Why 4Ps Marketing Mix Is Not Appropriate for Service Marketing - Literature review Example

Why 4Ps Marketing Mix is not appropriate for service marketing Service marketing is a type of marketing which involves the selling of services meaning that it mostly deals with intangibilities. Services are marketed in order to get people to do business with a certain firm which is often in a specified location. For instance, in restaurant business, food is provided to customers (Ennew, Watkins, and Wright, 1995), and thus for example, some food joints may champion cleanliness to ensure that they are competitive. Fyall and Garrod (2005) say that when such a business is marketing itself, it ought to convince its customers that it is preferable to other restaurants and that its facility is worth the trip through introducing appropriate and effective services. Nevertheless, Ennew, Watkins, and Wright, (1995) states that the approach that the restaurant will embrace should include product-marketing fundamentals since it covers food, utensils, and other accessories while service approach brings into consideration how the consumers are served, the quality of food, tidiness of both the waiters and location/restaurant. Since services are intangible in nature, customers ought to be convinced that the service is something that has some benefit to them and that they need it and thus according to Bowie and Buttle (2004) services has several levels. The first level is intangible offering, which has little or no transfer of physical products to the consumer. The second level is that a service is one part of product service mix that is offered to consumers. Another level of services is that a service is provided in the main product offering. The final level is that all products or services or a combination of both involves provision of a service to customers. Services are increasingly contributing to the advancement in technology, growth in per capita income, deregulation, and increased growth in retailing as a result of an increase in propensity to consumer. Thus, the aim of this paper is to analyse the point why 4Ps Marketing Mix is not appropriate for service marketing. Unlike products, services have more direct and instant impact on the customers since the first impression of a place may determine whether the customers’ aims can be achieved. For example, a bank in a shabby location/building may make a consumer to doubt the security of money deposited. Thus marketing of services ought to be more deliberate and considered meaning that the competencies of a service provider and his resources need to be audited carefully. Auditing according to Bowie and Buttle (2004) is important because services require to be positioned appropriately for them to be bought by customers, and as opposed to products, services are more intractable. Thus, services need to be defined precisely and be designed in an appropriate service product mix. Christopher and Jochen (2011) states that promotion of products is less challenging as opposed to promotion of services due to intangible nature of the services. Christopher and Jochen continues in their analysis stating that another unique aspect of services is that one basic service can be provided in many different service business enterprises which are involved in provision of different levels of amenities and luxuries. Bowie and Buttle (2004) concurs qith Christopher and Jochen (2011) when they continue to say that services are also unique in that similar services can be delivered in different ways. Marketing mix used in marketing services conveys how the service is positioned in the market. Apart from being intangible, services have other unique features such as perishability, variability and presence of other consumers. Ennew, Watkins, and Wright (1995) say that during marketing of services, the marketing mix ought to differentiate the services offered from competition on attributes that are highly valued by the target customers. This implies that the marketers ought to make two vital decisions: choose the target market and create differential advantage. Therefore, service marketing requires that marketers be able to know where to compete and how to compete utilising theories and frameworks that are found in the literature. One of the models that are commonly used in formulating marketing strategies is the 4Ps but cannot be applied fully in services marketing because they cannot be able to adequately market the service alone. However, the 4Ps makes an important component in developing service marketing strategies and Brown, Fisk, and Bitner (1994) say that the 4Ps needs to be modified to be able to deliver the objectives of a firm. According to Brown, Fisk, and Bitner, (1994), the services marketing mix thus requires consideration of the service, promotion, price, place, people, physical evidence, service encounters and service recovery. Winston (1985) states that services marketing mix thus requires consideration of the promotion, price, place, people, physical evidence and the process. Thus apart from the 4 Ps marketing mix that is traditionally used in product marketing, three additional Ps (people, physical evidence and process) is required in the service marketing; bringing the service marketing mix to 7Ps. Christopher and Jochen (2011) say that given the intangible nature of many services, it is often difficult to promote or rather communicate them. This implies that marketers are involved in employment of strategies for overcoming consumer’s perceived intangibility