What Are The Characteristics Of Service Operation
Features of Services: 8 Major Features of Service Marketing
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Everything you need to know about features of services. Services are unique and four major characteristics divide them from goods, namely intangibility, variability, inseparability, and perishability.
The services literature highlights differences in the nature of services versus products which are believed to create special challenges for service marketers and for consumers buying services.
To help sympathize these differences a number of characteristics that describe the unique nature of services accept been proposed.
The peculiar characteristics of services create challenges and opportunities to the service marketers. Services have some important characteristics that have implications for marketing.
Learn well-nigh the features of services. They are:- i. Intangibility 2. Perishability three. Inseparability 4. Heterogeneity 5. Buying 6. Simultaneity 7. Quality Measurement 8. Nature of Demand.
Features of Services: 8 Silent Features / Characteristics of Service Marketing
Features of Services – Peak 8 Features: Intangibility, Heterogeneity, Simultaneity, Quality Measurement, Nature of Demand and a Few More
Services have some salient features which necessitate a new vision, a distinct arroyo and a world-class professional excellence to market effectively and profitably. The professionals non well aware of the backdrop observe information technology difficult to make creative decisions. Information technology is against this background that nosotros go through the salient features with the viewpoint of their instrumentality in making the marketing decisions.
Feature # ane. Intangibility:
Intangibility is an of import consideration that complicates the functional responsibleness of a marketing director, specially while influencing and motivating the prospects/customers. The goods of tangible nature can exist displayed, the prospects or buyers can have a view and they tin can even test and make a trial earlier making the buying decisions. The selling processes are thus constitute easier. We are enlightened of the fact that services are of intangible nature and it is intangibility that complicates the task of decision-makers.
While motivating, they detect information technology difficult to perform and brandish and the positive or negative opinions regarding the services come up upward only after the completion of the using process. The client can't touch the services, they admitting tin't smell them. In a true sense, it is not a physical object. It has mental connotations. According to Carman and Uhl, a buyer of products (goods) have an opportunity to see, touch, hear, smell or taste them before they purchase.
Of course, nosotros don't observe the same matter with the services product. It is the professional person excellence of decision-makers that counts here, that influences the entire process and that helps them essentially. While selling or promoting services, we demand to concentrate on benefits and satisfaction which a heir-apparent can derive after buying. We can hardly emphasise the service itself.
As for example, the banking organisations promote the sale of credit cards by visualising the conveniences and comforts the holders of the credit cards are likely to get from the same. Services carry with them a combination of intangible perceptions. As for example, an airline sells the seat from ane destination to some other.
Here, it is a affair of consumers' perception of the services and their expectations not smelling or tasting the services. They expect safe, fast, decent services. A service by nature is an abstruse phenomenon. Thus, information technology is right to mention that due to intangibility, the selling and marketing of services become much more complicated.
Feature # ii. Perishability:
Another betoken complicating the task of a professional is the nature of perishability that we discover in the services. The appurtenances if not sold today can be stored, preserved for further selling. Thus, the run a risk element is here in a unlike form. Merely in the context of services, if we neglect to sell the services, it is lost only not for today but even for the future. If a labour stops to work, if a seat in the aircraft remains unsold, if a sleeping room in a hotel remains unbooked, a chair in a movie theater hall remains vacant; we find the business not-real and the opportunities are lost and lost forever. The services can't be stored or preserved.
Unutilised or underutilised services are establish to be a waste. A building unoccupied, a person unemployed, credit unutilised, vacant beds in a infirmary are economic waste. Of course, this is due mainly to its perishability. This makes it essential that determination-makers or the executives by using their professionalism minimise the possibilities of economic waste. The opportunities come and you lot need to capitalise on the same by using your excellence.
Characteristic # 3. Inseparability:
This is besides a feature that complicates the task of professionals while marketing the services. The inseparability focuses on the fact that the services are non of separable nature. Generally, the services are created and supplied simultaneously. Like the dancers, musicians, dentists and other professionals create and offer services at the aforementioned time. In other words, the services and their providers are the same. Donald Cowell says, "Goods are produced, sold so consumed whereas the services are sold and then produced and consumed."
It is inseparability that makes the task of marketing services a flake difficult. The appurtenances are produced at one indicate and then distributed past others at other points. In the services, we find the selling processes making ways for the generation of services. The professionals while marketing the services thus behave the responsibility of removing or minimising the gap between the services-promised and services-offered.
Goods are produced, sold and then consumed but the services are sold, produced and then used. The inseparability thus makes it essential that the service-providers are acting and behaving professionally so that the marketing processes are not to pave the avenues for a degeneration in the quality.
Characteristic # 4. Heterogeneity:
Another feature is heterogeneity which makes it hard to establish standard. The quality of services can't be standardised. The prices charged may exist too high or too low. In the case of amusement and sports, nosotros find the same thing. The same type of services can't be sold to all the customers even if they pay the same toll.
The consumers rate the services in a dissimilar way. Of grade, it is due to the difference in the perception of individuals at the levels of providers and users. The heterogeneity factor makes it difficult to marketplace efficiently. The professionals by using their excellence bear the responsibleness of minimising the problem.
