Introdaction
The subject area of service marketing was not really dealt with until the 1970’s either in Europe or the USA. Since that time it has grown considerably and has received much attention from various authors.According to the Nordic School, service marketing is the recognition that contacts between service providers and their customers is the basis of a process of building relationships, and the term service management is used in order to recognise the management of this relationship process. Service marketing is not only relevant to the service sector but to all organizations that offer a service element to their customers.
Services marketing
Services marketing is marketing based on relationship and value. It may be used to market a service or a product.
Marketing a service-base business is different from marketing a goods-base business.
There are several major differences, including:
• The buyer purchases are intangible
• The service may be based on the reputation of a single person
• It's more difficult to compare the quality of similar services
• The buyer cannot return the service
The major difference in the education of services marketing versus regular marketing is that apart from the traditional "4 P's," Product, Price, Place, Promotion, there are three additional "P's" consisting of People, Physical evidence, and Process. Service marketing also includes the servicewomen referring to but not limited to the aesthetic appearance of the business from the outside, the inside, and the general appearance of the employees themselves. Service Marketing has been relatively gaining ground in the overall spectrum of educational marketing as developed economies move farther away from industrial importance to service oriented economies.
Characteristics of services
Bitner, Fisk and Brown (1993) suggest that the major output from the services marketing literature up to 1980 was the delineation of four services characteristics: intangibility, inseparability,heterogeneity and perishability. These characteristics underpinned the case for services marketingand made services a field of marketing that was distinct from the marketing of products.
Information scientists are often providing services (eg advice, or searches), rather than physically distinct products. Marketing experts acknowledge that marketing a service is more difficult than marketing a tangible product.
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