of their offerings in order to produce better consumer understanding and alleviate their perceived risk. Once marketers overcome the problem of intangibility they are able to position their offerings to gain competitive advantage. Darryl and Jacque (2003) says that even though many authors allude to the fact that services are intangible some say that all products whether goods or services have both tangible and intangible elements. Darryl and Jacque continue to say some authors propose that services be associated with tangible cues or symbols as a means of overcoming the intangible elements in positioning and promotion. The cues proposed will be used in the firm’s brand names, brand marks and marketing communications to convey information about the offering’s attributes and/ or benefits. Thus marketers need to link intangible service elements to tangible symbols conveying trhe appropriate meanings (Darryl and Jacque, 2003). The sales persons often develop lists of customers who are satisfied to be used in reference selling. Unlike product promotion, in service promotion the word of mouth is critical to service marketing success. For example, a tailor may make a good dress, even though the dress is tangible, the actual process of making the dress (process) is service in nature, and a good dress markets itself through word of mouth. Henry (1994) says the choice of process is mainly dependent on the personal influence, which usually stimulates word of mouth communication. Henry (1994) and Bitner (1992) concludes by saying service marketers are therefore involved in persuading satisfied customers to inform other potential customers of their satisfaction. The marketers are also involved in development of materials that can be passed on to others. Advertisement campaign usually target opinion leaders according to Winston (1985) that later markets the idea through word of mouth. In addition, the service marketers are also involved in encouraging potential customers to talk to current customers, and the same approach according to Miller and Foust (2003) is used to target employees. Thus, promotion activities in service marketing differ from that of product marketing because it involves numerous stakeholders, and approaches. Miller and Foust (2003) comparing product marketing to service marketing they say price is an indicator of the quality that is perceived in both instances. The price ought to be congruent with both demand and supply, and some environmental factors that drive business within geo-population regions. The marketers should be able to make out price sensitive population in order to use it segment their target market for their services. Unlike product marketing according to Brown, Fisk, and Bitner (1994), the channels of distribution in service marketing are usually direct and production and consumption is often simultaneous. Moreover, with emerging technologies, customers often receive services without going to the service provider facilities meaning that place is not over emphasized in the service marketing as it is in product marketing. Generally, in the case of service marketing, channelling is not that important consideration because of emerging technologies. Brown et al., (1993) argues that customers can be satisfied via consumption of a physical utilization of the product but in the case of customer perception of service, encounters are important elements of customer satisfaction, perception of quality and long-term loyalty. This means that service encounter involves interaction between the firm’s employees and its customers. According to Bitner (1992) and Brown et al., (1993), service encounters entail management of customer and employee interaction; customer involvement in service encounters and the customer’s role in service production and delivery; and the role of tangibles and physical environment in the customer’s evaluation of encounters. Rao (2004) in his analysis shows that people (employees), in the service marketing mix, are important because it refers to employees recruiting, training, motivation, reward system and teamwork. Rao continues to say that one cannot separate the quality of service from the quality of service providers especially the employees of that service provider. Unlike product marketing, service marketing realizes that everyone in the firm has a customer and that internal customers must be sold on the service and be happy in their jobs before they can serve the final customer effectively. Thus, satisfied employees will lead to satisfied customers, and according to Brown et al., (1993) empowerment is highly relevant to internal marketing. Another important component in service marketing as stated by Bitner (1992) is process that refers to the flow of activities, standardization, and customization for customers with simple or complex process steps. In service marketing, attraction and retention of customers is vital unlike product marketing, which emphasizes just on attraction. Henry (1994) sees the importance of process and links process to relationship marketing since relationship marketing recognizes the value of current customers and the need to provide continuing services to existing customers so that they will remain loyal. For instance, some marketers focus on constructs such as trust, relationship, commitment, and how these constructs relate to customer satisfaction and loyalty, and this can be understood by the ways banks market their services. While other marketers such as Internet Service Providers focus on specific