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Marketing (6th Edition)

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 Sixth Sixth Edition
Edition

SERVICES

SERVICES MARKETING
Integrating Customer Focus Across the Firm
Services Marketing introduces readers to the vital role that services play in the
economy and its future. Services dominate the advanced economies of the world,

MARKETING
and virtually all companies view services as critical to retaining their customers
today and in the future. The sixth edition continues the strong conceptual approach
by integrating new research into every chapter. The foundation of the text is the
recognition that the provision of service presents special challenges that must be
identified and addressed. The framework of the book is managerially focused, with
every chapter presenting company examples and strategies for addressing issues
in the chapter. The book’s content focuses on the knowledge needed to implement Integrating Customer Focus Across the Firm
service strategies for competitive advantage across industries.

KEY FEATURES AND BENEFITS:

Increase coverage of business-to-business (B2B) services and the trends toward Valarie A. Zeithaml
service infusion in goods-dominant companies.

Four new cases: Zappos.com; United Breaks Guitars; Michelin Fleet Solutions;
Mary Jo Bitner
and ISS Iceland. Dwayne D. Gremler

MD DALIM #1177746 01/22/12 CYAN MAG YELO BLK

Streamlined coverage of key topics to eliminate redundancies.

A new framework of service recovery that includes strategies for “fixing the
customer” and “fixing the problem.”

Valuable resources for both instructors and students are available at the textbook website:
www.mhhe.com/zeithaml6e

Zeithaml
Bitner
Gremler
 Confirming Pages

Preface
This text is for students and businesspeople who recognize the vital role that services
play in the economy and its future. The advanced economies of the world are now
dominated by services, and virtually all companies view service as critical to retaining
their customers today and in the future. Manufacturing and product-dominant compa-
nies that, in the past, have depended on their physical products for their livelihood now
recognize that service provides one of their few sustainable competitive advantages.
We wrote this book in recognition of the ever-growing importance of services and
the unique challenges faced by service managers.

WHY A SERVICES MARKETING TEXT?

Since the beginning of our academic careers in marketing, we have devoted our
research and teaching efforts to topics in services marketing. We strongly believe that
services marketing is different from goods marketing in significant ways and that it
requires strategies and tactics that traditional marketing texts do not fully reflect. This
text is unique in both content and structure, and we hope that you will learn as much
from it as we have in writing and revising it now for almost 20 years. Over this time
period we have incorporated major changes and developments in the field, keeping
the book up to date with new knowledge, changes in management practice, and the
global economic trend toward services.

Content Overview
The foundation of the text is the recognition that services present special chal-
lenges that must be identified and addressed. Issues commonly encountered in ser-
vice organizations—the inability to inventory, difficulty in synchronizing demand
and supply, challenges in controlling the performance quality of human interactions,
and customer participation as cocreators of value—need to be articulated and tackled
by managers. Many of the strategies include information and approaches that are
new to managers across industries. We wrote the text to help students and managers
understand and address these special challenges of services marketing.
The development of strong customer relationships through quality service (and
services) are at the heart of the book’s content. The topics covered are equally appli-
cable to organizations whose core product is service (such as banks, transportation
companies, hotels, hospitals, educational institutions, professional services, telecom-
munication) and to organizations that depend on service excellence for competitive
advantage (high-technology manufacturers, automotive and industrial products, and
so on). Rarely do we repeat material from marketing principles or marketing strategy
texts. Instead, we adjust, when necessary, standard content on topics such as distribu-
tion, pricing, and promotion to account for service characteristics.
The book’s content focuses on knowledge needed to implement service strategies
for competitive advantage across industries. Included are frameworks for customer-
focused management and strategies for increasing customer satisfaction and reten-
tion through service. In addition to standard marketing topics (such as pricing), this
text introduces students to entirely new topics that include management and mea-
surement of service quality, service recovery, the linking of customer measurement
to performance measurement, service blueprinting, customer cocreation, and
cross-functional treatment of issues through integration of marketing with disciplines
vii

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viii Preface

such as operations and human resources. Each of these topics represents pivotal
content for tomorrow’s businesses as they structure around process rather than task,
engage in one-to-one marketing, mass customize their offerings, cocreate value with
their customers, and attempt to build strong relationships with their customers.

New Features
This edition contains the following new features:
1. Streamlined coverage of key topics to eliminate redundancies.
2. Elimination of two chapters—“Consumer Behavior in Services” and “Delivering
Service through Intermediaries”—based on feedback from reviewers. These
chapters will still be available in the Instructor’s Manual for those professors who
wish to continue to teach the material.
3. Four New cases: Zappos.com; United Breaks Guitars; Michelin Fleet Solutions;
and ISS Iceland.
4. New research references and examples in every chapter.
5. Updated data for key charts and examples.
6. A new model of service recovery strategies and a significantly revised organization of
the chapter, which includes strategies for “fixing the customer” and “fixing the problem.”
7. Significant new material and revised framework in the chapter on service innova-
tion and design.
8. Increased coverage throughout of business-to-business (B2B) services and the
trends toward service infusion in goods-dominant companies.
9. Updated focus on globalization, technology, and strategic service issues through
new or improved features in every chapter.
10. Focus on digital and social marketing in the chapter “Integrated Service Marketing
Communication,” as well as examples on these topics throughout the book.

Distinguishing Content Features

The distinguishing features of our text include the following:
1. The only services marketing textbook based on the Gaps Model of Service
Quality framework, which departs significantly from other marketing and
services marketing textbooks.
2. Greater emphasis on the topic of service quality than existing marketing and
service marketing texts.
3. Introduction of three service Ps to the traditional marketing mix and increased
focus on customer relationships and relationship marketing strategies.
4. Significant focus on customer expectations and perceptions and what they imply
for marketers.
5. A feature called “Strategy Insight” in each chapter—a feature that focuses on
emerging or existing strategic initiatives involving services.
6. Increased coverage of business-to-business service applications.
7. Two original cases written specifically for this textbook, one on JetBlue’s service
disaster in 2007 and one on Caterpillar’s decision to become an integrated solution
provider.
8. Increased technology and Internet coverage, including updated “Technology Spot-
light” boxes in each chapter.

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Preface ix

9. A chapter on service recovery that includes a conceptual framework for under-

standing the topic.
10. A chapter on the financial and economic impact of service quality.
11. A chapter on customer-defined service standards.
12. Cross-functional treatment of issues through integration of marketing with other
disciplines such as operations and human resource management.
13. Consumer-based pricing and value pricing strategies.
14. Description of a set of tools that must be added to basic marketing techniques
when dealing with services rather than goods.
15. An entire chapter that recognizes human resource challenges and human resource
strategies for delivering customer-focused services.
16. Coverage of service innovation with a detailed and complete introduction to ser-
vice blueprinting—a technique for describing, designing, and positioning services.
17. Coverage of the customer’s role in service delivery and strategies for making cus-
tomers productive partners in service and value creation.
18. A chapter on the role of physical evidence, particularly the physical environment,
or “servicescape.”
19. “Global Feature” boxes in each chapter and expanded examples of global services
marketing.

Conceptual and Research Foundations

We synthesized research and conceptual material from many talented academics
and practitioners to create this text. We rely on the work of researchers and busi-
nesspeople from diverse disciplines such as marketing, human resources, opera-
tions, and management. Because the field of services marketing is international
in its roots, we also have drawn from work originating around the globe. We have
continued this strong conceptual grounding in the sixth edition by integrating new
research into every chapter. The framework of the book is managerially focused,
with every chapter presenting company examples and strategies for addressing
issues in the chapter.
Conceptual Frameworks in Chapters
We developed integrating frameworks in most chapters. For example, we created new
frameworks for understanding service recovery strategies, service pricing, integrated
marketing communications, customer relationships, customer roles, and internal
marketing.

