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CAREER IN SERVICE SECTOR
Sevice sector has been considered
as post-industrial development phenomenon. World War-II,
in fact, marked a miliestone in the explosive rise of
service industry. Services marketing has increased ijn
importance over the last decades with the advent of
competition. Service sector has become very wide in
its gamut touching all human activities like health,
education, welfare, communication, travel, finance,
banking, insurance, professional services, credit-rating,
IT services , etc.
Special Features of Services Marketing
Services have a number of unique characterstics
that make them so different from products and thus creat
chalenges and opprotunities to service marketers. Some
of the most commonly accepted characterstics of services
may be enumerated as following:
(i) Services are intangibles and cannot
be standardized or reproduced in the same form. They
are customercentric and unique.
(ii) Both suppliers of services and customers should
have rapport, willingly understand each other and co-operate
through meaningful dialogue and effective communication.
(iii) Sevices are domianted by human element and quality
counts. But quality cannot be homogenized. It will vary
with time, Place and customer to customer.
(iv) Inventories cannot be created. Services are immediately
consumed and marketing and operations are closely inter-linked.
The first best market strategy is
a satisfied customer. The second strategy is to maintain
quality, humane approach, appearances and countries
of the personnel and the available infrastructural facilities
for them. Thirdly service counts in terms of how it
is cost effective for the customer and for the service
provider each.
Growth of service Industry
Growth of service industry can be attributed to
the changing life style,changing world, changing industrial
econimics, changing population and changing technology.
There is a drastic change in the industrial environment
and inter-industry relationships because of two vital
components viz, service and information technology,
Service are contributing to the development of wide
spectrum of business avenues those offer broader employment
opportunities. Some of the examples of growing services
are: advertising and marketing research, consultancy,
accountancy, medicine, education, health care and health
clubs, beauty parlours, mantrimonial services, hotel,
restaurants tourism, wholesaling, ralating, e-commerce,
transport, telephone and tele-communication, broadcasting
and telecasting, banking, share and stock broking, postal
courier services, employment agencies, computer agencies,
computer programming and business process outstanding
(BPO). Information technology has made the world boundary
less thus widens the scope for services.
Further as economies advance, the
service industry grows steadily in scale, volume and
complexity. In the OECD countries, 60-70% of GDP value
is added by sevice sector, while the share of manufacturing
remains in the range of 30-40 percent. Thus, the development
of service industry has become an important econimic
indicator of maturity of an economy.
Challenges of Services Marketing
Services marketing should focus on service quality,
service delivery and service management in order to
fulfill the broad marketing objectives of increased
customers satisfication and adequate return to service
providers. With a view to ensuring service quality,
the model of five quality dimensions- reliability, assurance,tangibles,
empathy and responsiveness (RATER) should be followed
by the marketer. The quality has emerged as the key
compititive component of strategies of service ortanisation.
In order to outsmart competition in quality, marketters
should aim at learning what customers are looking for,
what are they evaluating how they perceive quality and
the way service quality is influenced. The service marketers
must have logical approach to undertake research to
find out customers expectation and work towards meeting
them. Service delivery should confirm to time, quantity
and quality specifications and expectations of the custmers.
For better service management service marketing mix
broadly comprising the type of service to be rendered,
its pricing, promotion and delivery should be designed
and followed for realising service marketing objectives.
With the geographical borders blurring,
deragulation of domestic markets and rapid advancement
in communication tachnologies, service providers are
facing stiff competition in the market place. According
to Gronross, service marketing requires not only external
marketing, but also internal and interactive marketing.
These three constitute services marketing triangle that
explains the concepts of three types of marketing. External
marketing (setting the promise) de-scribes the normal
work done by the company to prepare, fix price, distribute
and promote the services to customers. Internal marketing
(enabling the promise) describes the work done by the
company, to recruit, train and motivating employees
to serve customers satisfactorily. Interactive marketing
(delivering the promise) describes the employees skill
in serving the client. The client judges service quality
not only by its technical quality but also by its functional
quality. These three concepts must be implemented effectively
by the service organisations to succeed in the today's
fiercely competitive libelisation era.
The marketing manager of services
marketing should also consider the following key elements
while formulating marketing strategy for their business.
(i) Customer Focus: The customer is the king
and his requirements are to be satisfied without any
compromise.
(ii) Successful Differentiation:
Success in a competitive world demands a firm's
ability to create a diffferent product image in the
minds of the target customer.
(iii) Innovativeness and Management
Ability: Ultimatley the success of firm's marketing
strategy depends on the ability and expertise of its
management to create innovation and utilise the fruits
of innovation in services marketing.
(iv) Quality and Professionalism:
Services markets are prone to subjective factors
like image, reputation, quality of service and professionalalism
in management. Customers are enlightened and are highly
demanding in the present day competitive environment.
Service quality, delivery system and process, timeliness
in conformity with specivications are the prerequisite
of successful marketing strategy. Skills, training and
education of all members (human factors) at all levels
in the firm are of vital necessity for any marketing
strategy to succeed.
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