What Is Service Marketing? – Definition, History, And More

Definition Service Marketing

The service Marketing growth is not only within the traditional service industries such as entertainment, education, health, financial institutions, insurance, self-employed and business professionals. We are witnessing a redirection towards the Client in sectors such as automobiles, computers, and others to establish a differential advantage and generate additional income sources for their companies.

To become familiar with the quality of customer service, it is essential to know the basic concepts; therefore, we define:

• Service: “It is a means to deliver value to customers, facilitating the results that customers want to achieve without assuming specific costs or risks.”
• Client: “It is the person, company or organization that voluntarily acquires or buys products or services that they need or want for themselves, another person or organization; therefore, it is the main reason why products and services are created, produced, manufactured, and commercialized.”

A little history

“There’s only one time to start wowing your customers and away from low-quality service: NOW .” Brian Clegg

The conceptual and theoretical development that supports the management of service marketing began its heyday in the 1970s. At first, academics were concerned with presenting services compared to goods, and hence they are often defined in terms of what differentiates them. Thus, among the characteristics that we usually find to define services under the dominant logic of goods, the authors Kotler and Keller (2009) highlight:

• Intangibility: Absence of the physical quality of the goods.
• Heterogeneity: Greater difficulty in standardizing services compared to goods.
• Inseparability: Impossibility of separating consumption from production.
• Expiration: Relative impossibility of storing services or having an inventory.

Quality of service

In the first place, it is essential, before starting with the different models, to review the meanings that this term has acquired, according to Reeves and Bednar (1994, p.419), four essential perspectives on the concept of quality could be determined, coexisting today, such as:

1. Quality as excellence: According to the term, service organizations must achieve the best of results, in the absolute sense. However, due to its subjectivity, it isn’t easy to understand what considered excellent since it would be necessary to set clear guidelines to achieve that required level.
2. Quality as an adjustment to specifications: After the need to standardize and specify production standards, this new perspective was developed, from which quality is understood as a measure to achieve essential objectives, such as being able to evaluate the difference between quality obtained in different periods, to get a basis for comparison and determine the possible causes found under their difference, with the difficulty that this evaluation is from the point of view of the organization and not of the user or consumer.
3. Quality as a value: In this sense, organizations consider internal efficiency and external effectiveness. That is, they must analyze the costs of following quality criteria and, at the same time, satisfy the expectations of consumers or users, taking into account It takes into account the difficulty existing in evaluating these elements since they are dynamic, they vary over time. It is challenging to identify which characteristics are essential to each consumer.

Marketing Service

The marketing of services concerns those situations in which the service is the object of marketing. That is, the company is selling the service as the core of its offer to the market.

All businesses can take a service perspective. It complicated to sustain advantages based solely on the product, the price, or the image; In the long run, any of these advantages can achieved and overcome with a good investment. However, if a company takes a service perspective, its advantage is developing relationships with customers, which can last longer. Adopting this perspective does not imply diminishing the importance of the other three sources of benefits ( product, price, and image ), which must be developed and maintained in parallel. Still, it will be the perspective of services that determines the development of specific competencies. There are the fundamental reasons to focus the company towards the development of services.

Attributes that customers expect to find in services

Zeithaml, Parasuraman, and Berry, through the Marketing Science Institute of the USA, established the model of the ten key expectations to determine the attributes that the

Clients expect to find in the services, and that will determine their quality:

1. Reliability: Clients can believe and trust the company and the consistent quality of its services.
2. Responsiveness: Employees are always ready to provide service when the customer needs it.
3. Professionalism: Employees have the skills and knowledge necessary to correctly and precisely the services requested by clients.
4. Accessibility: Customers can quickly contact the company.
5. Courtesy: All company personnel treats customers with care, respect, and consideration. With an attitude and disposition based on friendship and collaboration.
6. Communication: The company maintains a flow of communication with its customers, open and sincere, in both directions.
7. Credibility: In their actions and conversations, all staff projects an image of trust, faith, and honesty.
8. Security: The company cares and ensures that customers kept out of all kinds of damages, risks, and doubts.
9. Knowledge and understanding of the customer: The company maintains mechanisms that allow it to know precisely the needs, desires, and expectations of customers, their changes and trends, and their problems and aspirations.
10. Tangible elements: The company takes care that the service’s physical evidence always projects a quality image.

 Importance:

• Provide the Client with sufficient, simplified, and easy-to-understand information.
• Honest and preventive information about possible problems.
• Letter of commitment of services.
• Tips to optimize consumption.