd the marketing of physical goods

HOWEVER

The above indicate that despite the considerable debate regarding the effectiveness of the four characteristics in distinguishing between products and services, these have been widely accepted by scholars, services authorities and practitioners as constituting the essential characteristics of services (Zeithaml andBitner, 1996; Zeithaml, Parasuraman and Berry, 1985). These characteristics and their supposed marketing implications constitute the dominant theme of services marketing (Hoffmanand Bateson, 1997) and underpin both research and practice in services marketing. Consequently the question arises as to whether or not consumers recognise and use these characteristics, and whether marketers could be basing decisions on constructs which are not reflected in consumers’ buying behaviour. Hartman and Lindgren concluded from the results of their study that the four characteristics of services were not used by consumers when differentiating between products and services and proposed that three characteristics were used instead, namely “Evaluation”, “Customisation” and “Delay”. Their call to use these three characteristics instead of intangibility, inseparability, heterogeneity and perishability does not appear to have been heeded by services marketing

scholars. Consequently, further research is required to provide a greater understanding of how consumers distinguish between products and services.

REFERENCES

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