Marketing Strategies
for Services Firms
SUBMITTED BY: NITISH
SADOTRA
What is a service?
Definition:
Services are separately identifiable activities that
satisfy customer needs or wants through essentially
intangible benefits, either in their own right or as a
significant element of a tangible product.
Increasingly, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers
are providing value-added services, or simply excellent
customer service, to differentiate themselves. Many
pure service firms are now using the Internet to reach
customers.
Growth and Service Sector
Reasons:
When the physiological need of the people get
fulfilled, there is a demand for more satisfaction.
The changing lifestyle, changing world, changing
economies, technological advances, modernization,
liberalization, privatization & globalization polices are
some of the factors for stimulating the dramatic
growth in services.
Segmenting services
Service segmentation is fundamentally
the same process as that for a physical
good, with two points of difference:
•Customisation of the service.
•Delivery of the service.
Types of Services
Transportation Service – railway, airline, water, road, etc.
Communication Service – telephone, post & courier, tele & video
conferencing, radio, television, etc.
Marketing related service – advertising, sale, promotion, products
development & testing, market research, etc.
Financial & insurance service –banking, leasing, brokerage, life
and health insurance, etc.
Entertainment service – movie channels, cinema, game parlors,
etc.
Hospitability services – hotels & restaurants, catering & home
delivery, etc.
Service Firms Strategies
There are four basic kinds of strategies that are being
owned by service firms now a days;
1.Shifting Customer Relationship.
2.Customer Empowerment.
3.Customer Co-production.
4.Satisfying Employees As Well As Customers.
Shifting Customer Relationship
The first and most important act any service firm can
take is to change the relationship of the firm with their
customers.
Only if the relations of the firm are good with their
customers, then only they would be in a state to earn
profits for the firm.
With the changing trends the firm must also take the
customer along with.
Customer Empowerment
In marketing, empowerment is providing consumers
with options, tools and resources to facilitate decision-
making, allowing consumers to tailor a product or
brand experience to suit their own specific needs and
desires.
By providing consumers with the power to make
choices and take actions, marketers give up control
over consumer firm interaction, but the result is often
that consumers are happier with the brand experience
and more likely to engage with the firm in a positive
way.
Customer Co-production
Customer Co-production refers to the involvement of
consumers in the various value creating activities
through which products and services are made.
These activities include the production and distribution
processes which are usually performed in the course
of manufacturing a product or creating a service for a
given target group of consumers.
Customers often feel they deliver more value, and feel
a stronger connection to the service provider, if they
are actively engaged in the service process..
Satisfying Employees As Well As
Customers
Excellent service companies know that positive employee
attitude will strengthen customer loyalty. Instilling a strong
customer orientation in employees can also increase their
job satisfaction and commitment, especially if they have
high customer contact. Satisfied employee can;
•Pamper customer,
•Accurately read their needs,
•Develop a personal relationship with customer,
•Deliver high-quality service to solve customer’s problems.
Satisfying Employees As Well As
Customers
Firms need to satisfy their customers also, by
delivering them quality of service with the best of their
employees and the technologies they are having with
them.
Customer call center, online helplines, web portals,
feedback operations, could be the good options any
service firm can place in order to serve the customers
with the best.