THE NATURE AND DISTINCTIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF SERVICES WARRANT THEIR OWN MANAGEMENT AND MARKETING FRAMEWORK. DISCUSS FULLY

Kotler (2000 ) defines services as any act or performance that one party can offer to another  that is essentially intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything. He goes on to say that its production may or may not be tied to a physical product. Palmer (1994) defines services as the production of essentially intangible benefit either in its own right or as a significant element of a tangible product which through some form of exchange satisfies an identified consumer need. According to Wikipedia (1996a) A service is the non-material equivalent of a good.

Kotler (2000) Services are intangible, inseparable, variable, and perishable. These aspects affect the design of the marketing management framework. Each characteristic poses challenges and requires certain strategies. Additional marketing approaches more than just traditional external marketing use of four Ps is applied. Services characterists aspects affect the design of the marketing management framework. Each characteristic poses challenges and requires certain strategies. Marketers must find ways to give tangibility to intangibles, to increase the productivity of service providers, to increase and standardize the quality of the service provided, and to match the supply of services during peak and nonpeak periods with market demand.

Intangibility

Palmer (1994 ) states that “a pure service cannot be assessed using any of the physical senses. Services are intangible. This allude to the fact that services cannot be touched or viewed. Unlike physical products, they cannot be seen, tasted, felt, heard, or smelled before they are bought. This poses a challenge for clients to tell in advance what they will be getting. Services are ideas and concepts that are part of a process. The client typically relies on the service providers’ reputation and the trust they have with them to help predict quality-of-service and make service choices. For example services delivery of Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) and services of Standard Chartered Bank .

Regulations and governance are means to assuring some acceptable level of quality-of-service. It is then the duty of the service marketer to tangibilize the intangible through the physical evidence. The person who is getting a face lift cannot see the exact results before the purchase, just as the patient in the psychiatrist’s office cannot know the exact outcome before treatment.

To reduce uncertainty, buyers will look for signs or evidence of the service quality. They will draw inferences about quality from the place, people, equipment, communication material, symbols, and price that they see. Therefore, the service provider’s task is to “manage the evidence,” to “tangibilize the intangible.”Whereas product marketers are challenged to add abstract ideas, service marketers are challenged to add physical evidence and imagery to abstract offers. This is why Spar uses the slogan “Spar good for you.”In general, service marketers must be able to transform intangible services into concrete benefits. For example quality of apparatus in a barbershop, furniture in a hotel ,clothing of employees in a bank. Marketers in service companies use sensory evidence and the development of strong brands in reducing uncertainty, hence reduction of  perceived risk is evident. Service marketers can also stimulate personal influence sources such as word of mouth which is normally an non-paid form advertising. Celebrities and other famous people may be used in this regard for instance Phillip Chiyangwa , Precious Maphala ( former Miss Zimbabwe and Miss Tourism).

Inseparability

Kotler (2000) Services are typically produced and consumed simultaneously, unlike physical goods,

which are manufactured, put into inventory, distributed through resellers, and consumed

later. If a person or a machine renders the service, then the provider is part of the service for instance service of bank ATMs can only be enjoyed if the producer and consumer interact. In high involvement purchase (HIP), the customer must be present during the entire process for instance a hair do, the hairdresser cannot provide a service without the involvement of the customer. However, this is different with physical goods that are manufactured, put into inventory, distributed through multiple resellers and consumed later.

Because the client is also present as the service is produced, provider-client interaction is a special feature of services marketing—both provider and client affect the outcome. As tangible clues, service providers are evaluated based on their use of language, clothing, personal hygiene and interpersonal communication skills. Marketers should strive to create performance teams which Goffman defined as a set of individuals who cooperate to create a single definition of reality (Goffman, 1959,p, 79). The implications on marketing management is that staff has to be trained to interact effectively with clients, look for ways to prevent other customers from disturbing others.

