Exit Services Marketing – Enter Service Marketing
Since the 1970s, services marketing has grown into a major subdiscipline of marketing. It is constantly claimed that services are now the dominant economic activity in developed countries and keeps growing while the two traditional goods sectors, manufacturing and agriculture, are declining. An unsolved problem that has been swept under the carpet is the fact that goods and services always appear together. An international debate on the content of services marketing and marketing in general is in progress, especially fuelled by the service-dominant logic suggested by Vargo and Lusch (2004a). This new logic is a synthesis of knowledge and ideas that have been brewing over many decades. Among its tenets are that customers are not buying goods or services but value propositions to be of service to them, that customers are co-creators, and that value is actualized in the customer usage process rather than in the supplier value chain. The purpose of the article is to help break a deadlock of taken-for-granted “truths” in marketing, stimulate the emergence of more valid and relevant marketing theory and even uncover the inner secrets of marketing, its genome. In fulfilling this purpose the author points to the need to rethink several marketing-related issues, among them the economic sectors; alleged differences between goods and services; where and when marketing occurs; the interdependence between quality, productivity and profits; the roles of supplier and customer; the importance of customer-to-customer interaction (C2C); the high tech/high touch balance; the marketing mix; and relational and interactive approaches to marketing. Finally, the article questions the relevance of the marketing concept and customer centricity。
When and Where Marketing Occurs
Services marketing developed the idea of the service encounter, which was mentioned in the paragraph on inseparability and simultaneity. The service encounter is characterised by interaction between providers and customers. It is often put forward in 10 the mainstream literature as the core of services marketing. However, there are also the cases of no encounter. Then there are numerous variations and degrees of intensity in between the close encounter and the no encounter.
To explain interactivity in the service encounter, the model in Figure 1 will be used (Gummesson 2002). It shows different roles and interactions that are critical in marketing and it does so with the customer in focus. The service encounter is not only about marketing; it is about production, delivery, innovation, complaints, administration and whatever you can think of. The same employee often fulfils several of these functions.
The Service Encounter
Interaction Between the Customer and the Contact Person
The personal contact which service production often gives rise to is an important part of the customers perception of the quality of the service. The customer interacts with contact staff – cashiers, flight attendants, craftsmen – for all or part of the time the service is being performed. At the same time, the customer partially consumes the service. The customer performs part of the work, for example, for a hospital service by calling to make an appointment, driving to the hospital and parking, or preparing for tests by fasting in the morning. During this personal encounter and the service production, the customer makes conscious and unconscious evaluations of the quality of the supplier and decides whether or not to remain a loyal customer. It is therefore important to make the encounter a positive experience as this case spells out.
Christer Roth brought the local restaurant Ulla Winbladh in Stockholm, Sweden, to success. He was always there and his presence was felt. He kept a close watch on guests and employees and sensed the atmosphere, making sure that everything ran smoothly and that the food was top class. He quickly got to know guests who came back, and he made them feel special. “You must like your guests,” he said. “If you donrsquo;t, the job is impossible.” He was not servile, constantly smiling to guests. He could argue with them but he did it in an open and sincere way that created respect. Before joining the restaurant he worked in a rehabilitation centre for drug-addicts. My immediate reaction was that this must have been very different. “Not really,” he said. “In both cases you have to be interested in your customers and show a genuine concern.” He was right – both jobs are in the hospitality business. Commitment and a positive attitude is absolutely essential in business or government alike and Christer did not make a distinction between production, delivery and marketing; it was all there as value-adding activities.
Customer-to-customer Interaction, C2C
The individual customer is also influenced by other customers. A negative influence is queues which are usually experienced as a nuisance. Customers become an obstacle to each other in getting the service performed. On the positive side, customers can help each other (hospital), create a pleasant atmosphere (restaurant), and produce a service together (disco). C2C interaction and the customers role in both the value proposition and value actualisation is a growing area for research and practical applications. It will therefore be treated at more length in a later section of the article.
Customer Interaction with Physical Products and Servicescapes
The physical products include both durable, capital goods and consumption goods as was epitomised earlier. The literature stresses the significance of physical products in the services setting, the servicescape as Bitner (1992) calls it. The physical elements have of course a rational function such as escalators in an airpor
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