Unique Structure
The text features a structure completely different from the standard 4P (market-
ing mix) structure of most marketing texts. The text is organized around the gaps
model of service quality, which is described fully in Chapter 2. Beginning with
Chapter 3, the text is organized into parts around the gaps model. For example,
Chapters 3 and 4 each deal with an aspect of the customer gap—customer expec-
tations and perceptions, respectively—to form the focus for services marketing
strategies. The managerial content in the rest of the chapters is framed by the gaps
model using part openers that build the model gap by gap. Each part of the book
includes multiple chapters with strategies for understanding and closing these
critical gaps.

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x Preface

WHAT COURSES AND STUDENTS CAN USE THE TEXT?

In our years of experience teaching services marketing, we have found that a broad
cross section of students is drawn to learning about services marketing. Students
with career interests in service industries as well as goods industries with high
service components (such as industrial products, high-tech products, and durable
products) want and need to understand these topics. Students who wish to become
consultants and entrepreneurs want to learn the strategic view of marketing, which
involves not just physical goods but also the myriad services that envelop and add
value to these goods. Virtually all students—even those who will work for pack-
aged goods firms—will face employers needing to understand the basics of services
marketing and management.
Although services marketing courses are usually designated as marketing electives, a
large number of enrollees in our classes have been finance students seeking to broaden
their knowledge and career opportunities. Business students with human resource,
information technology, accounting, and operations majors also enroll, as do nonbusi-
ness students from such diverse disciplines as health administration, recreation and
parks, public and nonprofit administration, law, sports management, and library science.
Students need only a basic marketing course as a prerequisite for a services
marketing course and this text. The primary target audience for the text is services
marketing classes at the undergraduate (junior or senior elective courses), graduate
(both masters and doctoral courses), and executive student levels. Other target audi-
ences are (1) service management classes at both the undergraduate and graduate lev-
els and (2) marketing management classes at the graduate level in which a professor
wishes to provide more comprehensive teaching of services than is possible with a
standard marketing management text. A subset of chapters would also provide a more
concise text for use in a quarter-length or mini-semester course. A further reduced set
of chapters may be used to supplement undergraduate and graduate basic marketing
courses to enhance the treatment of services.

WHAT CAN WE PROVIDE EDUCATORS TO TEACH SERVICES

MARKETING?
As a team, we have accumulated more than 65 years of experience teaching the sub-
ject of services marketing. We set out to create a text that represents the approaches
we have found most effective. We incorporated all that we have learned in our many
years of teaching services marketing—teaching materials, student exercises, case
analyses, research, and PowerPoint slides, which you can find online at www.mhhe.
com/Zeithaml6e, along with a comprehensive instructor’s manual and test bank.

HOW MANY PARTS AND CHAPTERS ARE INCLUDED, AND WHAT DO

THEY COVER?
The text material includes 16 chapters divided into seven parts. Part 1 includes an
introduction in Chapter 1 and an overview of the gaps model in Chapter 2. Part 2 con-
siders the customer gap by examining customer expectations and perceptions. Part 3
focuses on listening to customer requirements, including chapters covering market-
ing research for services, building customer relationships, and service recovery. Part 4
involves aligning service strategy through design and standards and includes chapters
on service innovation and design, customer-defined service standards, and physical
evidence and the servicescape. Part 5 concerns the delivery and performance of service
and has chapters on employees’ and customers’ roles in service delivery, as well as

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Preface xi

managing demand and capacity. Part 6 focuses on managing services promises and
includes chapters on integrated services marketing communications and pricing of
services. Finally, Part 7 examines the financial and economic effect of service quality.

THE SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIALS

Instructor’s Manual
The Instructor’s Manual includes sample syllabi, suggestions for in-class exercises
and projects, teaching notes for each of the cases included in the text, and answers to
end-of-chapter discussion questions and exercises. The Instructor’s Manual uses the
“active learning” educational paradigm, which involves students in constructing their
own learning experiences and exposes them to the collegial patterns present in work
situations. Active learning offers an educational underpinning for the pivotal work-
force skills required in business, among them oral and written communication skills,
listening skills, and critical thinking and problem solving.
PowerPoint
We have provided PowerPoint slides online for each chapter and case, including figures
and tables from the text that are useful for instructors in class. The full-color PowerPoint
slides were created to present a coordinated look for course presentation.
Test Bank
We have also provided test bank files and a computerized test bank, which are avail-
able on this text’s website. Instructors can easily formulate quizzes and tests from this
trusted source.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We owe a great deal to the pioneering service researchers and scholars who devel-
oped the field of services marketing. They include John Bateson, Leonard Berry,
Bernard Booms, David Bowen, Steve Brown, Larry Crosby, John Czepiel, Ray Fisk,
William George, Christian Gronroos, Steve Grove, Evert Gummesson, Chuck Lamb,
the late Christopher Lovelock, Parsu Parasuraman, Ben Schneider, Lynn Shostack,
and Carol Surprenant. We also owe gratitude to the second generation of service
researchers who broadened and enriched the services marketing field. When we
attempted to compile a list of those researchers, we realized that it was too extensive
to include here. The length of that list is testament to the influence of the early pio-
neers and to the importance that services marketing has achieved both in academia
and in practice.
We remain indebted to Parsu Parasuraman and Len Berry, who have been research
partners of Dr. Zeithaml’s since 1982. The gaps model around which the text is structured
was developed in collaboration with them, as was the model of customer expectations
used in Chapter 3. Much of the research and measurement content in this text was shaped
by what the team found in a 15-year program of research on service quality.
Dr. Zeithaml is particularly indebted to her long-time colleague A. “Parsu”
Parasuraman, who has been her continuing collaborator over the 30 years she has
been in academia. An inspiring and creative talent, Parsu has always been willing to
work with her—and many other colleagues—as a mentor and partner. He is also her
treasured friend. She also thanks the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State
University and the Center for Services Leadership. For three decades, ASU has been
her second academic home, and she has grown through her continued and intensified

