Page 142 - DMGT408DMGT203_Marketing Management

Unit 6: Products, Services and Brands

6.2.3 Extended Marketing Mix for Services Notes

The marketing mix for services is an extended one and includes 7Ps. The first four marketing mix
elements are the traditional 4Ps that work well for tangible products. The additional three
elements are important and require attention in services marketing. In addition to these 4Ps
(Product, Price, Place, and Promotion), B. H. Booms and M. J. Bitner suggested three more Ps for
service products marketing and include people, physical evidence, and process.

People

People of a service organisation involved in production and delivery of services are a vital
element of the marketing mix. Service people are an important consideration because they are
the ones who provide most services. Service employees sometimes become almost a distinction
for some businesses and they become the business. Parasuraman and Berry observe that a
service firm can be only as good as its people. If these employees are taken away, the company
may be left with few assets with which to gain competitive advantage. The actions of service
employees have a much more direct affect on the output that customers receive. Sound selection,
training, and motivation of service delivery personnel can mean the difference between a service
business’s success and failure. Satisfied customers are more likely to repeat purchase the service
and spread favourable word-of-mouth. A committed service employee should ideally be
competent, caring, responsive, has initiative, and problem-solving ability and attitude. In labour-
intensive industries where workers must perform their tasks ‘live’ in front of customers, the
performance of workers can have a major impact on service quality perception.

Physical Evidence

Physical evidence reduces the risk perception by customers by offering tangible evidence of the
promised service delivery. Tangible evidence of service quality can take a number of forms. At
its simplest level, the evidence could be a brochure that gives pictorial evidence of infrastructure
and physical facilities of a management school, or a holiday brochure gives evidence of hotels
and resorts. The appearance and smiles of airline staff and stewardesses provides some indication
of the nature of service.

Example: Every McDonald’s outlet right from the exterior to interior and employees
evoke confidence in the kind of service a consumer can expect, and actually gets.

Process

Process is of critical importance to consumers in high-contact services. Diners in a restaurant can
be significantly affected by the manner in which staff serves them and the amount of waiting
time involved in the service production process.
Service blueprint is a process analysis methodology. The proposed blueprint allows for a
quantitative description of critical service elements, such as time, logical sequences of actions
and processes, also specifying both actions/events that happen in the time and place of the
interaction (front office) and actions/events that are out of the line of visibility for the users, but
are fundamental for the service.

Example: The process of securing a loan would include filling up application forms,
submitting it, credit checks, getting approval and finally getting the loan. If, in a bank, this
process is very lengthy and tiresome, customers can move to the competitors.

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