Feature # 5. Ownership:
It is also ownership that makes it significant to market place the services in a bit different way. The goods sold are transferred from i place to another, the ownership is also transferred and this provides to the buyers an opportunity to resell. In the example of services, we don't discover the same thing. The users have but an access to the service. As for example, a consumer tin use personal care services or Medicare services or can apply a hotel room or swimming pool, however the ownership rests with the providers.
An expert opines, "A service is any activity or benefit that i political party can offer to another that information technology is substantially intangible and does non result in the ownership of anything." Here, it is clear that buying is non afflicted in the process of selling the services. The outcome of ownership has also been clarified by another practiced.
He says, "Services are those separately identifiable, substantially intangible activities which provide want satisfaction and that are not necessarily tied to employ sales of a product or some other services. To produce a service may or may not require the use of tangible goods. Yet, when such use is required, there is no transfer of permanent ownership to these tangible goods."
The same theme of not transferring the ownership has too been supported by Batesan. Here, the focus is on the point that transfer of ownership simplifies the chore of a marketer since he/she can use information technology as a motivational tool. In example of services, the professionals feel difficulties because nosotros don't find any telescopic for the transfer of ownership. The professionals thus need to exist more than careful while selling or marketing the services.
Characteristic # 6. Simultaneity:
Services tin can't be delivered to customers or users. Services don't motility through the channel of distribution. For availing the services, it is essential that the users are brought to the providers or the providers go to the users. It is correct to say that the services take express geographical areas.
Carman and Uhl say, "Producers of services generally accept small-sized operations than do producers of goods, largely because the producers must travel to get the services or vice versa. When the producers travel to the buyer, fourth dimension is taken away from the production of services and the cost of those services is increased. It likewise costs time and money from buyers to travel to producers of services and these economies of fourth dimension and travel provide incentive to locate more services centres closer to prospective customers which results in smaller service eye." This can be antiseptic past a suitable example. Hotel rooms can't be brought to the users; aeroplane can't exist brought to the customers, etc.
Feature # 7. Quality Measurement:
The quality of service requires another tool for measurement. We can't mensurate it in terms of service level. It is very difficult to rate or quantify the total purchase. Every bit for example, we tin quantify the food served in a hotel but the style a waiter or a carrier serves it or overall environment or behaviour of other staff tin can't be ignored while rating the total process. Hence, we can determine the level of satisfaction at which the users are found satisfied. A business firm sells atmosphere, conveniences, consistent quality, status, anxiety, moral, etc.
Feature # 8. Nature of Demand:
While going through the features of services, we can't underestimate the factor related to the nature of demand. Mostly, the services are found of fluctuating nature. Particularly during the height season, nosotros detect an abnormal increase in the need. As for example, the mobility of rider is institute increased, peculiarly during the marriage flavor or during an important festival.
The tourists adopt to go the tourist spots or resorts peculiarly during summertime when we find the atmospheric condition condition suitable. The cricket stadiums are used in wintertime. The golf courses remain unused during the winter. The public transport facilities are used considerably during the showtime and end of office hours. At that place are a number of examples to prove the superlative hour when nosotros find an aberrant increase in the demand position.
The aforesaid features of services make it clear that the professionals working in the services sector need excellence to make available to the customers the promised services without a gap. If the executives working in the unlike service generating organisations carry the potentials to understand the specialities in the services to be sold, they tin can do the all-time possible to understand the expectations of customers.
This simplifies the process of satisfying the customers. Information technology is not meant that the professionals working in the goods manufacturing organisations don't demand excellence. The focus is on the point that since the services as a product are constitute of sensitive nature and the expectations of customers are plant high, it is essential that the professionals sympathise the services vis-a-vis the customers. This makes an assault on the multi-dimensional bug likely to crop upward in the procedure of selling services.
Features of Services – 4 Main Characteristics: Intangibility, Inseparability, Variability and Perishability
Services are unique and four characteristics separate them from goods, namely intangibility, variability, inseparability, and perishability.
one. Intangibility:
Services are intangible, that is, they cannot be seen. Services existence acts, deeds, and operation tin can be experienced but non possessed. That is, a service unlike a good cannot be sampled, seen, touched, and felt before their consumption. For example, it is incommunicable to sample surgery, travel, and theatre functioning.
Similarly, an insurance cover bought for life or a car or the service provided past a marriage counsellor or consultant cannot be seen, touched, or smelled. On the other hand, the tangibility of a television receiver or a mobile phone allows customers to see, touch, hear, and even smell them.
The results of a service experience are discernible to only those customers who experience it. A sample class past a instructor, sample consultation of a doctor, sample experience of a hotel, or a sample flight is distinct from what it purports to exist sample of. The sampled consequence is unlike from the service event that suggests information technology being a sample of. Each service experience is distinct and unique.
Service intangibility is the fundamental reason that their marketing assumes dissimilar dimensions from concrete products. Bateson considers it every bit a very critical distinguishing feature. Intangibility can have two aspects—palpable intangibility that implies lack of bear on power and mental intangibility that ways difficult to grasp something mentally.