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xii Preface

involvement with the faculty and the center in recent years. She is grateful to Holger
“HoPi” Pietzsch of the Latin American Division of Caterpillar Inc. Working with
Caterpillar Inc. to provide integrated solutions with products and services led to one
of the original cases in this textbook. She also thanks her colleagues and MBA stu-
dents at the University of North Carolina. The students’ interest in the topic of services
marketing, their creativity in approaching the papers and assignments, and their con-
tinuing contact are appreciated. As always, she credits the Marketing Science Institute
(MSI), of which she was a researcher and an academic trustee, for the support and
ongoing inspiration from its many executive members, conferences, and working
papers. She is especially indebted to David Reibstein and Leigh McAllister, both of
whom served as MSI academic directors, for their leadership and talent in bridging the
gap between academia and practice.
Dr. Bitner expresses special thanks to the W. P. Carey School of Business at
Arizona State University, in particular to Stephen W. Brown and the Center for
Services Leadership staff. Their support and encouragement have been invalu-
able throughout the multiple editions of this book. Dr. Bitner also acknowledges the
many ideas and examples provided by the 50 member companies of the Center for
Services Leadership that are committed to service excellence and from which she
has the opportunity to continually learn. For this edition, Dr. Bitner wants to again
acknowledge the continued leadership of the IBM Corporation through its research
divisions, in particular James Spohrer, for inspiring academics, government employ-
ees, and businesspeople around the world to begin focusing on the science of ser-
vice. She is also grateful to Buck Pei, Associate Dean for Asia Programs at the W.
P. Carey School, for providing the opportunity to teach a course on service excel-
lence in ASU’s China EMBA. The experience has enriched this book and provided
tremendous learning. She also acknowledges and thanks her colleague Amy Ostrom
for her support and invaluable assistance in sharing examples, new research, and cre-
ative teaching innovations. Finally, Dr. Bitner is grateful to the fine group of Arizona
State services doctoral students she has worked with, who have shaped her thinking
and supported the text: Lois Mohr, Bill Faranda, Amy Rodie, Kevin Gwinner, Matt
Meuter, Steve Tax, Dwayne Gremler, Lance Bettencourt, Susan Cadwallader, Felicia
Morgan, Thomas Hollmann, Andrew Gallan, Martin Mende, Mei Li, Shruti Saxena,
and Nancy Sirianni.
Dr. Gremler expresses thanks to several people, beginning with his mentor, Steve
Brown, for his advice and encouragement. He thanks other Arizona State University
faculty who served as role models and encouragers, including John Schlacter,
Michael Mokwa, and David Altheide. Dr. Gremler acknowledges the support of fel-
low doctoral student colleagues from Arizona State University who have gone on to
successful careers and who continue to serve as role models and encouragers, includ-
ing Kevin Gwinner, Mark Houston, John Eaton, and Lance Bettencourt. Dr. Gremler
also expresses thanks to colleagues at various universities who have invited him to
speak in their countries in recent years and who have provided insight into services
marketing issues internationally, including Jos Lemmink, Ko de Ruyter, Hans Kasper,
Chiara Orsingher, Stefan Michel, Thorsten Hennig-Thurau, Silke Michalski, Brigitte
Auriacombe, David Martin Ruiz, Caroline Wiertz, Vince Mitchell, Sina Fichtel, Nina
Specht, Kathy Tyler, Bo Edvardsson, Patrik Larsson, Tor Andreassen, Jens Hogreve,
Andreas Eggert, Andreas Bausch, Javier Reynoso, Thorsten Gruber, Lia Patrício,
Lisa Brüggen, Jeroen Bleijerveld, Marcel van Birgelen, Josée Bloemer, and Cécile
Delcourt. Finally, a special thanks to Candy Gremler for her unending willingness to
serve as copy editor, encourager, wife, and friend.

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Preface xiii

The panel of academics who helped us by completing a survey include Dan

Gossett, The University of Texas–Arlington; William Edward Steiger, University of
Central Florida; Julie Anna Guidry, Louisiana State University; Mark Rosenbaum,
Northern Illinois University; and Troy A. Festervand, Middle Tennessee State
University.
Finally, we would like to acknowledge the professional efforts of the McGraw-Hill
Higher Education staff. Our sincere thanks to Brent Gordon, Paul Ducham, Daryl
Bruflodt, Lorraine Buczek, Joyce Watters, Brenda Rolwes, and Colleen Havens.
Valarie A. Zeithaml
Mary Jo Bitner
Dwayne D. Gremler

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Brief Contents
About the Authors iv 9 Customer-Defined Service
Preface vii Standards 250
10 Physical Evidence and the
PART 1 Servicescape 276
Foundations for Services Marketing 1
1 Introduction to Services 2 PART 5
Delivering and Performing Service 309
2 Conceptual Framework of the
Book: The Gaps Model of Service 11 Employees’ Roles in Service
Quality 33 Delivery 311
12 Customers’ Roles in Service
Delivery 345
PART 2
Focus on the Customer 49 13 Managing Demand and Capacity 375
3 Customer Expectations of
Service 50 PART 6
Managing Service Promises 409
4 Customer Perceptions of Service 76
14 Integrated Service Marketing
Communications 411
PART 3 15 Pricing of Services 440
Understanding Customer
Requirements 111
PART 7
5 Listening to Customers through Service and the Bottom Line 469
Research 113
16 The Financial and Economic Impact of
6 Building Customer Service 470
Relationships 145
7 Service Recovery 179 CASES 495

PART 4 PHOTO CREDITS 620

Aligning Service Design and
Standards 215
INDEX 622
8 Service Innovation and Design 216

xiv

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Detailed Contents
About the Authors iv Simultaneous Production and
Consumption 21
Preface vii Perishability 22
Search, Experience, and Credence
PART 1 Qualities 23
FOUNDATIONS FOR SERVICES Challenges and Questions for Service
Marketers 24
MARKETING 1
Service Marketing Mix 24
Traditional Marketing Mix 25
Chapter 1
Expanded Mix for Services 26
Introduction to Services 2 Staying Focused on the Customer 27
What are Services? 3 Exhibit 1.2: Southwest Airlines:
Service Industries, Service as a Aligning People, Processes, and Physical
Product, Customer Service, and Derived Evidence 28
Service 4 Summary 29
Tangibility Spectrum 5 Discussion Questions 29
Trends in the Service Sector 5 Exercises 29
Why Service Marketing? 6 Notes 30
Service-Based Economies 6
Service as a Business Imperative in Chapter 2
Goods-Focused Businesses 8
Conceptual Framework of the Book:
Deregulated Industries and Professional
Service Needs 9
The Gaps Model of Service Quality 33
Service Marketing Is Different 10 The Customer Gap 35
Service Equals Profits 10 The Provider Gaps 36
Exhibit 1.1: Is the Marketing of Services Provider Gap 1: the Listening Gap 36
Different? A Historical Perspective 11 Provider Gap 2: the Service Design and
But “Service Stinks” 12 Standards Gap 37
Strategy Insight: Competing Strategically Global Feature: An International Retailer
through Service 13 Puts Customers in the Wish Mode to Begin
Service and Technology 14 Closing the Gaps 38
New Service Offerings 14 Provider Gap 3: the Service
New Ways to Deliver Service 15 Performance Gap 40
Enabling Both Customers and Employees 15 Technology Spotlight: Technology’s Critical
Technology Spotlight: The Changing Face of Impact on the Gaps Model of Service
Customer Service 16 Quality 42
Extending the Global Reach of Services 16 Provider Gap 4: the Communication Gap 44
The Internet Is a Service 16 Putting It All Together: Closing the Gaps 45
The Paradoxes and Dark Side of Technology Strategy Insight: Using the Gaps Model
and Service 17 to Assess an Organization’s Service
Global Feature: The Migration of Service Strategy 46
Jobs 18 Summary 48
Characteristics of Services 19 Discussion Questions 48
Intangibility 20 Exercises 48
Heterogeneity 21 Notes 48

xv

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xvi Detailed Contents
PART 2
FOCUS ON THE CUSTOMER 49
Chapter 3
Customer Expectations of Service 50
Service Expectations 52
Types of Expectations 53
Global Feature: Global Outsourcing of
Personal Services: What Are Customers’
Expectations? 54
The Zone of Tolerance 54
Factors That Influence Customer Expectations of
Service 57
Sources of Desired Service Expectations 57
Sources of Adequate Service Expectations 59
Technology Spotlight: Customer
Expectations of Airport Services Using
Technology 60
Sources of Both Desired and Predicted Service
Expectations 63
Strategy Insight: How Service Marketers
Can Influence Customers’ Expectations 65
Issues Involving Customers’ Service
Expectations 66
What Does a Service Marketer
Do if Customer Expectations Are
“Unrealistic”? 66
Exhibit 3.1: Service Customers Want the
Basics 67
Should a Company Try to Delight the
Customer? 68
How Does a Company Exceed Customer
Service Expectations? 69
Do Customers’ Service Expectations
Continually Escalate? 71
How Does a Service Company Stay Ahead
of Competition in Meeting Customer
Expectations? 71
Summary 72
Discussion Questions 72
Exercises 73
Notes 73
Chapter 4
Customer Perceptions of Service 76
Customer Perceptions 78
Satisfaction versus Service Quality 79
Transaction versus Cumulative Perceptions
zei12052_fm_i-xxviii.indd xvi
Confirming Pages
Customer Satisfaction 80
What is Customer Satisfaction? 80
What Determines Customer Satisfaction? 81
National Customer Satisfaction Indexes 83
The American Customer Satisfaction Index 83
Outcomes of Customer Satisfaction 85
Service Quality 87
Outcome, Interaction, and Physical
Environment Quality 87
Service Quality Dimensions 87
Global Feature: Importance of Service
Quality Dimensions
across Cultures 88
E-Service Quality 91
Service Encounters: The Building Blocks For
Customer Perceptions 93
Service Encounters or Moments of Truth 93
Strategy Insight: Customer Satisfaction,
Loyalty, and Service as Corporate
Strategies 94
The Importance of Encounters 95
Exhibit 4.1: One Critical Encounter Destroys
30-Year Relationship 97
Types of Service Encounters 98
Sources of Pleasure and Displeawsure in
Service Encounters 99
Technology Spotlight: Customers Love
Amazon 100
Exhibit 4.2: Service Encounter Themes 102
Technology-Based Service Encounters 103
Summary 105
Discussion Questions 105
Exercises 106
Notes 106
PART 3
UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER
REQUIREMENTS 111
Chapter 5
Listening to Customers through
Research 113
Using Customer Research to Understand Customer
Expectations 115
Research Objectives for Services 115
Criteria for an Effective Service Research
Program 116
Exhibit 5.1: Elements in an Effective Customer
79 Research Program for Services 118
2/8/12 1:07 PM

