What are the key service characteristics a company must consider when designing marketing programs briefly describe each characteristic?

The service sector is growing rapidly worldwide. Majority of developed and developing countries experience the development of many service industries, which participate significantly in the national economies.

P. Kotler suggested that ”service is an activity or benefit that one party can offer to another that is essentially intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything. Its production may or may not be tied to a physical product”.

There are four characteristics of service: Intangibility, Inseparability, Variability, and Perishability (Kotler and Keller, 2007).

• As service's nature is intangibility, therefore manufacturing and service delivery is more complex than a product.
• Inseparability is a significant characteristic that distinguishes a service from a     product according to the simultaneous production and consumption.
• Due to the service's variability, it's difficult to be controlled, because it greatly relies on the service's provider, moreover when, where and how it's provided.
• Perishability is one of the major characteristics of service, that it can't be stored for later use or sale (No inventory).

In order to deliver the overall service offer to a target market, the marketing mix elements should be coherent, coordinated, integrated and consistent with each other to produce the synergistic effect of them. (Lovelock, 2001).

The main objective of service marketers is to create and provide service that satisfies consumer needs and expectations, therefore achieving organizational goals.  Consequently, marketers should work on understanding how people make their buying decisions and what determines their satisfaction during the service consumption stages: pre-purchase, service encounter, and post-encounter.

To gain  a competitive advantage in the  global market, successful organization should adopt the marketing strategy (overall cost leadership / differentiation / focus) that is based on the marketing concept which holds that the key to achieving company’s organizational goals is being more effective than competitors in creating, delivering, and communicating superior customer value to target customers, and therefore ensuring profits through customer satisfaction.

The positioning of services is even more important than the positioning of goods because services tend to be intangible, so differentiation becomes a key issue in making the service distinctive in the perception of the customer's mind. Positioning is concerned with the identification, development, and communication of the attributes which a service company intends to use to make its market offering recognizable and superior to the competing services.

A customer-focused organization requires improving service quality as a critical element of differentiation. It's related to the long-term evaluation of the service performance and is crucial to customer satisfaction which is the difference between perception and expectation, moreover, customer satisfaction will become a key factor for business success in the future.

In order to develop long-term relationships, it is necessary to build customer involvement, commitment, and trust. In service companies focused on building loyalty, customer service plays an important role in their marketing strategies and is an essential element in creating service quality and customer satisfaction.

An organization which strategy focuses on delivering service excellence was more successful. This era is the era of customers and for the success and survival in this competitive market, organizations should emphasize on quality service and this should be integrated into the strategy (Chowdhary and Prakash, 2007).

Author: Hend Hassan, lecturer at LIGS University

References

Chowdhary, Prakash, (2007) "Prioritizing service quality dimensions", Managing Service Quality: An International Journal, Vol. 17 Issue: 5, pp.493-509, https://doi.org/10.1108/09604520710817325

Kotler, P., and Keller (2007) A Framework for Marketing Management 3rd ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Lovelock, C.H., Patterson, P.G. and R.H. Walker, (2001). “Services Marketing: An Asia-Pacific Perspective”, 2nd edition, Prentice Hall, NSW.

Services have five specific characteristics. If your business sells services you need to take account of each of the characteristics in all aspects of your marketing. Service characteristics need to be considered at each stage of the marketing process, from service design through to service sales and service delivery.

This article examines each of the five characteristics of a service and looks at how the traditional marketing mix (4Ps - Product, Price, Place, and Promotion) can be adapted to market a service (Known as the Service Marketing Mix or the 7Ps - Product, Price, Place, Promotion, People, Process and Physical Evidence).

The diagram below captures the five essential characteristics of a service which need to be taken into account for service marketing; lack of ownership, intangibility, inseparability, perishability, and heterogeneity/variability.

Services have five essential characteristics.

• Lack of ownership
• Intangibility
• Inseparability
• Perishability
• Heterogeneity or Variability

You can not own a service and you can not store a service like you can store a product. Services are used or hired for a period of time. For example when you buy an aeroplane ticket to fly to the USA, you are buying a service which will start at the beginning of the flight and finish at the end of the flight. You can not take the aeroplane flight home with you.