This makes service ownership hard for customers. Service buyers therefore bank upon cues to grade sentence about marketed services. The extrinsic elements that environment a service are often used by consumers as indicators of quality of service. For case, a hotel's quality is judged past tangible elements such equally building, lawn, lobby, decor, paintings, staff dress, and lighting.
two. Inseparability:
Goods being physical entities are separable from their product systems. For instance, a mobile telephone may be manufactured in China and packed, stored, and shipped to the markets where it is sold to end customers. Goods are separable from their producers in terms of fourth dimension and place.
Whereas, services do not allow this flexibility; they are not inseparable from their producers. For instance, a surgeon's surgery, flying of an airline, makeup of an artist, and a hotel's stay cannot be separated from their producers. This inseparability between the service product and service producer unfolds unique challenges for service marketers.
The lack of separation does non allow services to go to markets without taking service production organisation along with it. This makes interaction betwixt consumer and service production system essential for its cosmos and marketing. For example- health services crave patients to go to health clinics and a traveller must cheque in an shipping in gild to exist able to apply their services. On the other side, customers do not go to Nokia's factory or Toyota'due south plant to buy their products.
The lack of inseparability in services blurs the boundaries between product systems and markets. In marketing of appurtenances, product takes place in factories and goods travel to markets for sales. However in services, this sequence is thwarted because of inseparability.
There are two options—either the customers move to service systems or the service system moves to customers. When patients, students, and travellers motion to hospitals, schools, and aircrafts respectively, the market moves to production system. On the other hand, when hotels open branches and doctors pay visit to patient's firm, the production system moves to markets.
Inseparability makes centralized product difficult in services. This is a radical departure from goods marketing. Goods production is generally centralized at some locations in gild to reap the advantage of large scale. Services are performed in real fourth dimension.
Inseparability makes customer-provider interaction mandatory in example of services, which further makes operations and marketing intersect with each other. Services therefore are co-created experiences. This often breeds conflicts between the two functions.
Absence of their conflict resolution oft sits at the heart of poor client satisfaction. The interactions between provider and customer may differ in terms of intimacy and involvement. The interactions between doctor and patient is intimate and involving and whereas in retail it is not and then.
3. Variability:
Physical goods are produced with a high caste of standardization. They are factory produced or assembled in large numbers with enormous consistency. It is rare to find 2 cakes of soap like Pears or two pieces of machine similar Alto different from 1 another. However, this kind of similarity is near impossible in services. For example, two visits to a doctor or two lectures of a professor are never exactly same. Two split stays at a particular hotel are unlikely to be an exact replica of 1 another. Variability is inherent in services because of their peculiar characteristics including intangibility and inseparability.
At that place are several reasons that make standardization of services difficult. Start, intangibility prevents setting up of precisely defined standards for service product, their conformance, and control. The advances in quality like zero defect has been possible due to their tangible graphic symbol.
Physical goods have tangible dimensions that permit setting up of quality standards, deviations measurement, and their minimization. Second, service variability is acquired by human being interest and customer- provider interactions. Services are produced and consumed in real time.
Unlike goods, services cannot be produced and then quality checked. The lack of separation between production and consumption prevents post-product quality control. 'A major difference between product marketing and service marketing is that nosotros cannot control the quality of our products likewise every bit a P&G control engineer on a production line can command the quality of his product.
When you purchase a box of Tide, yous can be certain that it will piece of work to get your dress clean. When you buy a Holiday Inn room, you are sure to some bottom percentage that information technology will work to requite a good night'south slumber without any hassle, or people banging on walls and all the bad things that can happen to you in a hotel'.
Each service episode tends to be unique in its own right. The interaction between customer and provider cannot be programmed and controlled cent per cent. In spite of a highly regimented service commitment procedure, each client brings unique psycho-social aspect to a service come across.
For case, service encounters are affected by moods and personality combinations between provider and customer. For case, service provider'due south mood and emotional land despite loftier training is difficult to control like a automobile. Similarly, i client is unlikely to have similar mental state in ii service episodes. Service inconsistency manifests in different forms.
For example, quality variation tin can be experienced across different service outlets, for case 2 branches of Buffet Coffee Solar day (CCD) may provide different service feel. Variations in service tin can also exist found beyond time likewise. For instance, the service quality between lunch and dinner services of a eating house may differ.
4. Perishability:
Services cannot be stored like goods because of simultaneity of production and consumption. Unlike goods, which bask separation between production and consumption, services are produced and consumed at the same time. For instance, most of the consumer durable companies accrue inventories prior to the arrival of festive seasons.
These inventories let them to meet overfull demand later when festivals go far. However, this luxury is not possible for a service marketer. For instance, hotels and airlines cannot create stocks of their rooms or seats to supply them during the fourth dimension of excess demand. Inventory is non possible in services.
The lack of inventories profoundly reduces flexibility of service firms in coping with fluctuating demand conditions. The inability to marshal service supply every bit per demand situations causes service to suffer from revenue loss when demand exceeds capacity and incur excess cost when demand is less than available capacity.
Consider the instance of a typical airline visitor. During the prime number travel time during morning and evening between cities such as Bombay and New Delhi, the demand for travel generally exceeds chapters. Similarly, restaurants have to turn away their customers during tiffin and dinner time and cinema theatres neglect to suit demand during prime shows.