Elements in an Effective Service Marketing
Research Program 121
Complaint Solicitation 121
Technology Spotlight: Conducting Customer
Research on the Web 122
Critical Incident Studies 123
Requirements Research 124
Relationship and SERVQUAL Surveys 125
Exhibit 5.2: SERVQUAL: A
Multidimensional Scale to Capture
Customer Perceptions and Expectations of
Service Quality 126
Trailer Calls or Posttransaction Surveys 128
Service Expectation Meetings and Reviews 129
Process Checkpoint Evaluations 130
Market-Oriented Ethnography 130
Mystery Shopping 131
Customer Panels 132
Lost Customer Research 132
Future Expectations Research 132
Analyzing and Interpreting Customer Research
Findings 133
Zones of Tolerance Charts 133
Strategy Insight: From Greeting Cards to
Gambling, Companies Bet on Database
Customer Research 134
Global Feature: Conducting Customer
Research in Emerging Markets 136
Importance/Performance Matrices 136
Using Marketing Research Information 138
Upward Communication 138
Objectives for Upward Communication 138
Exhibit 5.3: Elements in an Effective
Program of Upward Communication 139
Research for Upward Communication 139
Exhibit 5.4: Employees Provide Upward
Communication at Cabela’s, “World’s
Foremost Outfitter” 141
Benefits of Upward Communication 142
Summary 142
Discussion Questions 142
Exercises 143
Notes 143
Chapter 6
Building Customer Relationships 145
Relationship Marketing 147
The Evolution of Customer Relationships 147
Exhibit 6.1: A Typology of Exchange
Relationships 149
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Detailed Contents xvii
Technology Spotlight: Customer
Information Systems Help Enhance the
Customer Relationship 150
The Goal of Relationship Marketing 152
Benefits for Customers and Firms 153
Relationship Value of Customers 156
Exhibit 6.2: Calculating the Relationship
Value of a Quicken Customer 157
Customer Profitability Segments 157
Profitability Tiers—the Customer
Pyramid 158
The Customer’s View of Profitability Tiers 159
Making Business Decisions Using Profitability
Tiers 160
Relationship Development Strategies 160
Core Service Provision 160
Switching Barriers 161
Relationship Bonds 162
Global Feature: Developing Loyal
Customers at Alliance Boots 166
Relationship Challenges 166
The Customer Is Not Always Right 166
Ending Business Relationships 169
Strategy Insight: “The Customer Is Always
Right”: Rethinking an Old Tenet 170
Summary 172
Discussion Questions 173
Exercises 173
Notes 174
Chapter 7
Service Recovery 179
The Impact of Service Failure and Recovery 180
Service Recovery Effects 181
Exhibit 7.1: The Internet Spreads the Story
of Poor Service Recovery: “Yours is a Very
Bad Hotel” 182
The Service Recovery Paradox 184
How Customers Respond to Service Failures 185
Why People Do (and Do Not) Complain 185
Types of Customer Complaint Actions 187
Types of Complainers 187
Service Recovery Strategies: Fixing the
Customer 188
Respond Quickly 189
Exhibit 7.2: Story of a Service Hero 190
Provide Appropriate Communication 191
Technology Spotlight: Cisco Systems—
Customers Recover for Themselves 192
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xviii Detailed Contents
Treat Customers Fairly 194
Exhibit 7.3: Fairness Themes in Service
Recovery 195
Global Feature: Service Recovery across
Cultures 196
Cultivate Relationships with Customers 197
Strategy Insight: Eliciting Complaints 198
Service Recovery Strategies: Fixing the
Problem 198
Encourage and Track Complaints 198
Learn from Recovery Experiences 199
Learn from Lost Customers 200
Make the Service Fail-Safe—Do It Right the
First Time! 201
Service Guarantees 201
Characteristics of Effective Guarantees 202
Types of Service Guarantees 202
Benefits of Service Guarantees 204
Exhibit 7.4: Questions to Consider in
Implementing a Service Guarantee 205
When to Use (or Not Use) a Guarantee 205
Switching Versus Staying Following Service
Recovery 206
Summary 208
Discussion Questions 208
Exercises 209
Notes 209
PART 4
ALIGNING SERVICE DESIGN AND
STANDARDS 215
Chapter 8
Service Innovation and Design 216
Challenges of Service Innovation
and Design 218
Important Considerations for Service
Innovation 219
Involve Customers and Employees 219
Global Feature: The Global Service
Innovation Imperative 220
Employ Service Design Thinking and
Techniques 220
Technology Spotlight: Facebook: A Radical
Service Innovation 222
Types of Service Innovation 224
Service Offering Innovation 224
Innovating around Customer Roles 225
Innovation through Service Solutions 225
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Confirming Pages
Stages in Service Innovation and
Development 226
Front-End Planning 227
Strategy Insight: Strategic Growth through
Services 230
Implementation 231
Exhibit 8.1: Service Innovation at the Mayo
Clinic 232
Service Blueprinting: A Technique for Service
Innovation and Design 234
What Is a Service Blueprint? 235
Blueprint Components 235
Service Blueprint Examples 237
Blueprints for Technology-Delivered Self-
Service 239
Reading and Using Service Blueprints 240
Building a Blueprint 241
Exhibit 8.2: Blueprinting in Action at
ARAMARK Parks and Destinations 242
Exhibit 8.3: Frequently Asked Questions
about Service Blueprinting 244
Summary 244
Discussion Questions 245
Exercises 245
Notes 246
Chapter 9
Customer-Defined Service
Standards 250
Factors Necessary for Appropriate Service
Standards 252
Standardization of Service Behaviors and
Actions 252
Formal Service Targets and Goals 253
Customer-, Not Company-, Defined
Standards 253
Strategy Insight: When Is the Strategy
of Customization Better Than
Standardization? 254
Types of Customer-Defined Service Standards 256
Hard Customer-Defined Standards 256
Exhibit 9.1: Examples of Hard Customer-
Defined Standards 257
Technology Spotlight: The Power of Good
Responsiveness Standards 258
Soft Customer-Defined Standards 259
Global Feature: Adjusting Service Standards
around the Globe 260
Exhibit 9.2: Examples of Soft Customer-
Defined Standards 262
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Detailed Contents xix