breakthroughs strategies for retaining customers such as building an effective recovery strategy for service failure situations or offering service guarantees to reduce risk and build loyalty (Brown et al., 1993). Henry (1994) defines physical evidence as facility design, employee dress and other tangible elements meaning that it comprises the environment that the service is provided. Unlike manufacturing, Brown et al., (1993) states that service industries do not apply rigorous process design standards before introduction of new services and service process are less controllable due to the human element. This can be understood by analysing a restaurant where the waiters cleanliness and tidiness defines the hygienic condition of the foods serviced, while in banking halls, the strategic positioning of tellers and customer care can easily determine the quality of service received. Nevertheless, other essentials components that make service marketing unique exist. These Employees of service organizations TheseThes essentials components for service marketing according to Henry (1994) include the service, service encounters and service recovery. The service as an element of service marketing mix is an intangible element. It involves an increased perceived risk in decision-making process. The quality of the service is dependent on the people, physical evidence and processes. The perception of the service is also affected by the brand name (Rao, 2004) and thus marketers of services often provide service trials wherever possible to define service encounters. Miller and Foust, (2003) say that services encounters acknowledge that any terrible ending often dominate the recollection of the experience of a person. In most cases, customers do not notice how long it takes the service to be delivered when they are engaged mentally and hence service marketers often take advantage of this to engage their customers mentally. For example, Virgin Atlantic employees usually encage their customers while processing their tickets making the entire experience enjoyable and memorable. Furthermore, more often than not customers desperately want to make sense out of unexpected events. The service encounters should therefore be studied from the customer’s point of view. According to Winston (1985), marketers should finish strongly, ensure they get the bad experience out of the way early, segment the pleasure, combine the pain and build commitment via choice and offer people rituals and stick to them. On the other hand, service recovery ensures that angry customers are assuaged through well-intentioned, apt, and prompt recovery (Wenderoth, 2009). This requires that all stakeholders at the firm have the motivation, skill and authority to make service recovery to be the main component of service operation. In order to attain high service standards the service delivery system need to be production oriented. This means that different departments have to come together to ensure the organisational is successful. According to Wenderoth (2009), numerous departments exist and these departments have to come together to ensure the goals and aims of the organisational are successful. Miller and Foust (2003) support this idea by stating that different departments such as accounts, management and marketing have to come together to deliberate the most appropriate actions towards the success of an organization. This means that it is appropriate for departments within an organization to work together to ensure for the good of the organization. Services marketing cannot rely wholly on the 4Ps on marketing of services. Even the 4Ps employed need to be modified to be able to address the intangibility of services. The intangibility of services makes their promotion and communication emphasized in 4 Ps model to be difficult. Service marketers are thus involved in overcoming the intangibility of services in order to position the services in way that can enable them have a competitive advantage. Word of mouth is critical to promotion of services unlike product marketing which employs mass marketing. Services marketing does not emphasize place since channel of distribution in service marketing are usually direct and production and consumption is often simultaneous. Service encounters are important elements of customer satisfaction, perception of quality and long term loyalty in service marketing unlike product marketing where satisfaction is based on the utilization of the product by the customer. Contrary to 4 Ps models where marketing is directed to people outside the firm, services marketing realize that everyone in the firm has a customer and that internal customers must be sold on the service and happy in their jobs before they can serve the final customer effectively. The 4 Ps marketing model does not emphasize relationship marketing like services marketing which recognizes the value of current customers and the need to provide continuing services to existing customers so that they will remain loyal. Unlike manufacturing, service industries do not apply rigorous process design standards before introduction of new services and service processes are less controllable due to the human element. Therefore we can conclude that 4 Ps marketing model cannot be successful be employed in services marketing. Reference Bitner, M. 1992. Servicescapes: The impact of physical surroundings on customers and employees. Journal of Marketing, 56, pp. 57–71. Bowie, D. and Buttle, F. 2004. 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