Page 26 - DMGT510_SERVICES_MARKETING

Unit 2: Service Marketing Environment

the implications for his firm, adapt himself and allow for them in his strategy. Task environmental Notes
factors are internal to the organization and affect the individual service firm directly. The firm
can control and influence its task environment factors for decisive competitive advantage.

2.1 The General or External or Macro Environment

The external or the macro environment of a service firm consists of the following SLEPT factors:

Socio-Cultural factors

Legal factors
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Economic factors
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Political factors
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Technological factors
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2.1.1 Socio-Cultural Factors

This is a combination of social and cultural factors that are greatly affecting the service firms.

Consumption

From the late eighties, there has been an increase in conspicuous consumption and cultural
norms have changed ever so imperceptibly. Today, consuming on credit is not seen as being all
that strange or shameful. The Indian middle-class now recognizes such marketing mix initiatives
as ‘EMI’, ‘Exchange old for the new’, etc. Credit card firms have taken great advantage of changed
socio-cultural factors. A consumer is not reticent in flashing his wallet packed with colourful
credit and charge cards.

Time, in 1989, chronicled the conspicuous consumption of the middle class in a cover story
‘Consumer Boomers’. The apt sobriquet talked of the not-so-quiet consuming class (then estimated
to be 200 million, but now after fourteen years, almost 300 million) bent on acquiring, spending
and living it up. To quote the article: “In India, social position used to be equated with an English
education and a job in the Indian Administrative Service. Today, it is money that increasingly
defines status, giving rise to a middle class that cuts across caste and region.” The rush to acquire
has affected such sensitive traditions as arranged marriages and has allowed middle-class women
to emerge in the workforce. It is no longer regarded as shameful to covet the good life and to
seek an even better life for one’s children. “Indians always accepted drudgery as what life had in
store for them,” says Mohammed Khan, chairman of Enterprise Advertising in Bombay. “Today,
self-gratification is no longer a dirty word.”

That was 1989. Bombay has been rechristened Mumbai and the social change has become universal
and irreversible. Frenetic consumption has fuelled a boom in consumer finance, which saw a
horde of Non-Banking Finance Companies (NBFC) storming onto the scene.

Did u know? The consumer big bang was detonated in 1982 with the advent of colour TV,
but really took off in 1984 when Doordarshan, the monopoly state television company,
began allowing advertisers to sponsor shows. Over the next five years, the advertising
revenues at Doordarshan jumped more than tenfold. Top-rated shows exposed tens of
millions of slum dwellers and villagers, as well as civil servants and professionals, to the
blandishments of housewives, models and children. A surge in foreign travel and the
arrival of the video revolution further whetted appetites for consumer goods. Consumers

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