Exhibit 9.3: Hard and Soft Standards for
Service at Ford Motor Company 263
One-Time Fixes 264
Development of Customer-Defined Service
Standards 264
Turning Customer Requirements into Specific
Behaviors and Actions 264
Exhibit 9.4: Expected Behaviors for Service
Encounters at John Robert’s Spa 268
Developing Service Performance Indexes 273
Summary 273
Discussion Questions 274
Exercises 274
Notes 275
Chapter 10
Physical Evidence and the
Servicescape 276
Physical Evidence 278
What Is Physical Evidence? 278
How Does Physical Evidence Affect the
Customer Experience? 279
Technology Spotlight: Virtual Servicescapes:
Experiencing Services through the
Internet 280
Types of Servicescapes 282
Servicescape Usage 282
Servicescape Complexity 283
Strategic Roles of the Servicescape 283
Strategy Insight: Strategic Positioning
through Architectural Design 284
Package 284
Exhibit 10.1: Using Physical Evidence to
Position a New Service 286
Facilitator 287
Socializer 287
Differentiator 288
Framework for Understanding Servicescape Effects
on Behavior 288
The Underlying Framework 288
Exhibit 10.2: Servicescapes and Well-being
in Health Care 289
Behaviors in the Servicescape 291
Internal Responses to the Servicescape 292
Exhibit 10.3: Social Support in “Third
Places” 294
Environmental Dimensions of the
Servicescape 296
Exhibit 10.4: Designing the Mayo Clinic
Hospital 298
Guidelines for Physical Evidence Strategy 298
Recognize the Strategic Impact of Physical
Evidence 298
Blueprint the Physical Evidence
of Service 299
Global Feature: McDonald’s Adapts
Servicescapes to Fit the Culture 300
Clarify Strategic Roles of the
Servicescape 302
Assess and Identify Physical Evidence
Opportunities 302
Update and Modernize the Evidence 302
Work Cross-Functionally 303
Summary 303
Discussion Questions 304
Exercises 304
Notes 305
PART 5
DELIVERING AND PERFORMING
SERVICE 309
Chapter 11
Employees’ Roles in Service Delivery 311
Service Culture 312
Exhibiting Service Leadership 313
Developing a Service Culture 313
Global Feature: How Well Does a
Company’s Service Culture Travel? 314
Transporting a Service Culture 314
The Critical Role of Service Employees 315
The Service Triangle 317
Employee Satisfaction, Customer Satisfaction,
and Profits 318
The Effect of Employee Behaviors on Service
Quality Dimensions 319
Boundary-Spanning Roles 319
Emotional Labor 320
Sources of Conflict 321
Strategy Insight: Strategies for Managing
Emotional Labor 322
Quality/Productivity Trade-Offs 324
Strategies for Delivering Service Quality through
People 324
Hire the Right People 325
Technology Spotlight: How Technology Is
Helping Employees Serve Customers More
Effectively and Efficiently 326
Exhibit 11.1: Google Quickly Becomes a
Preferred Employer in Its Industry 328

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xx Detailed Contents
Develop People to Deliver Service
Quality 330
Exhibit 11.2: Potential Benefits and Costs of
Empowerment 332
Provide Needed Support Systems 333
Retain the Best People 334
Customer-Oriented Service Delivery 336
Summary 338
Discussion Questions 338
Exercises 339
Notes 339
Chapter 12
Customers’ Roles in Service Delivery 345
The Importance of Customers in Service
Cocreation and Delivery 347
Customer Receiving the Service 347
Strategy Insight: Customer Cocreation of
Value: The New Strategy Frontier 348
Fellow Customers 349
Customers’ Roles 351
Customers as Productive Resources 351
Exhibit 12.1: Client Coproduction in
Business-to-Business Services 352
Customers as Contributors to Service Quality
and Satisfaction 354
Exhibit 12.2: Which Customer (A or B) Will
Be Most Satisfied? 355
Customers as Competitors 356
Global Feature: At Sweden’s IKEA,
Global Customers Cocreate Customized
Value 357
Self-Service Technologies—The Ultimate in
Customer Participation 358
A Proliferation of New SSTs 358
Customer Usage of SSTs 359
Success with SSTs 360
Strategies for Enhancing Customer
Participation 360
Define Customers’ Roles 360
Technology Spotlight: Technology Facilitates
Customer Participation in Health Care 362
Exhibit 12.3: Working Together, U.S.
Utility Companies and Customers Conserve
Energy 365
Recruit, Educate, and Reward Customers 365
Exhibit 12.4: Weight Watchers Educates and
Orients New Members 367
Manage the Customer Mix 368
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Summary 370
Discussion Questions 370
Exercises 371
Notes 371
Chapter 13
Managing Demand and Capacity 375
The Underlying Issue: Lack of Inventory
Capability 377
Capacity Constraints 379
Time, Labor, Equipment, and Facilities 380
Optimal versus Maximum Use of
Capacity 380
Demand Patterns 381
The Charting of Demand Patterns 381
Predictable Cycles 382
Random Demand Fluctuations 382
Demand Patterns by Market Segment 383
Strategies For Matching Capacity and Demand 383
Shifting Demand to Match Capacity 383
Global Feature: Cemex Creatively Manages
Chaotic Demand for Its Services 384
Adjusting Capacity to Meet Demand 387
Strategy Insight: Combining Demand
(Marketing) and Capacity (Operations)
Strategies to Increase Profits 390
Combining Demand and Capacity
Strategies 392
Yield Management: Balancing Capacity Utilization,
Pricing, Market Segmentation, and Financial
Return 392
Exhibit 13.1: Simple Yield Calculations:
Examples from Hotel and Legal
Services 393
Technology Spotlight: Information and
Technology Drive Yield Management
Systems 394
Implementing a Yield Management System 394
Challenges and Risks in Using Yield
Management 396
Waiting Line Strategies: When Demand and
Capacity Cannot Be Matched 397
Employ Operational Logic 397
Exhibit 13.2: Overflow in the ED: Managing
Capacity Constraints and Excess Demand in
Hospital Emergency Departments 398
Establish a Reservation Process 400
Differentiate Waiting Customers 401
Make Waiting More Pleasurable 402
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Detailed Contents xxi

Summary 404 The Role of Nonmonetary Costs 445

Discussion Questions 404
Exercises 405
Notes 405
PART 6
MANAGING SERVICE PROMISES 409
Chapter 14
Integrated Service Marketing
Communications 411
The Need for Coordination in Marketing
Communication 413
Key Service Communication Challenges 415
Service Intangibility 415
Management of Service Promises 416
Management of Customer Expectations 416
Customer Education 417
Internal Marketing Communication 417
Five Categories of Strategies to Match Service
Promises with Delivery 418
Address Service Intangibility 418
Strategy Insight: Google’s Strategy Dominates
Web Advertising and Communication 421
Exhibit 14.1: Service Advertising
Strategies Matched with Properties of
Intangibility 422
Manage Service Promises 425
Global Feature: Virgin Atlantic
Airways 428
Manage Customer Expectations 429
Technology Spotlight: Grouping Customers
Based on Online Activities 430
Manage Customer Education 432
Manage Internal Marketing
Communication 434
Summary 437
Discussion Questions 437
Exercises 438
Notes 438
Chapter 15
Pricing of Services 440
Three Key Ways That Service Prices Are Different
for Customers 442
Customer Knowledge of Service Prices 442
Exhibit 15.1: What Do You Know about the
Prices of Services? 443
Price as an Indicator of Service Quality 447
Approaches to Pricing Services 447
Cost-Based Pricing 448
Competition-Based Pricing 449
Strategy Insight: “Congestion Pricing” as a
Strategy to Change Driving Behavior in Big
Cities 450
Demand-Based Pricing 451
Global Feature: Unique Pricing around the
World 452
Pricing Strategies That Link to the Four Value
Definitions 455
Technology Spotlight: Dynamic Pricing on
the Internet Allows Price Adjustments Based
on Supply and Demand 456
Exhibit 15.2: Pricing for Customer-
Perceived Value with Modular Service
Pricing and Service Tiering 458
Pricing Strategies When the Customer Means
“Value Is Low Price” 460
Pricing Strategies When the Customer Means
“Value Is Everything I Want in a Service” 462
Pricing Strategies When the Customer Means
“Value Is the Quality I Get for the Price I
Pay” 462
Pricing Strategies When the Customer
Means “Value Is All That I Get for All That I
Give” 464
Summary 466
Discussion Questions 466
Exercises 467
Notes 467
PART 7
SERVICE AND THE BOTTOM
LINE 469
Chapter 16
The Financial and Economic Impact of
Service 470
Service and Profitability: The Direct
Relationship 472
Offensive Marketing Effects of Service: Attracting
More and Better Customers 473
Exhibit 16.1: Customer Satisfaction,
Service Quality, and Firm
Performance 474

