Marketing Strategies

for Services Firms

 What is a service?

Definition:
 Services are separately identifiable activities that
satisfy customer needs or wants through essentially
intangible benefits, either in their own right or as a
significant element of a tangible product.

 Increasingly, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers

are providing value-added services, or simply excellent
customer service, to differentiate themselves. Many
pure service firms are now using the Internet to reach
customers.
 Growth and Service Sector

Reasons:

When the physiological need of the people get

fulfilled, there is a demand for more
satisfaction.

 The changing lifestyle, changing world, changing

economies, technological advances, modernization,
liberalization, privatization & globalization polices are
some of the factors for stimulating the dramatic
growth in services.
 Segmenting services

Service segmentation is fundamentally

the same process as that for a
physical good, with two points of
difference:
• Customisation of the service.
• Delivery of the service.
 Types of Services

 Transportation Service – railway, airline, water, road, etc.

 Communication Service – telephone, post & courier, tele & video
conferencing, radio, television, etc.
 Marketing related service – advertising, sale, promotion, products
development & testing, market research, etc.
 Financial & insurance service –banking, leasing, brokerage, life
and health insurance, etc.
 Entertainment service – movie channels, cinema, game parlors,
etc.
 Hospitability services – hotels & restaurants, catering & home
delivery, etc.
 Service Firms Strategies

There are four basic kinds of strategies that are being

owned by service firms now a days;

1. Shifting Customer Relationship.

2. Customer Empowerment.
3. Customer Co-production.
4. Satisfying Employees As Well As Customers.
 Shifting Customer Relationship

 The first and most important act any service firm can
take is to change the relationship of the firm with
their customers.

 Only if the relations of the firm are good with their

customers, then only they would be in a state to earn
profits for the firm.

 With the changing trends the firm must also take

the customer along with.
 Customer Empowerment

 In marketing, empowerment is providing consumers

with options, tools and resources to facilitate decision-
making, allowing consumers to tailor a product or
brand experience to suit their own specific needs and
desires.
 By providing consumers with the power to make
choices and take actions, marketers give up control
over consumer firm interaction, but the result is often
that consumers are happier with the brand experience
and more likely to engage with the firm in a positive
way.
 Customer Co-production

 Customer Co-production refers to the involvement

of consumers in the various value creating activities
through which products and services are made.
 These activities include the production and
distribution processes which are usually performed in
the course of manufacturing a product or creating a
service for a given target group of consumers.
 Customers often feel they deliver more value, and
feel a stronger connection to the service provider, if
they are actively engaged in the service process..
 Satisfying Employees As Well As
Customers

 Excellent service companies know that positive

employee attitude will strengthen customer loyalty.
Instilling a strong customer orientation in employees can
job satisfaction
also and commitment, especially if they have
increase their
high customer contact. Satisfied employee can;
• Pamper customer,
• Accurately read their needs,
• Develop a personal
• relationship with customer,
Deliver high-quality service to solve customer’s problems.
 Satisfying Employees As Well As
Customers

 Firms need to satisfy their customers also, by

delivering them quality of service with the best of their
employees and the technologies they are having with
them.
 Customer call center, online helplines, web portals,
feedback operations, could be the good options any
service firm can place in order to serve the customers
with the best.