Service Encounter and Its Impact on Experiential Value, Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction - Essay Example

Service Encounter Student’s Name Subject Professor University/Institution Location Date Introduction The reality of massive and complexity of human demands and preferences clearly proves embryonic nature of any business. What is new today could be archaic or obsolete in a few months with ever changing needs, and potential never thought of years back, is fully integrated now (Stenseng 2012). Thus, it necessitates future businesses to be more skilled to provide up to date services for the growing clientele. Accordingly, in order to emerge a complete discipline, service science ought to show how customers experience services with same depth of analysis as it studies the analytics of information and physical flow processes that deliver the service. The increasingly convoluted consumer behavior has provoked businesses to work towards experiential value rather than solely aiming to maximize profits meaning businesses are managing their relationship with customers to create benefits for both parties. In this regard, each service necessitates a distinguishing approach to ensure constructs such as customer satisfaction and service quality are adhered to (Oumlil & Willmams 2000). Any company that offers a service encounter that go well with consumers, cause an affirmative experiential value that leads to a lasting customer relationship. The businesses that fail to answer the changing needs are likely not going to survive. To be relevant in future, current trends must be well analyzed to be able to understand future behavior of consumers to enable organization to involve the right service encounters. This paper explores service encounter and it impact on experiential value, service quality and customer satisfaction. Service Encounter A theoretical relationship affirms that a consumer’s initial attitude influences buyers expectations towards a specific service encounter. This theory further argues that immediate reaction from the consumer after consumption, always results from a comparison of previous prospects and the conceptualized performance. This result to confirmation of positive expectation or negative or disconfirmation incase expectations fails to match performance. The epicenter of a service is the encounter involved between the provider and the consumer. At this juncture, customers’ emotions meet the economics in reality leading to judgment of the quality of service. Examine and managing customers’ satisfaction is an imperative ingredient for success of any service organization. Researchers have observed that service encounter plays a major function in determining a firm’s customer’s satisfaction (Bitner & Meuter 2000). Service encounter has been defined as dyadic relations between the client and the service giver. In other words, service provider is termed as role performances. This means that both the customer and service provider have responsibility to perform. Moreover, service encounter can be referred to as an episode of time during which a consumer directly interacts with a service. This encompasses every facet of a service organization such as personnel, facilities and any other observable elements that the customer may interact with (Baker et al 2002). Encounters can as well take place via internet, on phone through email or even face to face. According to Holbrook, 2006 service encounter engages human relations, but more importantly actual and intangible elements such as enviroment and staff. This means that the employees of the any organization should be trained to relate with customers in a manner that display effectivenes in services offered. Baker et al 2002 asserts that enviromental factors directly impact consumer senses causing a subjective judgement. Reserchers have proven that service encounters greately affects customers satisfaction (Kotler et al 2004; Wong & Tsai 2010; Schmitt 1999), intent to repurchase, consumer behavoir (Caru and Cova, 2003), and loyalty (Kotler et al 2004). Analysist urgue that negative service encounter results in extra costs arising from providing the service again, loss of repeat of customers, negative word of mouth, and compesation of customers due to wrong perfomance. Experiential studies also confirms the significance of service encounters in evaluation of service quality. Quality in most services is experienced at service delivery between consumer and the service provider. The significance of service encounters is evident tactical frameworks engaged to administer services such as Service Marketing Triangle (Bitner & Meuter 2000). The triangle summarizes the interelationship between employees, company and customers. Simply put, service encounter are moments of truth whereby customers build up an ineffaceable impression of a business. This posits that every encounter renders an opportunity for the business to sell itself, strengthen it provisions, and to persuade the customer. Yet, every encounter could be an opportunity to disappoint. Figure 1 below shows the flow in the three constituents of Customer, employees and company during a service encounter. Source: http://www.ida.liu.se/~steho/und/htdd01/9602205187.pdf Service quality Service quality can be defined as the general appraisal of a specific company by comparing it performance to the consumers’ expectations of the way in which businesses in that industry ought to perform. Many scholars have posited that service quality as a consumer’s personal analysis of experience (Marley et al 2004). Over the years, researches have been engaged to conceptualize service quality as per provider and consumer perception (Brandy & Cronin 2001). The 5 dimensions of service quality: tangibles, responsiveness, empathy, reliability and assurance must be achieved through service encounter to ensure confirmation of customers’ positive expectation. This positive confirmation enhances clients’ loyalty to the business (Brandy& Cronin 2001). Scholars affirm that these dimensions are closely related to the human interaction component of service delivery. Surveys in various industries have shown that this component is a requisite in determination of either satisfaction or dissatisfaction. A relationship marketing has found when a clients is satisfied by a contact person are likely to be satisfied with the overall service. Behavior of a particular individual handling the product or service creates a perception in customers’ mind of its ability to offer solution to their need. Consequently, any businesses that manage to achieve the five dimensions enjoy the competitive advantage of loyal, repeat and new customers in the marketplace. Experiential value Experience is a response to particular stimuli that emerges from observation or involvement in an event (Schmitt 1999). As such, experiences are created rather than being spontaneous. As Kotler et al, 2004 posits, experiences at individual level have the potential to influence human behavior and beliefs. Holbrook notes that an experience constitutes a better part of the consumption process. The value of an experience is defined as an extent to which it gives a solution or takes the consumer in the direction of consumption objectives. In other words experience value is the level of consumer value and attitudes in regard to a product that is generated for the duration of the consumption process. In order to enhance customer loyalty as well as profitability, generating affirmative experiential value ought to be a high priority to any business. This due to the fact that repeat consumption comes up from positive experiences (Wong & Tsai 2010). For that reasons, many companies are embarking on experiential marketing that relates to psychology and social behaviors of the consumer. This idea has inturn facilitates a conceptual structure of five tactical modules to manage expereinetial value. These includes sense, act, feel, relate and think. According to Schmitt, 1999 this conceptual framework deeply affects human life in regard to product and service consumption. The effect also differs from individual to individual. This because people are different both physically and cognitively. For that reason, individual knowledge as well as attitude towards service quality is distinct hence a a distinctive experiential value. Thus, only strategic service encounters can cause clients to purchase. This implies that a company should employ as much time in ensuring a positive service encounter as it does to the production of serices and products (Wong & Tsai 2010). Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty The elemental aim of overall quality movements entirely revolves around customer satisfaction (Kotler et al 2004). Satisfaction of a consumer is the fundamental concept in the literature of service marketing. Satisfaction is defined as an attitude or judgment evident from consumers after purchase and product or service interaction (Lovelock et al 2006). The increasingly evident demand and competition raises challenges to service marketers. Satisfaction revolves around customers’ attitude in regard to the service. As such, for any business that want customers loyalty and continual satisfaction, ought to analyze the customers satisfaction and dissatisfaction so as to maximize their provisions. Carrillat et al 2009 asserts that service quality directly or indirectly of affects attitude and purchase intention. Consumers are likely to return if the perceive the service given solved the intended problem. This is due to the fact that the service was good value for money (Boshoff & Gray 2004). Scholars’ argue that consumer satisfaction is conceptualized as a perception in regard to service performance. Loyalty and satisfaction are shown through repeat visits and recommendations to others. Recommendation However, service encounter is not necessarily the major or most effective form of marketing. The services marketing context identifies considerable marketing failures associated with service encounter. This has been seen in review of the two major types of service encounter failures: process and the outcome failures. The outcome aspect of a service encounter engrosses what the consumer gets from the service. This means that the service provider fails to fulfill needed service, or even perform it. The process failure aspect outlines how consumers receive the service or the manner in which the service is delivered. In other words the delivery of service is faulty or deficient in some manner. Consequently, service encounter influences customers’ judgment on satisfaction in a negative perspective, especially in regard to magnitude of failure (Smith et al 1999). Furthermore, prior research on the reaction of customers towards service encounters implies that, the higher the magnitude of service failure the poorer the customer satisfaction is. In view of that, the failure context shapes customers’ normative standard and relationship between them and the services. As such, customers will just buy the service or products on the basis that they have to have it, and not necessarily because it brings in the total solution to their needs. Indeed, the service encounter failure perspective acts as a reference point of customers’ judgment of satisfaction (Smith et al 1999). Conclusion Conclusively, the impact of service encounter on customer satisfaction, loyalty, purchase behavior, experiential value and service quality should be a high priority for any business. I It is of paramount importance to have a suitable and consistent scale to quantify the service encounter process and quality in any business setting. However, in the view of the above, service encounter alone is not the determining factor of business success, other viable marketing strategies should be well employed. By so doing, the complexity of customers demand is well handled. Consumer behaviors and preferences must also be well analyzed to ensure the right model of marketing is applied for specific segments of clientele. Reference Baker, J. P. (2002). The Influence of Multiple Store Enviroment Cues on Perceived Merchandise Value and Patronage Intentions. 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The Effects of Service Encounter and Experiential Value on Consumer Purchasing Behavior. Journal of Business and Economics Vol 7, No 2 , 59-68. Read More