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xxii Detailed Contents

Defensive Marketing Effects of Service: Customer Cases 495

Retention 476
Lower Costs 476 Case 1
Volume of Purchases 477 Zappos.com 2009: Clothing, Customer Service, and
Price Premium 477 Company Culture 495
Word-of-Mouth Communication 477 By Frances X. Frei, Robin J. Ely, Laura Winig
Exhibit 16.2: Word-of-Mouth
Communication and Customer Measurement: Case 2
The Net Promoter Score 478 Merrill Lynch: Supernova 516
Customer Perceptions of Service Quality and By Rogelio Oliva, Roger Hallowell, Gabriel R. Bitran
Purchase Intentions 478
Exhibit 16.3: Questions That Managers Want Case 3
Answered about Defensive Marketing 480 United Breaks Guitars 537
Exhibit 16.4: Service Quality and the By John Deighton, Leora Kornfeld
Economic Worth of Customers: Businesses
Still Need to Know More 482 Case 4
The Key Drivers of Service Quality, Customer Michelin Fleet Solutions: From Selling Tires to Selling
Retention, And Profits 483 Kilometers 549
Strategy Insight: Customer Equity and
Return on Marketing: Metrics to Match a Case 5
Strategic Customer-Centered View of the ISS Iceland 563
Firm 484
Company Performance Measurement: The Case 6
Balanced Performance Scorecard 484 People, Service, and Profit at Jyske Bank 572
Technology Spotlight: Cost-
Effective Service Excellence through Case 7
Technology 487 JetBlue: High-Flying Airline Melts Down in Ice
Global Feature: Measurement of Customer Storm 591
Satisfaction Worldwide 488 By Joe Brennan, Felicia Morgan
Changes to Financial Measurement 488
Customer Perceptual Measures 489 Case 8
Operational Measures 489 Using Services Marketing to Develop and Deliver
Innovation and Learning 489 Integrated Solutions at Caterpillar in Latin
Effective Nonfinancial Performance America 607
Measurements 489 By Holger Pietzsch, Valarie A. Zeithaml
Summary 491
Discussion Questions 492 Photo Credits 620
Exercises 492
Notes 492 Index 622

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List of Boxes
PART 1 Global Feature
Foundations for Services Marketing 1 Global Outsourcing of Personal Services: What Are
Customers’ Expectations? 54
Chapter 1
Introduction to Services 2 Technology Spotlight
Customer Expectations of Airport Services Using
Technology 60
Exhibit 1.1
Is the Marketing of Services Different? A Historical Strategy Insight
Perspective 11 How Service Marketers Can Influence Customers’
Expectations 65
Strategy Insight
Competing Strategically through Service 13 Exhibit 3.1
Service Customers Want the Basics 67
Technology Spotlight
The Changing Face of Customer Service 16
Chapter 4
Global Feature Customer Perceptions of Service 76
The Migration of Service Jobs 18
Global Feature
Exhibit 1.2 Importance of Service Quality Dimensions across
Southwest Airlines: Aligning People, Processes, and Cultures 88
Physical Evidence 28
Strategy Insight
Chapter 2 Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty, and Service as
Conceptual Framework of the Book: The Corporate Strategies 94
Gaps Model of Service Quality 33
Exhibit 4.1
Global Feature One Critical Encounter Destroys 30-Year
Relationship 97
An International Retailer Puts Customers in the
Wish Mode to Begin the Closing Gaps 38
Technology Spotlight
Technology Spotlight Customers Love Amazon 100
Technology’s Critical Impact on the Gaps Model of
Service Quality 42 Exhibit 4.2
Service Encounter Themes 102
Strategy Insight
Using the Gaps Model to Assess an Organization’s
Service Strategy 46 PART 3
Understanding Customer
PART 2 Requirements 111
Focus on the Customer 49
Chapter 5
Chapter 3 Listening to Customers through
Customer Expectations of Service 50 Research 113
xxiii

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xxiv List of Boxes

Exhibit 5.1 Chapter 7

Elements in an Effective Customer Research Service Recovery 179
Program for Services 118
Exhibit 7.1
Technology Spotlight
The Internet Spreads the Story of Poor Service
Conducting Customer Research on the Web 122 Recovery: “Yours is a Very Bad Hotel” 182
Exhibit 5.2 Exhibit 7.2
SERVQUAL: A Multidimensional Scale to Capture Story of a Service Hero 189
Customer Perceptions and Expectations of Service
Quality 126 Technology Spotlight
Cisco Systems—Customers Recover for
Strategy Insight Themselves 192
From Greeting Cards to Gambling, Companies Bet
on Database Customer Research 134 Exhibit 7.3
Fairness Themes in Service Recovery 195
Global Feature
Conducting Customer Research in Emerging Global Feature
Markets 136 Service Recovery across Cultures 196

Exhibit 5.3 Strategy Insight

Elements in an Effective Program of Upward Eliciting Complaints 198
Communication 139
Exhibit 7.4
Exhibit 5.4 Questions to Consider in Implementing a Service
Employees Provide Upward Communications at Guarantee 205
Cabela’s, “World’s Foremost Outfitter” 141
PART 4
Chapter 6 Aligning Service Design and
Building Customer Relationships 145 Standards 215

Exhibit 6.1 Chapter 8

A Typology of Exchange Relationships 149 Service Innovation and Design 216

Technology Spotlight Global Feature

Customer Information Systems Help Enhance the The Global Service Innovation Imperative 220
Customer Relationship 150
Technology Spotlight
Exhibit 6.2 Facebook: A Radical Service Innovation 222
Calculating the Relationship Value of a Quicken
Customer 157 Strategy Insight
Strategic Growth through Services 230
Global Feature
Developing Loyal Customers at Alliance Exhibit 8.1
Boots 166 Service Innovation at the Mayo Clinic 232

Strategy Insight Exhibit 8.2

“The Customer Is Always Right”: Rethinking an Blueprinting in Action at ARAMARK Parks and
Old Tenet 170 Destinations 242

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List of Boxes xxv

Exhibit 8.3 Exhibit 10.2

Frequently Asked Questions about Service Servicescapes and Well-being in Health Care 289
Blueprinting 244
Exhibit 10.3
Chapter 9 Social Support in “Third Places” 293
Customer-Defined Service Standards 250
Exhibit 10.4
Strategy Insight Designing the Mayo Clinic Hospital 298
When Is the Strategy of Customization Better Than
Standardization? 254 Global Feature
McDonald’s Adapts Servicescapes to Fit the
Exhibit 9.1 Culture 300
Examples of Hard Customer-Defined
Standards 257 PART 5
Technology Spotlight
Delivering and Performing Service 309
The Power of Good Responsiveness Chapter 11
Standards 258 Employees’ Roles in Service Delivery 311
Global Feature
Adjusting Service Standards around the Globe 260 Global Feature
How Well Does a Company’s Service Culture
Exhibit 9.2 Travel? 314
Examples of Soft Customer-Defined
Standards 262 Strategy Insight
Strategies for Managing Emotional Labor 322
Exhibit 9.3
Hard and Soft Standards for Service at Ford Motor Technology Spotlight
Company 263 How Technology Is Helping Employees Serve
Customers More Effectively and Efficiently 326
Exhibit 9.4
Expected Behaviors for Service Encounters at John Exhibit 11.1
Robert’s Spa 268 Google Quickly Becomes a Preferred Employer in
Its Industry 328
Chapter 10
Physical Evidence and the Exhibit 11.2
Servicescape 276 Potential Benefits and Costs of
Empowerment 332
Technology Spotlight
Chapter 12
Virtual Servicescapes: Experiencing Services
through the Internet 280 Customers’ Roles in Service Delivery 345