The unaccommodated customers are lost revenue opportunities. On the paw, during the not-peak time aircrafts, restaurants, and cinema theatres face demand conditions far lower than available capacity. Unused capacity is undesirable because assets remain idle.
Unoccupied theatre, airline, and eating place seats cannot be stored and carried over to cater supply during the time of excess demand. In service industries, output is wasted if it is not consumed simultaneously. The 'unused capacity in a service business is rather like having equally running tap in a sink with no plug, the flow is wasted unless customers, or their possessions that require servicing, are present to receive it'.
Appurtenances marketers are meliorate equipped to align their supply according to demand conditions due to their power to maintain inventories as a buffer. Services on the other hand stand to lose due to the absenteeism of inventories.
Features of Services – 4 Important Features (With Issues and Marketing Strategy)
The services literature highlights differences in the nature of services versus products which are believed to create special challenges for services marketers and for consumers buying services. To help sympathise these differences a number of characteristics that describe the unique nature of services accept been proposed.
These characteristics were starting time discussed in the early services marketing literature and are more often than not summarised as intangibility, inseparability, heterogeneity and perishability.
Although, at that place has been a contend on the effectiveness of the four characteristics in distinguishing between products and services and used both every bit the basis for examining services buyer behaviour and developing services marketing strategies.
Information technology is, therefore, important to establish the extent to which these characteristics reverberate the perspective of the consumer. A US-based study by Hartman and Lindgren (1993) institute that consumers did non use the 4 characteristics in distinguishing betwixt products and services.
Bitner, Fisk and Dark-brown (1993) suggest that the major output from the services marketing literature upward to 1980 was the delineation of 4 services characteristics- intangibility, inseparability, heterogeneity and perishability. These characteristics underpinned the example for services marketing and made services a field of marketing that was singled-out from the marketing of products.
iv I's of Services Backed past an O:
Services have four distinct characteristics that need to be internalised by service professionals to create opportunities in the market identify, to enhance both summit and bottom line growth for the firm. Leading researchers take zeroed on Intangibility, Inseparability, Inconsistency, and Inventory while others mention Buying as well. All these characteristics are providing opportunity likewise as challenges to the service marketer.
The singled-out characteristics of services need individual focus while taking decisions regarding their organisational gear up-up.
They are mentioned below:
Feature # 1. Intangibility:
It is one of the almost important characteristics of service products. It has no physical dimension and attributes. Service is a human activity, a performance, and an effort. The customers buy operation as they cannot encounter, touch, hear, gustation or smell a service before they determine to purchase the product.
This makes the perception of service quite subjective. For e.g. a heir-apparent of health club package, for weight loss cannot see what the consequence will be till the programme is over. Therefore, the customers for many services accept to buy them on trust as they cannot be inspected before use. In case of goods, a consumer can bear on, taste and sample the production. The intangible nature of services makes consumers concerned near their providers.
For e.chiliad. in case of Global Trust Banking company, a few years back, the investments fabricated were non equally per Regulatory norms, and when it was released in the press, it left many customers uneasy about the fiscal instability of GTB and there was a withdrawal of deposits as investors' trust were shaken. Some customers lost total faith and stopped banking.
In fact some service providers like life insurance agents every bit per IRDA have to undergo 100 hours training to get a license to practice so that they are trained in their profession.
Service products are mostly intangible but are marketed with tangible evidence. This is referred to as tangibilising the intangibles. While services oft are accompanied with physical testify that enables the consumer to make the product less abstract and more tangible, there volition always be an intangible element to the service product.
The level of tangibility in the service offer is based on three criteria:
i. Tangible appurtenances which are included in the service offer and consumed by the user.
two. The physical environment in which the service production/consumption process takes place, and
iii. Tangible evidence of service performance.
Where appurtenances class an of import component of a service offer, many of the practices in goods marketing can be applied to this part of the service offer. A firm's promotional efforts must state the benefits to be derived from a service rather than stressing on the service itself. It is used to communicate the nature and quality of service.
Take for instance an feel on a flight, the total service experience is an aggregate of many components such equally experience at the airport, the nature of services on lath, the inflight entertainment. Here, there are some tangible elements merely most are intangible elements.
Intangibility of services leads customers to have difficulty in evaluating competing services, perceiving and assessing high levels of risk placing more emphasis on personal data sources and often using price every bit the basis for assessing quality. Hence management responds by reducing service complexity, stressing more than on tangible clues, focusing on service quality and facilitating give-and-take of oral fissure recommendation.
While some services are rich in such tangible cues similar retail outlets, restaurants, other services provide relatively fiddling tangible bear witness similar life insurance.
In case of restaurants, it represents a mix of tangibles and intangibles and in respect of the food element, few of the particular characteristics of services marketing are encountered. Therefore, production of the nutrient tin can exist separated from its consumption and the perishability of food is less significant than the perishability of an empty table which results in loss of concern. The presence of a tangible component gives customers a visible basis to judge quality.
The tangible elements of the service offered comprise not just those goods which are exchanged but too the physical surround in which a service meet takes place. Within this environment, the design of buildings, their cleanliness and the appearance of staff present important tangible evidence which may exist the only basis on which a buyer is able to differentiate ane service provider from another.
