Service organizations and manufacturing businesses

Résumé du document

"Service organizations differ in many important ways from manufacturing businesses and require a distinctive approach to planning and implementing marketing strategy." In this paper, we discuss various aspects of service organizations. Service by nature is intangible, and cannot be physically transferred and kept from the service providers to its customers (Berry, 1986). This means the offering and consumption of service are inseparable. Service also cannot be stored for future use. This feature is called the perishability of service. Another major concern in service business is that the quality of a service provided can vary significantly from one producer to another, from one customer to another, and even from day to day. The difficulty in standardizing the output of service reflects its heterogeneous nature (Zeithaml, Parasuraman, and Berry, 1985). Intangibility, inseparability, perishability, and heterogeneity, are the distinctive characteristics of service contrast with the tangible nature of goods produced in manufacturing industry. These attributes make it difficult or even impossible sometimes for the customers to tangibly compare and evaluate the performance and quality of the service they are receiving.

Extraits

[...] Image building of these enterprises enable their customers to better understand the willingness and ability of these businesses in the express delivery market. More importantly, through these marketing campaigns, the customers realize more about what special values can be offered by different express delivery enterprises and prefer to create mental images for these values Enhanced Customer Experience Because production and consumption of service are inseparable, it is quite often that a service offering is sold first, then produced and consumed (Parasuraman and Varadarajan, 1988). The inseparability nature of service creates a more rigorous marketing situation for the service businesses. [...]

[...] To conclude, the report highlights again the important difference between servicing and manufacturing in their own marketing situations, and summarizes that service organizations should design and execute their distinctive marketing strategies to accommodate the special need of service market. Introduction Service by nature is intangible, thus it cannot be physically transferred and kept from the service providers to its customers (Berry, 1986). This means the offering and consumption of service are inseparable. Service also cannot be stored for future use. This is called the perishability of service. Another major concern in service business is that the quality of a service provided can vary significantly from producer to producer, from customer to customer, and even from day to day. [...]

[...] These challenges require service organisations to adopt a special approach to planning and implementing marketing strategy. The successful experience of the express delivery service illustrated in the report reflects that marketing strategies for service business should focus more on the special nature of service, more specifically, the four distinctive characteristics of service. If business organisations could actively design and implement well-tailored strategies to match their service need, they will remain competitive in their business arena. References Berry, L. (1986), Ideas in Service Marketing”, Journal of Consumer Marketing, vol no.2, pp. [...]

[...] 55-67. Parasuraman, A. and Varadarajan, P. (1988), “Future Strategic Emphasis in Service Versus Goods Businesses”, Journal of Services Marketing, vol no pp. 57-67. Rushton, M. and Carson, J. (1989), Marketing of Services: Managing the Intangibles”, European Journal of Marketing, vol no pp. 23-45. Suprenant, F. [...]

[...] In express delivery service sector, various approaches at both marketing and operational levels have been developed to cope with the heterogeneity problem. The aim is try to standardize the output and process of service delivering. At operational level, one useful means is to perform a set of standardized service codes and policies across the express delivery service companies. For instance, DHL requests each of its employees to follow the uniform instructions in his daily operations. DHL also integrates a special service quality control system into its global strategic planning. [...]