 An alternative strategy is to train more service providers and build up client confidence. They should be an intensive selecting and training. Public personnel are part of the service experience their emotions and attitudes are apparent to the customer and can affect the service experience for better or for worse. It is crucial to build trust and teamwork and making employees loyal to the company’s mission. Front lines office workers must also be skilled in empathy, reliability, assurance and responsiveness in order to achieve service quality.

Another effective strategy is separating production and consumption. Below is an illustration of how hotel service companies have dealt with separating production and consumption. Hotel kitchens are very secluded places for customers. Here there is no direct interaction of production and consumption where customers interact with the facilitating medium (Hoffman, 2001).

Service marketers can also balance consumer needs with efficient operating procedures that is effectively managing different market segments with different needs within a single service environment. For example, allocating different age groups different places within a single restaurant, Fantasy land in Harare can be a very good example. This helps create a conducive environment for different customer segments.

Inventorability

Kotler (2000) Services cannot be stored and are produced on demand and in the presence of a consumer, that is, they are perishable. The in-inventorability nature of service calls upon the service organization to manage demand and capacity. Services can not be saved, their unused capacity cannot be reserved.  Inability to inventory creates profound difficulties for marketing services.

To match fluctuating demand, down time can be scheduled during periods of low demand to avoid breakdowns during peak periods, using part time employees in services such as the Fast foods shops or supermarkets where demand increase significantly during festive seasons. Alternatively a firm may rent or share extra facilities and equipment to avoid over investment in assets. A company can rent or hire part of its premises in times of low demand . Workers can be cross trained and be multi-skilled to cover up each other  during peak times, for  example in a restaurant set up.

Inconsistency

Kotler (2000) Because services depend on who provides them and when and where they are provided,

they are highly variable. The quality of service depends also with the state of mind of the service provider. Service variability has impact upon not just outcomes but also the production process. Because customers are usually involved in the production process for a service at the same time they consume, it may be difficult to carryout monitoring and control to ensure consistence standards. The way one may prepare a recipe of sausage dish in a restaurant or a hair do may differ from time to time. Once you service the opportunity to pre-deliver inspection and rejection is open to physical goods and not normally possible with services.

Kotler (2000) Knowing this, service firms can take three steps toward quality control. The first is recruiting the right service employees and providing them with excellent training. This is crucial regardless of whether employees are highly skilled professionals or low-skilled workers.

Below is a service blue printing which is flowcharting the processes involved in the service process. A service blue print shows potential fail points and helps come up with solutions. A detailed service flow chart shows time frames within which each service has to be performed. It further shows relationships between the front and back office.

Service providers can also use standardisation as a strategy. Intensive training of providers , the replacement of human labour with machines reduce the variability of service production. From vending machines, robots and all automation and system development give some sense of consistency, for example the use of bank ATMs.

On the other hand customization can also be used to reduce the impact of inconsistency in service provision. This eliminates inconsistency by way of developing services that meet each customer’s exact specifications.

A number of strategies can be implemented in the marketing and management framework of services in order to offset the above mentioned challenges.

Participation-   customer`s input is asked for, for example packing their groceries in a retail shop

Capacity management- Thus matching capacity during peak periods or simply demarket the service to reduce demand.

Differential pricing- shift demand from peak to off peak periods , that is higher prices during peak and low off peak periods.

Complementary services-These are also used to minimize customer’s perceived waiting time for instance  reading material in the doctor’s office.

Reservation systems- This enable the service provider to prepare in advance for a known quantity of demand. It eliminates the risk of not receiving the service or waiting long hours before receiving a service good examples are those in hotels, airlines and physicians services.

It is clear that service businesses need a more direct and special marketing and management strategy rather than just using traditional marketing approach ( the use of 7 Ps).Various strategies need to be employed to appeal to the market in service provision, thus, for a proper marketing management of services, three tasks need to be implemented and that is competitive differentiation, service quality and their production.

BIBILOGRAPHY

Marketing Management 7^th Edition:                       Phillip Kotler

Principles of Services Marketing 1^st Edition:          Palmer A

Services Marketing 2^nd Edition:                               Luvlock

 Marketing Management Millenium Edition          Phillip Kotler

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