Tangibility is farther provided by evidence of service production methods. Some services provide many opportunities for customers to see the procedure of production, indeed the whole purpose of the service may exist to see the production procedure like dramas or skits.
Often this tangible show can be envisioned before a decision to buy a service is made, either past straight observation of a service being performed on somebody else like watching the sculptor work on a statue or indirectly, through a description of the service production procedure by brochures which illustrate and detail the service process like teaching. On the other hand, some services provide very few tangible clues about the nature of the service production process.
The lack of physical prove, which intangibility implies, increases the level of doubtfulness which a consumer faces when choosing betwixt competing services. The service marketer's program consists of reducing consumer uncertainty by adding physical evidence and the evolution of strong service brands; in contrast appurtenances marketers augment their products by adding intangible elements such as afterwards sales service and improved distribution.
Feature # ii. Inconsistency (Heterogeneity or Variability):
This characteristic of service as well referred to as heterogeneity, is a function of human involvement in the delivery and consumption procedure. The inseparability of the production and consumption aspects of the service transaction refers to the fact that service is a performance, in existent time, in which the customer cooperates with the service provider.
Inseparability is a feature of a service indicating that information technology cannot exist separated from the service provider of the product. Therefore a corking deal of try has to get into standardisation of delivery. Since buyers' and service providers' interpersonal substitution is involved, there is opportunity for customisation, which can be the Unique Selling Proposition.
Inconsistency occurs largely because unlike service providers perform a given service on dissimilar occasions. The service performed by an individual provider may differ over a period of time because interaction between client and provider may vary. Every time a service is performed, the process and the customer experience are unlike.
Services that are provided by individuals rather than equipment will vary, depending upon which private performs the service, and these will fifty-fifty vary with the aforementioned service provider from one task to the adjacent. The service will as well vary according to the degree to which clients involved in the production of the service agree.
The degree to which the service firm designs the service delivery system to control variability will influence the quality of the service experienced by the customer.
Customer uncertainty can be reduced past a combination of automation, standardisation and rationalisation. All the same, inseparability may be desired by those customers who want customised service, rather than standard approaches that are not appropriate for private situation as in case of interiors for bungalows in sectional schemes for high net worth individuals.
Simply it is not possible to standardise service manufacture output. In case of trips by the Shatabdi Express betwixt Delhi and Agra, the consumer does not get the same quality of service 24-hour interval after mean solar day due to dissimilar service personnel, snacks, music etc.
The performance of a kinesthesia in a lecture, is not of same standard in each performance, as it will depend on a host of factors like preparation, mood, participation of the students, ambience etc. In case of an income tax consultant, he may provide a different service feel to a high net worth individual and a salaried form clerk because of varying needs and depends on his moods and pressures at the time of the day when the interaction is taking identify.
In order to provide consequent services, the firms should standardise staff performance through careful' planning, control and automation. Firms which are automated have less people and hence they take lower inconsistency in services. A garage which has installed auto automobile launder facilities with mounting of the vehicle on the ramp can provide consistent services. Banks have installed Automatic Teller Machines to provide consistent services due to automation. Fountain, Cola and Pepsi vending machines are another examples.
While these firms reach high homogeneity in service commitment, they increase the chance of being inflexible and the staff reacts poorly to the unforeseen problem. Inconsistency is an opportunity and firms tin strengthen their brands past customisation with greater empowerment to the staff.
For services, variability impacts upon customers not but in terms of outcomes but also in terms of processes of product. It is the latter point that causes variability to pose a much greater trouble for services, compared to goods. Because the client is usually involved in the production procedure for a service at the same time every bit they swallow it, it can exist difficult to conduct out monitoring and command to ensure consequent standards.
The opportunity for pre-delivery inspection and rejection which is open up to the goods manufacturer is not normally possible with services. The service must normally be produced in the presence of the client without the possibility of intervening quality command.
Particular problems tin can occur where personnel are involved in providing services on a one-to-1 footing, such as hairdressing, where no easy method of monitoring and command is possible.
Characteristic # 3. Inseparability:
Many services are created, delivered and consumed simultaneously through interaction between customers and service producers, whereas appurtenances generally, are produced first and consumed later on. As the customers are involved in the production process, the service quality becomes difficult to measure and command.
For due east.g. a physician creates, delivers all his services simultaneously just the consumer presence is required during the performance of the service. This ways that in many cases, people are involved concurrently in the production and marketing efforts of the service organisations.
In most of the cases, the customer receives and consumes the services at the service provider'southward premises. Since inseparability characteristic generally means the direct interaction between the service provider and customer, it is direct selling.
Inseparability leads customers to existence co-producers of the service either alone or with other co-consumers and often they accept to travel to the point of product service. The management has to answer to this by separating production and consumption. It has to monitor consumer producer interaction and focus on continuous improvement in the service commitment system.
Production and consumption are separable for appurtenances. On the other manus, the consumption of a service is said to be inseparable from its means of production. Producer and consumer must collaborate with each other in order to realise the benefits of the service; both must commonly meet at a fourth dimension and a place which is mutually convenient in such a way that the producer can directly laissez passer on service benefits.
For services, marketing becomes a means of facilitating complex producer-consumer interaction, rather than beingness merely an substitution medium.
