The Marketer's Handbook: Reassessing Marketing Techniques for Modern Business

SERVICES MARKETING

Application: All Marketing Activities in the Service Sector

The Concept

This concept suggests that the methods to create, run, communicate, sell, and grow a service business are different from those used to handle a product business. The major differences reported by marketers working in the field and by researchers who have studied it are as follows.

(i) Intangibility

Pure services are intangible. They have no physical presence and cannot be experienced or detected by the five senses. So it is not possible to taste, feel, see, hear, or smell them. As a result, they are communicated, sold, and bought in the customer’s imagination.

This lack of physical components affects marketing in several ways, the first being pre-purchase assessment. Human beings seem to need physical clues to help them assess benefits and compare value propositions. People find it hard to accept or engage with a concept until it is reality, presented to them in physical form. They need to see it and touch it to understand it. In fact, the comparison of physical elements (in a new car for example) often clinches the sale. So, potential customers of a service business need help if they are to understand and grasp the offer. When buying an intangible service, they will often seek the opinion of people they respect before purchase and will buy again only if their initial experience of the service ...