Strategy Insight Strategy Insight

Strategic Positioning through Architectural Customer Cocreation of Value: The New Strategy
Design 284 Frontier 348

Exhibit 10.1 Exhibit 12.1

Using Physical Evidence to Position a New Client Coproduction in Business-to-Business
Service 286 Services 352

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xxvi List of Boxes

Exhibit 12.2 PART 6

Which Customer (A or B) Will Be Most Managing Service Promises 409
Satisfied? 355
Chapter 14
Global Feature Integrated Service Marketing
At Sweden’s IKEA, Global Customers Cocreate Communications 411
Customized Value 357

Technology Spotlight Strategy Insight

Technology Facilitates Customer Participation in Google’s Strategy Dominates Web Advertising and
Health Care 362 Communication 421

Exhibit 12.3 Exhibit 14.1

Working Together, U.S. Utility Companies and Service Advertising Strategies Matched with
Customers Conserve Energy 366 Properties of Intangibility 422

Exhibit 12.4 Global Feature

Weight Watchers Educates and Orients New Virgin Atlantic Airways 428
Members 367
Technology Spotlight
Chapter 13 Grouping Customers Based on Online
Managing Demand and Capacity 375 Activities 430

Global Feature
Cemex Creatively Manages Chaotic Demand for Its Chapter 15
Services 383 Pricing of Services 440

Strategy Insight Exhibit 15.1

Combining Demand (Marketing) and Capacity What Do You Know about the Prices of
(Operations) Strategies to Increase Profits 390 Services? 443
Exhibit 13.1
Strategy Insight
Simple Yield Calculations: Examples from Hotel
and Legal Services 393 “Congestion Pricing” as a Strategy to Change
Driving Behavior in Big Cities 450
Technology Spotlight
Information and Technology Drive Yield Global Feature
Management Systems 394 Unique Pricing around the World 452

Exhibit 13.2 Technology Spotlight

Overflow in the ED: Managing Capacity Dynamic Pricing on the Internet Allows
Constraints and Excess Demand in Hospital Price Adjustments Based on Supply and
Emergency Departments 398 Demand 456

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List of Boxes xxvii

Exhibit 15.2 Exhibit 16.3

Pricing for Customer-Perceived Value Questions That Managers Want Answered about
with Modular Service Pricing and Service Defensive Marketing 480
Tiering 458
Exhibit 16.4
Service Quality and the Economic Worth of
PART 7 Customers: Businesses Still Need to Know
More 482
Service and the Bottom Line 469
Strategy Insight
Chapter 16
Customer Equity and Return on Marketing: Metrics
The Financial and Economic Impact of to Match a Strategic Customer-Centered View of
Service 470 the Firm 484

Exhibit 16.1 Technology Spotlight

Customer Satisfaction, Service Quality, and Firm Cost-Effective Service Excellence through
Performance 474 Technology 487

Exhibit 16.2 Global Feature

Word-of-Mouth Communication and Customer Measurement of Customer Satisfaction
Measurement: The Net Promoter Score 478 Worldwide 488

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Part One
Foundations for
Services Marketing
Chapter 1 Introduction to Services
Chapter 2 Conceptual Framework of the Book: The Gaps Model of Service Quality

This first part of the text provides you with the foundations needed to begin your
study of services marketing. The first chapter identifies up-to-date trends, issues,
and opportunities in services as a backdrop for the strategies addressed in remain-
ing chapters. The second chapter introduces the gaps model of service quality, the
framework that provides the structure for the text. The remaining parts of the book
include information and strategies to address specific gaps, giving you the tools and
knowledge to become a services marketing leader.

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Chapter One

Introduction
to Services
This chapter’s objectives are to
1. Explain what services are and identify important trends in services.
2. Explain the need for special services marketing concepts and practices and why the
need has developed and is accelerating.
3. Explore the profound impact of technology on service.
4. Outline the basic differences between goods and services and the resulting
challenges and opportunities for service businesses.
5. Introduce the expanded marketing mix for services and the philosophy of
customer focus as powerful frameworks and themes that are fundamental to the
rest of the text.

“Services are going to move in this decade to being the front edge of
the industry.”
This quote from IBM’s former CEO, Louis V. Gerstner, illustrates the changes sweep-
ing across industry in the 21st century. Many businesses that were once viewed as
manufacturing giants are shifting their focus to services. And, in many ways, IBM
has led the pack. Actions of Sam Palmisano, IBM’s CEO following Gerstner, have
reinforced this focus on service. In his tenure, Mr. Palmisano led IBM in the expansion
of its outsourcing businesses and accentuated its focus on client solutions. He also
led IBM in its purchase of PricewaterhouseCoopers to gain broader strategic service
consulting expertise and in its focus in service “products” and solutions.
In a company brochure IBM states that it is the largest service business in the
world. It is the global leader in information technology (IT) services and consulting
with approximately 200,000 service professionals around the world. Through its
Global Services division, IBM offers product support services, professional consulting
services, and network computing services. Many businesses have outsourced entire
service functions to IBM, counting on the company to provide the services better
than anyone else. The service side of IBM, including technology and business services,
brings in nearly $60 billion, significantly more than half the company’s total revenue.
The service strategy has been very successful for IBM to date and promises to be the
engine of growth into the future.
No one in IBM would suggest that these positive results have been easily achieved.
Switching from a manufacturing to a service and customer focus is indeed a challenge.

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Chapter 1 Introduction to Services 3

It requires changes in management mind-set, changes in culture, changes in the ways

people work and are rewarded, and new ways of implementing customer solutions. At
IBM this change has evolved over decades and continues today. This switch to service
has carried over into IBM’s research division as well, where hundreds of researchers
worldwide currently focus on service science and service innovation.
Many large manufacturing and IT companies have viewed IBM’s success and are
pushing to make the same transition to services. It is not as easy as it looks. In moving
into services, companies discover what service businesses such as hospitality, consult-
ing, health care, financial services, and telecommunications have known for years:
services marketing and management are different—not totally unique, but different
from marketing and management for consumer goods and manufactured products.
Selling and delivering a computer is not the same as selling and delivering a service
that solves a customer’s problem.1

As the opening vignette suggests, services are not limited to service industries, ser-
vices can be very profitable, and services are challenging to manage and market. Ser-
vices represent a huge and growing percentage of the world economy, yet in many
countries, including the United States, customer perceptions of service are not good.2
In fact, the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index has shown
consistently lower scores for services when compared to other products.3 Others have
noted that productivity for many service industries also lags the manufacturing sector.
Given the economic growth in services, their profit and competitive advantage poten-
tial, and the overall lower levels of customer satisfaction and productivity for services,
it seems that the potential and opportunities for companies that can excel in service
marketing, management, and delivery have never been greater.
This text will give you a lens with which to approach the marketing and manage-
ment of services. What you learn can be applied in a company like IBM with a tra-
ditional manufacturing history or in pure service businesses. You will learn tools,
strategies, and approaches for developing and delivering profitable services that can
provide competitive advantage to firms. At the base of services marketing and man-
agement you will find a strong customer focus that extends across all functions of the
firm—thus the subtitle of this book, “integrating customer focus across the firm.”

WHAT ARE SERVICES?