Moreover, the service cannot be stocked past the distribution partners, equally in example of appurtenances. This poses a major limitation for the service provider. For e.g. a automobile mechanic can only repair, say, four vehicles per day. Thus private service seller's services cannot exist sold in many markets or multi locations. This feature limits the scale and reach of performance of a service firm.
In that location are other services which tin be sold past a representative of the master service provider e.g. insurance amanuensis, travel agent, but at the final point of service commitment the service provider's presence is a must. Such services are more often than not sold by the institutions producing them.
The caste of interest between transacting parties is dependent upon the extent to which the service is 'equipment based' or 'people based'.
Feature # iv. Inventory (Perishability):
The perishability of services describes the real time nature of the product. Unlike goods, the consumer cannot store the service and the absenteeism of the power to build and maintain stocks of the product means that sudden demands cannot be accommodated every bit it can be washed in case of goods.
The buyer may decide to delay the consumption but may non swallow more in advance than the requirements. For the buyer of services, the time at which they choose to employ the service may be critical to its performance and therefore to the consumer's experience, for e.g., in a Pune Municipal Transport bus the experience in the blitz hr is very different than in lean hours.
Consumption of services is direct linked to the feel. In case of services, inventory costs are related to capacity utilisation. In idle service production surroundings, the inventory cost relates to reimbursing staff along with any needed equipment. Due east.g. If a lawyer is available but there is no customer during that period, the fixed toll of the idle lawyer's opportunity is the inventory carrying cost.
Some services have characteristics, where demand for them fluctuates, considerably by season and past day of the calendar week and even hour of the day. An airline which offers seats on a 6.00 am flight from Mumbai to Delhi cannot sell any empty seats once the aircraft has left at 6.00 am. The service offer disappears and spare seats cannot be stored to come across a surge in demand which may occur at 8.00 am.
Few services have a constant pattern of demand over a period of time. Many show considerable variation like daily variation in cyber cafes towards the evening/night , weekends for travel past railways between Pune-Mumbai, seasonal for hotels, cyclical for mortgages or an unpredictable blueprint of demand like emergency repair services like electricity later copse falling on electricity lines.
For a travel amanuensis, the demand fluctuates according to time and period and is linked to holidays in school and colleges, in summertime and wintertime coupled to festivals like Diwali, Durga Puja, and Christmas etc., wherein the demand peaks.
The combination of perishability and fluctuating demand present challenges for marketers engaged in planning, pricing, promotion and distribution of services. The cellular companies try to spread out demand for their services by pricing off meridian hours to make them more attractive to callers.
They offer "happy hour" rates to increase traffic in lean periods of the 24-hour interval. The services providers focus on strategies for effective capacity management to reduce the inventory costs. Hence, even if volumes tin can be enhanced with a petty margin over variable price, the firm should push for information technology.
An appointment with a dentist at a given fourth dimension, on a given day, cannot be stored and if patient cancels the appointment last infinitesimal, the acquirement is lost. The firms must monitor their capacity and review information technology periodically to ensure customers get better service equally well as resources of the firm are optimally utilised.
Many services are bought even before they are experienced as in case of pension. Here the service firms have to tackle 2 issues- start, they take to develop prototype and reputation to concenter customers; secondly, they must retain customers, as competitors effort to concenter them away, even though they have yet to experience the service.
Perishability occurs considering of the inability to store services, inelasticity of curt-term supply. This results in need patterns being irregular with just in time production of services and if managed effectively congestion occurs at peak periods and loss of capacity at off-peak periods. Pricing and promotion are used extensively to encourage customers to utilise services at a fourth dimension when information technology is convenient to the service operator in order to take ameliorate capacity utilisation.
To manage these characteristics efficiently the service provider has to use the optimum strategies. "The Bug and Strategies in Services Marketing" adapted from Parasuraman, Drupe and Zeithmal, "Problems and Strategies in Services Marketing", and "Journal of Marketing" are described for ready reference.
Problem:
ane. Intangibility:
i. Cannot be easily displayed
two. Cannot be patented
2. Inconsistency:
i. Standardisation hard to achieve
ii. Hard to set up quality control
iii. Can merely predict quality or determine it after the service is performed
3. Inseparability:
i. Harder to mass produce
ii. Less efficient than production goods
iv. Inventory:
Customers must be present
Marketing Strategy:
ane. Intangibility:
i. Provide tangible clues
ii. Stimulate word of mouth
three. Use personnel sources
iv. Use post purchase communication
2. Inconsistency:
i. Stress on standardisation and performance
2. Focus on employee training
iii. Programs, operation evaluation
iv. Licensing and other forms of credential requirement
3. Inseparability:
i. Demand strong training programmes, incentives
ii. Focus on personal attention
four. Inventory:
i. Focus on convenience, saving fourth dimension, faster service
two. Extended hours
3. Focus on competence and expertise
iv. Predict fluctuating need
5. Manage capacity to remainder supply and demand
In improver to the 4 I's of services, ownership has been identified every bit a distinguishing feature of services by some researchers including Kotler.