Service Marketing Characteristic - Intangibility

You cannot hold or touch a service unlike a product. This is because a service is something customers experience and experiences are not physical products.

Service Marketing Characteristic - Inseparability

Services cannot be separated from service providers. A product can be taken away from the producer but a service can not be taken away as it involves the service provider or its representatives doing something for the customer. For example a company selling ironing services needs the company to iron the clothes for you.

Services last a specific time and cannot be stored like a product for later use. For example an interior designer will design a property once. If you would like to redesign the house you will need to purchase the service again.

Service Marketing Characteristic - Heterogeneity/Variability

Firms have systems and procedures to ensure that they provide a consistent service but it is very difficult to make each service experience identical. For example two identical plane journeys may feel different to the passengers due to circumstances beyond the airline's control such as weather conditions or other passengers on the plane.

Next page: Service Marketing Mix

ur laoreet. Nam

at, ultrices ac magna. Fusce dui lectus, congue vel laoreet ac, dictum vitae odio. Donec aliquet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam lacinia pulvinar tortor nec facilisis. Pellentesque dapibus efficitur laoreet.

acinia pulvinar tortor nec facilisis. Pellentesque dapibus efficitur laoreet. Nam risus ante, dapibus a molestie consequat, ultrices ac magna. Fusce dui lectus, congue vel laoreet ac, dictum vitae odio. Donec aliquet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, co

ultrices

Fusce dui lectus, congue vel laoreet ac, dictum vitae odio. Donec aliquet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, co

gue

at, ultrices ac m

llentesque dapibus efficitur laoreet. Nam risus ante, dapibus a molestie consequat, ultrices ac magna. Fusce dui lectus, congue vel laoreet ac, dictum vitae odio. Donec aliquet. Lor

a. Fusce dui lectus, congue vel laoreet ac, dictum vitae odio. Donec aliquet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam lacinia pulvinar tortor nec facilisec facilisis. Pellentesque dapibus efficitur laoreet. Nam risus ante, dapibus a molestie consequat, ultrices ac magna. Fusce dui lectus, congue vel laoreet ac, dictum vitae odio. Donec aliquet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam lacinia pulvinar tortor nec facilisis. Pellentesque dapibus efficitu

o. Donec aliquet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam lacinia pulvinar tortor nec facilisis. Pellentesque dapibus efficitur laoreet. Nam risus ante, dapibus a molestie c

usce dui l

Donec aliquet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam lacinia pulvinar tortor nec facilisis. Pellentesque dapibus efficitur laoreet. Nam risus ante, da

sus ante, dapibu

molestie consequat, ultrices ac magna. Fusce dui lectus, congue vel laoreet ac, dictum vitae odio. Donec aliquet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam la

m ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam lacinia pulvinar tortor nec facilisis. Pellentesque dapibus efficit

ipiscing elit. Nam lacinia pulvinar tortor nec facilisis. Pellentesque dapibus efficitur laoreet. Nam risu

rem i

ng elit. Nam lacinia pulvinar tortor nec facilisis. Pellentesque dapibus efficitur laoreet. Nam risus ante, dapibus a molestie consequat, ultrices ac magna. Fusce dui lectus, congue vel laoreet ac,

gue

at, ultrices ac magna.

Fusce dui lectus, congue vel laoreet ac, dictum vitae odio. Donec aliquet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam lacinia pulvinar tortor nec facilisis. Pellentesque dapibus efficitur laoreet. Nam risus ant

molestie consequat, ultrices ac magna. Fusce dui lectus, congue vel laoreet ac, dictum vitae odio. Donec aliquet. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam lacinia pulvinar tortor nec facil

rem i

pulvinar tortor nec facilisis. Pellentesque dapibus efficitur laoreet. Nam risus ante, dapibus a molestie consequat, ultrices ac magna. Fusce dui lectus, congue vel laoreet ac, dic