Put in the most simple terms, services are deeds, processes, and performances pro-
vided or coproduced by one entity or person for another entity or person. Our opening
vignette illustrates what is meant by this definition. The services offered by IBM are
not tangible things that can be touched, seen, and felt, but rather are intangible deeds
and performances provided and/or coproduced for its customers. To be concrete, IBM
offers repair and maintenance service for its equipment, consulting services for IT
and e-commerce applications, training services, web design and hosting, and other
services. These services may include a final, tangible report, a website, or in the case
of training, tangible instructional materials. But for the most part, the entire service is
represented to the client through problem analysis activities, meetings with the client,
follow-up calls, and reporting—a series of deeds, processes, and performances. Simi-
larly, the core offerings of hospitals, hotels, banks, and utilities are primarily deeds and
actions performed for customers, or coproduced with them.

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4 Part One Foundations for Services Marketing

Although we will rely on the simple, broad definition of services, you should be
aware that over time services and the service sector of the economy have been defined
in subtly different ways. The variety of definitions can often explain the confusion
or disagreements people have when discussing services and when describing indus-
tries that constitute the service sector of the economy. Compatible with our simple,
broad definition is one that defines services to include “all economic activities whose
output is not a physical product or construction, is generally consumed at the time it
is produced, and provides added value in forms (such as convenience, amusement,
timeliness, comfort, or health) that are essentially intangible concerns of its first pur-
chaser.”4 The breadth of industries making up the service sector of the U.S. economy
is illustrated in Figure 1.1.

Service Industries, Service as a Product, Customer Service,

and Derived Service
As we begin our discussion of services marketing and management, it is important
to draw distinctions between service industries and companies, service as a product,
customer service, and derived service. The tools and strategies you will learn in this
text can be applied to any of these categories.
Service industries and companies include those industries and companies typi-
cally classified within the service sector where the core product is a service. All of
the following companies can be considered pure service companies: Marriott Interna-
tional (lodging), American Airlines (transportation), Charles Schwab (financial ser-
vices), and Mayo Clinic (health care). The total services sector comprises a wide range
of service industries, as suggested by Figure 1.1. Companies in these industries sell
services as their core offering.

FIGURE 1.1 Finance, insurance, Agriculture, mining,

Contributions of real estate construction
Service Industries to 20% 7%
U.S. Gross Domestic
Manufacturing
Product, 2009
18%
Source: Survey of Current
Business, Online, March
2011.

Wholesale and
retail trade
9%

Government (mostly
Transportation,
services)
warehousing,
14%
utilities
5%
Educational and
health services
8% Other services (includes
information, entertainment)
Professional and 9%
business services
10%

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Chapter 1 Introduction to Services 5

Service as a product represents a wide range of intangible product offerings that

customers value and pay for in the marketplace. Service products are sold by service
companies and by nonservice companies such as manufacturers and technology com-
panies. For example, IBM and Hewlett-Packard offer information technology consult-
ing services to the marketplace, competing with firms such as Accenture, a traditional
pure service firm. Other industry examples include department stores like Macy’s that
sell services such as gift wrapping and shipping, and pet stores like PetSmart that sell
pet grooming and training services.
Customer service is also a critical aspect of what we mean by “service.” Customer
service is the service provided in support of a company’s core products. Companies
typically do not charge for customer service. Customer service can occur on-site (as
when a retail employee helps a customer find a desired item or answers a question), or
it can occur over the phone or via the Internet through chat in real time. Many compa-
nies operate customer service call centers, often staffed around the clock. Quality cus-
tomer service is essential to building customer relationships. It should not, however, be
confused with the services provided for sale by the company.
Derived service is yet another way to look at what service means. In an award-
winning article in the Journal of Marketing, Steve Vargo and Bob Lusch argue for a new
logic for marketing that suggests that all products and physical goods are valued for the
services they provide.5 Drawing on the work of respected economists, marketers, and
philosophers, they suggest that the value derived from physical goods is really the service
provided by the good, not the good itself. For example, they suggest that a pharmaceutical
drug provides medical service, a razor provides barbering service, and computers provide
information and data manipulation service. Although this view is somewhat abstract, it
suggests an even broader, more inclusive, view of the meaning of service.

Tangibility Spectrum
The broad definition of service implies that intangibility is a key determinant of whether
an offering is a service. Although this is true, it is also true that very few products are
purely intangible or totally tangible. Instead, services tend to be more intangible than
manufactured products, and manufactured products tend to be more tangible than ser-
vices. For example, the fast-food industry, while classified as a service, also has many
tangible components such as the food, the packaging, and so on. Automobiles, while
classified within the manufacturing sector, also supply many intangibles, such as trans-
portation and navigation services. The tangibility spectrum shown in Figure 1.2 cap-
tures this idea. Throughout this text, when we refer to services we will be assuming the
broad definition of services and acknowledging that there are very few “pure services”
or “pure goods.” The issues and approaches we discuss are directed toward those offer-
ings that lie on the right side, the intangible side, of the spectrum shown in Figure 1.2.
Trends in the Service Sector
Although you often hear and read that many modern economies are dominated by ser-
vices, the United States and other countries did not become service economies overnight.
As early as 1929, 55 percent of the working population was employed in the service
sector in the United States, and approximately 54 percent of the gross national product
was generated by services in 1948. The data in Figures 1.3 and 1.4 show that the trend
toward services has continued, until in 2009 services represented 75 percent of the gross
domestic product (GDP) and 83 percent of employment. Note also that these data do
not include services provided by manufacturing companies. The number of employees
and value of the services they produce would be classified as manufacturing sector data.

zei12052_ch01_001-032.indd 5 1/28/12 6:53 PM

 Rev.Confirming Pages

6 Part One Foundations for Services Marketing

FIGURE 1.2 Tangibility Spectrum

Source: G. Lynn Shostack, “Breaking Free from Product Marketing,” Journal of Marketing 41 (April 1977), pp. 73–80. Reprinted with permission of the
American Marketing Association.
Salt
Soft drinks
Detergents
Automobiles Fast-food
Cosmetics
outlets

Intangible
dominant

Tangible
dominant

Fast-food
outlets Advertising Airlines
agencies Investment
management Consulting Teaching

WHY SERVICE MARKETING?

Why is it important to learn about service marketing, service quality, and service
management? What are the differences in services versus manufactured-goods mar-
keting that have led to the demand for books and courses on services? Many forces
have led to the growth of services marketing, and many industries, companies, and
individuals have defined the scope of the concepts, frameworks, and strategies that
define the field.

Service-Based Economies
First, services marketing concepts and strategies have developed in response to the tre-
mendous growth of service industries, resulting in their increased importance to the U.S.
and world economies. As was noted, in 2009 the service sector represented more than
80 percent of total employment and 75 percent of gross domestic product of the United

FIGURE 1.3 90
Percentage of U.S.
Labor Force by 80
Industry
70
Percentage of U.S. Labor Force

Sources: Survey of Current

Business, Online, March 60
2011; Survey of Current
Business, February 2001,
50
Table B.8, July 1988, Table
6.6B, and July 1992, Table
6.4C; E. Ginzberg and G. J. 40
Vojta, “The Service Sector of
the U.S. Economy,” Scientific 30
American 244, no. 3 (1981),
pp. 31–39.
20

10

0
1929 1948 1969 1977 1984 1999 2009
Year
Services Manufacturing Mining, agriculture, and construction

zei12052_ch01_001-032.indd 6 1/28/12 6:53 PM

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 DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI

Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
 FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)

The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
 Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.

NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAHUTA

I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
 The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.

MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

 This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]

MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY

With no small pride first one householder and then a second

showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
 “We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
 Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
 BRAZIER

Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT

SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB

CUTTING THE EDGE

 FINISHING THE BOTTOM

LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

BURNING

FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

 LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE

TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL

NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
 Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK

DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG

REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

 BEATING THE BARK

WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

SOFT

MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN