Page 145 - DMGT408DMGT203_Marketing Management

Marketing Management/Essentials of Marketing

Notes 4. Gap between service delivery and external communications: This refers to discrepancy
between communications to consumers describing the service and the service actually
delivered. Consumers form their expectations based on service marketer’s advertising
and statements of company reps.

Example: If a hotel brochure shows beautiful room with scenic view from window and
consumer actually finds the room dull and cheap looking, external communications have wrongly
influenced consumer expectations.
5. Gap between perceived service and expected service: This gap depends on the size and
direction of the first four gaps associated with service delivery. This occurs when the
consumer perceives something else than intended by service provider.

Example: To show care and reassure airlines passengers a cabin crew may demonstrate
how to use an oxygen mask. Some passengers may perceive it as an indication that staff is
anticipating some kind of danger during flight.
The evidence of poor service quality in everyday life abounds. Trains are late, flights are delayed,
teachers do not perform, telephone faults remain unattended, salespeople are rude, and water
taps go dry and so on. However, it is unlikely that excellent service quality goes unnoticed.
Research indicates that consumers use five criteria to judge service quality. Parasuraman, Zeithaml,
and Berry observe that these criteria are basically the same irrespective of the type of service.
The five determinants of service quality are:
1. Reliability: This refers to consistency in performance and dependability, such as accuracy
in billing, keeping records correctly, performing the service at designated time (an airline
flight departing and arriving on time, accurate electricity bill, telephone fault complaints
recorded promptly and accurately, etc.).

2. Responsiveness: Willingness or readiness of service employees to provide the service
promptly, (such as handling urgent requests, calling back customers, ambulance arriving
within specified time, delivering cooking gas within one-hour, etc.)
3. Assurance: Knowledge of service employees and ability to convey trust and confidence,
such as knowledge and skill of contact personnel, company reputation, personal attributes
of employees. (such as a highly trained school teacher, a known and respected service
marketer, a doctor’s manner of dealing with patients, etc.)

4. Empathy: Caring and individualised attention provided by service employees to customers,
(such as attentively listening to customer needs, caring about customer’s concerns, a nurse
counselling a post-surgery patient, etc.)

5. Tangibles: Physical evidence of the service. Appearance of physical facilities, appearance
of service employees, equipment or tools used to provide service. (a clean and professional
looking doctor’s consulting clinic, the cleanliness in a restaurant, alert waiters, good-
looking and courteous air hostesses, etc.)

Service marketers seek ways to differentiate their service offers. This acquires more significance
because of intangibility characteristics. In the absence of physical differences, competing services
are likely to appear quite similar to consumers. One option to create differentiation is to augment
the service with attractive features that can be promoted.

Example: In highly competitive credit card services, some banks have started offering
their cards free of any renewal charges. Some banks offer fixed deposit schemes that customers
can operate as savings account. Some banks have extended hours of banking and still others

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