Page 380 - Marketing Management

DESIGNING AND MANAGING SERVICES | CHAPTER 13 357

4. Major service with accompanying minor goods and services—a major service, like air travel,
with additional services or supporting goods such as snacks and drinks. This offering requires
a capital-intensive good—an airplane—for its realization, but the primary item is a service.
5. Pure service—primarily an intangible service, such as babysitting, psychotherapy, or massage.

The range of service offerings makes it difficult to generalize without a few further distinctions.
• Services vary as to whether they are equipment based (automated car washes, vending ma-
chines) or people based (window washing, accounting services). People-based services vary by
whether unskilled, skilled, or professional workers provide them.
• Service companies can choose among different processes to deliver their service. Restaurants
offer cafeteria-style, fast-food, buffet, and candlelight service formats.
• Some services need the client’s presence. Brain surgery requires the client’s presence, a car
repair does not. If the client must be present, the service provider must be considerate of his or
her needs. Thus beauty salon operators will invest in décor, play background music, and
engage in light conversation with the client.
• Services may meet a personal need (personal services) or a business need (business services).
Service providers typically develop different marketing programs for these markets.
• Service providers differ in their objectives (profit or nonprofit) and ownership (private or
public). These two characteristics, when crossed, produce four quite different types of organi-
zations. The marketing programs of a private investor hospital will differ from those of a
private charity hospital or a Veterans Administration hospital. 6

Customers typically cannot judge the technical quality of some services even after they have
received them. Figure 13.1 shows various products and services according to difficulty of
7
evaluation. At the left are goods high in search qualities—that is, characteristics the buyer can
evaluate before purchase. In the middle are goods and services high in experience qualities—
characteristics the buyer can evaluate after purchase. At the right are goods and services high
in credence qualities—characteristics the buyer normally finds hard to evaluate even after
consumption. 8
Because services are generally high in experience and credence qualities, there is more risk in
their purchase, with several consequences. First, service consumers generally rely on word of
mouth rather than advertising. Second, they rely heavily on price, provider, and physical cues to
judge quality. Third, they are highly loyal to service providers who satisfy them. Fourth, because
switching costs are high, consumer inertia can make it challenging to entice business away from
a competitor.

|Fig. 13.1|
Continuum of
Evaluation for
Different Types of
Most goods Most services
Products
Source: Valarie A. Zeithaml, “How Consumer
Evaluation Processes Differ between Goods and
Easy to Difficult Services,” James H. Donnelly and William R. George,
Evaluate to Evaluate eds., Marketing of Services (Chicago: American
Clothing Jewelry Furniture Houses Automobiles Restaurant meals Vacation Haircuts Child care Television repair Legal services Root canal Auto repair Medical diagnosis Marketing Association, 1981). Reprinted with permis-
sion of the American Marketing Association.

High in Search High in Experience High in Credence
Qualities Qualities Qualities