Ownership is another distinguishing feature of service. The inability to own a service is related to the characteristics of intangibility and perishability. In case of service, when it is performed, no ownership is transferred from buyer to seller. The buyer is just buying the right to a service process such as the use of a automobile park or a solicitor's time.
A distinction should exist drawn betwixt the inability to own the service human action, and the rights which a buyer may acquire to have a service carried out at some time in the future. In case of service, the buyer has temporary access to or apply of it.
What is endemic is the benefit of service, not the service itself, e.g. for a holiday tour package to picturesque Manali in Himachal, the buyer has access to hotel, mountains, snowfall, waterfalls, rivers etc. but doesn't ain any of them.
The inability to own a service has implications for the pattern of distribution channels, so a wholesaler or retailer cannot accept championship, as is the case with goods. Instead, direct distribution methods are more common and where intermediaries are used, who generally act every bit a co- producer with the service provider.
Features of Services: Pinnacle half-dozen Features: Perishability, Changing Need, Intangibility, Inseparability, Heterogeneity and Pricing of Services
The peculiar characteristics of services create challenges and opportunities to the service marketers.
These are given beneath:
one. Perishability:
Equally a marketable commodity, a service has a loftier degree of perishability. Fourth dimension element assumes unique importance. If a service is non used today, information technology is lost forever. It cannot be Stored. It cann6t be carried forward. Unutilised services are economic losses. A building unoccupied, a person unemployed, credit non utilised, a ship, a wagon or a warehouse loaded to only one-half its chapters, empty rooms in a five star hotel are illustrations representing perishable nature of services and business organisation which is lost forever.
two. Changing Demand:
The market for services has wide fluctuations. These fluctuations in demand may be seasonal or even by weeks, days or hours. During not-acme hours we demand less transport. The utilize of public transport fluctuates greatly during the day. During night nosotros need less telephone services. Tourism also has seasonal need. Cricket fields are unused in the rainy flavour. Golf courses are not used in the winter.
3. Intangibility:
A physical production, e g., a television set, a refrigerator, terelene saree, idli-dossa, face cream, are visible and concrete products. You lot tin can see them, feel them, sense of taste them, smell them and fifty-fifty eat or enjoy their possession. Information technology is non possible to meet, feel, gustation, and smell services before they are bought. A service by nature is an abstruse phenomenon. It is not a physical object.
It has mental connotations. While selling or promoting the sale of a service nosotros have to concentrate entirely on the benefits and satisfaction a buyer tin can derive later ownership that service. We cannot emphasize the service itself.
Banks promote the sale of credit cards by emphasizing the conveniences and advantages derived from possessing a credit bill of fare. Key card of the Central Depository financial institution of India is a new convenience card—Convenience taking on a new proper name. Information technology is the showtime of its kind to be launched by a nationalised depository financial institution in India. Whether you are out on business concern, shopping or merely dining out, you don't have to pay cash or requite a cheque. By holding a fundamental carte du jour you lot can discover a new mode of life.
In this way a bank marketer can promote the auction of any banking company service by stressing the benefits, conveniences and other advantages derived from that particular service. The telephone company stresses how the utilise of telephone tin reduce costs of selling and storage by using long-distance calls. Of class, sale of a service, e.1000., insurance, involves a real claiming. The burden of selling an intangible product similar service falls mainly on the promotion mix.
4. Inseparability:
Personal service cannot be separated from the individual. Some services are created and supplied simultaneously. Dentist, musician, dancer, and such other professionals create and offering service at the same time. Hence, due to inseparability, directly sale of many services is the merely channel of distribution. The market for offering personal services is bound to be limited.
A person can sell his service only to a limited number of customers in a day. However, when an institution is interim as a creator of a service, we may take its representatives or agents to sell that service. For example, a travel agent, an insurance broker, a finance banker, may represent and sell the services supplied by a tourist organisation, insurance company and fiscal institutions.
5. Heterogeneity:
The quality of services offered by the competing firms cannot exist standardised. Even the quality of the output of services sold by one seller cannot exist compatible or standardised. For instance, a technician cannot offer equal quality of service when he is repairing a number of television sets.
Similarly, it is difficult to guess accurately the quality of services. Payment of cost and the quality of actual performance may not have perfect correlation Cost paid for a service may be too high or too low in relation to actual performance. This is particularly significant in the instance of sports and entertainment services.
six. Pricing of Services:
Perishability, fluctuations in demand and inseparability in services involve significant implications in pricing. Consumers may postpone purchases or perform some services themselves. Competition plays a secondary role in many services. Quality of services cannot be fully standardised.
In that location are many difficulties in pricing of services. In regulated services we accept cost plus pricing. Usually prices of other services are determined on the basis of demand and contest. Variable pricing policy is also used in services Discounts are too offered in many services, due east.g. insurance, hotel, etc.
Features of Services
Services have some important characteristics that have implications for marketing.
Characteristic # 1. Intangibility :
Services are intangible. "They cannot be tasted, felt, heard, or smelled earlier they are bought". Intangibility created problems for marketing as it makes very difficult to make consumers convinced almost the qualities of a product to encourage its purchase. Therefore, a lot depends on the reputation of the service provider.
As services are intangible, they cannot exist patented, legally, and new service concepts tin can therefore easily be copied by competitors. … Decisions nigh what to include in advertising and other promotional materials are challenging, as is pricing. The bodily costs of a 'unit of service' are hard to determine and the toll quality relationship is complex.
Feature # ii. Inseparability :
Services are inseparable from the providers, whether persons or machines. For example, a musician'south performance or a lawyer'south counsel cannot exist separated from them. As the quality of the services is highly personal or inherent, another person may not be able to render exactly the aforementioned quality. For example, one musician cannot be a substitute for another.
The inseparability imposes limits on the supply of service of a certain quality and image. Several strategies are in utilise for getting around this limitation. For instance, the number of patients attended to past an eye specialist can be increased by having assistants to do the standard routine examinations and the specialist doing only the vital, critical, part of it. Recorded cassettes (i.east., making the service in the product grade) can increase the reach of the performance of a musician, although for many it may not exist every bit appealing as enjoying it live.
Feature # three. Variability :
The quality of service is highly variable. Different people or organisations may not be able to make the quality of their service exactly the aforementioned always. Even when the same person provides a service, the quality may vary at different times. The quality of the food served by a eating house oft varies. Consistency in quality is very important. Quality of the people providing the service, standardising service performance process and monitoring customer satisfaction tin can help improve service quality.
Every bit Zeithaml and Binter indicate out, "because services are heterogeneous across time, organisations, and people, ensuring consistent service quality is challenging. Quality actually depends on many factors that cannot be fully controlled by service providers, such as the ability of the consumer to articulate his/her needs, the ability and willingness of personnel to satisfy those needs, the presence (or absence) of other customers, and the level of demand, for the service."
Characteristic # 4. Perishability :
Services are perishable in the sense they cannot be stored, resold, or returned. This creates problem to conform supply with demand. This is sought to be adjusted to by methods such as – differential pricing like off season discounts by airlines, hotels, lower phone charges during lean hours, advance reservation system etc.
Simultaneous Production and Consumption :
A corollary of the perishability characteristic of service is simultaneous production and consumption. Unlike appurtenances, which are often produced first, and so sold and consumed, most services are sold first so produced and consumed simultaneously.
As a result, service providers play "a role as part of the product itself and equally an essential ingredient in the service experience for the consumer". The simultaneous production and consumption make demand supply management very challenging.
"The quality of service and customer satisfaction will be highly dependent on what happens in 'existent time', including actions of employees and the interaction between employees and customers. Similarly, it is not commonly possible to gain pregnant economies of scale through centralisation. Usually operations need to exist relatively decentralised so that services can be delivered direct to the consumer in user-friendly locations."
Features of Services – Peak vi Features: Intangible, Inseparability, Perishable, Heterogeneous, Customer's Participation and Ownership
1. Intangible:
'You cannot touch; you just can feel it'. Ex – In instance of child intendance middle, a women takes care of children from morning time to evening, what is seen their? goose egg. Merely everything is performed, done, felt. No physical, material exists merely an intangible graphic symbol is merely provided. The kids are maintained from still evening. A pure service has no tangibility. In style designing, the designer designs some design and transfer them to model. The model demonstration services only intangibles exists zilch is given just everything is obtained.
There may be partial tangibility in services. Ex Railways the Jana-shatabdi train (Transportation) the main service is intangible but the dinner, lunch provided would be tangible. The very nature of intangibility is that, their production and consumption instantly takes-place. No ownership is transferred i.e., If you become for a movie past paying Rs. 100/- information technology does not mean that you became possessor of the theatre.
two. Inseparability:
Both the product and consumption should go manus in hand. They cannot be separated. In instance of Beauty Parlour, the services provided along with the hair- dressing should be enjoyed simultaneously. You cannot mail-pone information technology. The sale product consumption is the routine activities of services. You buy a ticket for movie, then enter theatre, flick starts, and then consumptions take place. As and when moving-picture show moves you accept to consume it, because, both are inseparable.
3. Perishable:
The basic characteristic of the services is that, if you do non use, they volition perish or die themselves When movie is going on, in a particular seen, if you close the eyes, then it is missed forever because, in the same time you do not got it second time. No shop value. At the height period the services not used will not exist obtained in the lean-flow.
4. Heterogeneous:
There cannot be a standard services. Ex – Whenever you become for Beauty Parlour, you won't get the aforementioned service equally previously experienced. Homogeneity cannot be incorporated. Because, rendering service involves human element and human chemical element cannot be standardised. He is affected past psychology, behaviour, instincts, etc. Hence, marketing of services is difficult, all the same customer are habituated to accepts its heterogeneity.
5. Customer'south Participation:
The unique nature of services is that, client should participate at 100%, otherwise services cannot be given. Ex – If flick is moving, customers should open the eyes. If he fails to participate in the act of pic moments, information technology cannot exist enjoyed. Facial cannot be performed unless face is shown to beautician.
half dozen. Ownership:
The ownership to services does not exist. A person who goes to theatre cannot with the chair, as he has not paid for it.
The amount paid by the client is for the observing the running film merely not for anything else. Hence, neither the service ownership is transferred nor obtained both by the seller and heir-apparent.
Source: https://www.economicsdiscussion.net/marketing-2/features-of-services-8-major-features-of-service-marketing/31597
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