Lecture 6: Communication in Services Flashcards
Define Communication Strategy
Communicates the firm’s positioning strategy to its target markets, including consumers, employees, stockholders, and suppliers for the purpose of achieving organisational objectives
Define Communication Mix
The array of communication tools available to marketers including advertising, personal selling, publicity, sales promotions and sponsorships.
What are the External Roles (market focused) of marketing communications ?
To Inform: what the service offering is, where & when, cost & the particular benefits
To Persuade: why buy; solution to customer needs/problem
To Remind: contact & retain patronage of existing customers; especially important in time-sensitive situations (perishability)
What are the Internal Roles of Marketing Communications?
Establish, maintain & nurture a desirable corporate culture (integration, shared values) Facilitate internal communication
Ensure efficient & satisfactory service delivery
Achieve productive working relationships
Build employee morale & loyalty
How may the Intangibility characteristic of service influence it’s communication?
Define: Cannot be seen, touched, tasted. The lack of
Explain: The marketing implications is higher perceived risk, greater reliance on word-of-mouth (eWOM). Thus, eWOM must be monitored and managed by marketers through communications
Example: If your restaurant received bad reviews on Facebook or Zomato, you need to respond and manage public perception of how you managed the situation through professional communication.
How may the Inseparability characteristic of service influence it’s communication?
Define: Difficult to separate the service from the person who performs the act and from the person who received the act
Explain:
Credence qualities of medical and legal services can lead to a lack of understanding of the value a customer has just finished receiving.
Personal Selling can help reduce perceived risk.
If customers are involved in the process of making their product, clear instructions should be given.
Example:
Service personnel would spend a significant amount of time listening to the customer’s problems before providing personalized advice on the service benefits, rather than ticking of a cookie-cutter checklist of benefits.
at SpudBar, customers are given instructional steps and a form to customize their salad to reduce wait time.
How may the Perishability characteristic of service influence it’s communication?
Define: Services cannot be owned stored, cannot be returned after purchase
Explain:
Necessary to balance capacity and demand
Use short-term advertising and other sales promotions
Example:
Generating demand through flash sales
Flour Market will announce on Instagram that it’s all SOLD OUT to help people avoid dissapointment from travelling all the way
What are the benefits of communication?
Communication can :
Promote people as the service
Use brand names, symbols to give visibility to intangible performances
Create memorable, tangible images
Gives sense of credibility, confidence (risk reduction), reassurance
Educate customers what to expect and how to use the service
What are the 3 concerns of communication?
- Managing expectations is important
- Communication must be integrated across the organisation
- All communication media must support service positioning
What is the Hierarchy of Effects Model. Explain and relate it to the Services Sector Hierarchy?
Hierarchy of Effect Model is the order of responses a consumer has to a marketing communication.
With many services there is little information available to stimulate cognition, so emotions are likely to be the dominant factor in influencing attitude development, particularly when consumer lacks experience with the service.
Buyers in the service sector commence with emotions, progress with actual purchase, then learn through actual experience
Feel → Do → Learn
(Affect) →(Behaviour) →(Cognition)
Implications: Communciations should stimulate feelings and emotions that are consistent with emotional expectations of target market.
Example: Service workers can stimulate customer feelings through the process of emotional contagion.
How can managers manage communication within the service encounter?
Non-verbal communication
Physical appearance
Desirable service worker behaviour
Physical evidence (servicescape)
Internal
External
Give examples of Non-verbal communication
Cues of smiling, light laughter, forward body lean, open body posture and frequent eye contact convey intimacy and non-
dominance commonly associated with friendliness and courtesy
Cues of stoic facial expressions, either staring or avoiding eye contact, backward lean of body, and close body posture are perceived as conveying dominance, unfriendliness and emotional distance
What is the importance of Physical appearance?
Uniforms:
- Aids customers to identify service workers
- Helps employees play their roles; thus facilitates consistency of performance
- Enhances group identification
Explain Desirable service worker behaviour and give examples
Intended to convey courtesy, professionalism, respect, enthusiasm and appreciation…
- Serving customers immediately
- Conversing with customers
- Smiling
- Maintaining eye contact
- Maintaining aligned posture
- Demonstrating proactive behaviours
- Placing change in the customer’s hand
- Saying “thank you”
Explain Physical evidence (servicescape)
Symbols and cues that serve to create expectations and influence perceptions of both customers and the firm’s employees
Similar to a tangible product’s packaging
Includes internal and external evidence.
Provide examples of Internal Physical evidence (or servicescape)
- Furniture and furnishings
- Facilities and equipment
- Grooming, uniforms and
appearance of staff
- Brochures, pamphlets, business stationery, invoices, business cards, reports
- Web pages
Provide examples of External Physical evidence (or servicescape)
Geographic location and surrounding environment,neighbours
Exterior design and appearance of building
Parking, landscape, signage
What is the role of the servicescape?
- Attention-creating: Use colour, sound, scent, uniforms to stand out
- Message-creating: Use symbolic cues to communicate with intended audience
- Effect-creating: Use colour, sound, design to create or heighten appetite for certain experiences
- Strategic: Used as a form of competitive differentiation
- Functional: Used to facilitate service delivery flow and facilitate customer-to-customer and customer-to-employee interactions
What is the SOR Model? Provide Definition and it’s components.
SOR Model Definition: a model developed by environmental psychologists to help explain the effects of the service environment of consumer behaviour, described environmental stimuli, emotional states and responses to those states.
Three components of stimulus-organism-response (SOR) model:
- A set of environmental stimuli
- An organism (employees and/or customers)
- A set of responses or outcomes
Define the components of the SOR Model
Stimuli: the various elements in the firm’s physical evidence
Organism: The recipients of the set of stimuli in the service encounter, includes employees and customers
Responses (outcomes): Consumer’ reaction or behaviour in response to stimuli
What are the components of Responses in the SOR Model?
Pleasure-displeasure
Arousal non-arousal:
Dominance- submissiveness
Approach/Avoidance
What is Bitner’s Servicescape Model?
Identifies the main dimensions of stimuli
- Ambient or Atmosphere conditions
- Space
- Signs, symbols and artifacts
People perceive them as a whole (perceived servicescape)
Key to effective design is how well each individual dimension fits together
Customer and employee responses can be categorized into cognitive, emotional and physiological responses, which lead to observable behavioral responses
Explain Atmosphere
Ambience/ Atmosphere includes Temperature, air quality, noise colour, music, odour, etc
- Fast tempo and high volume music
increase arousal - Warm colours such as orange, yellow & red increase arousal.
- Cool colours such as blue, green, violet are associated with feelings of calmness
- Lighting (dim vs bright)
- Congruity between scent and service
In the context of Atmosphere, explain Congruent vs Incongruent scents.
Congruity between scent and service
Congruent scents: Coffee shops such as Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks use scents of fresh coffee to attract customers
Incongruent Scents: ORANGE SMELL IN HOSPITALS The typical smells of hospital or dentist’s office makes some patients anxious and stressed, evoking intensely unpleasant feelings in patients with dental phobia. Behavioural response is to avoid the service facility.Lehrner et al. (2000) found that the ambient scent of orange in a dental waiting room led female patients to feel less anxious, more positive, and calmer.
