Services marketing is marketing based on relationship and value. It may be used to market a service or a product. Traditionally, marketing has been a term applied to the process or act of bringing together buyers and sellers. ... This article is about a term used in economics. ...
Marketing a service-base business is different from marketing a product-base business.
There are several major differences, including:
The buyer purchases an 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
When one markets a service business, one must keep in mind that reputation, value, delivery of service and follow-through are keys to a successful venture.
"Managing the evidence" refers to the act of informing customers that the service encounter has been performed successfully. It is best done in subtle ways like providing examples or descriptions of good and poor service that can be used as a basis of comparison. The underlying rationale is that a customer might not appreciate the full worth of the service if they do not have a good benchmark for comparisons.
References
Levitt, T. (1981) "Managing intangible products and product intangibles", Harvard Business Review, May-June, 1981, pp.94-102.
Vandermerwe, S. and Rada, J. (1988) "Servicitization of business: Adding value by adding services", European Management Journal, vol. 6, no. 4, 1988.Shamoon Malik
Most observers believe that market incentives as opposed to government planning will have to become the principal force guiding the economy if the nation is to recover from the present economic crisis.
Services provided by some of these companies were interrupted in March 1999, when payments due to Etecsa by some of the American carriers were seized in a court action in Florida.
Service was quickly restored by rerouting calls via other countries, but the matter is still before the courts.
Indeed, the ability to combine location sensitive services with content tailored to user's individual interests has materialized as a progressive strategy for mobile operators to attract new customers, reduce churn and create additional revenue streams.
Thus, in order to maximize the commercial, operational, and marketing benefits of LBS, operators are expected to insist on a wide range of platform prerequisites to efficiently manage and deliver a full range of services that can target a variety of customer segments.
Service providers are advised to engage in strategic partnerships to ensure best-of-breed billing and customer support systems that can seamlessly integrate with legacy infrastructure to support the full spectrum of LBS.