Promoting Services & Educating Customers, + TB Chapter 7

Question 1

5 Ws of integrated service communications model

Answer 1

Who is our target audience?
What are our objectives?
How should this be communicated?
Where should this be communicated?
When should communication take place?

Question 2

3 broad target audiences

Answer 2

Prospects
Users
Employees

Question 3

Tactical objectives

Answer 3

Relate to shaping and managing consumer perceptions, beliefs, attitudes, and behaviour during the three stages of service consumption

Question 4

Strategic objectives

Answer 4

Building a service brand and positioning it and its service products against competition
Persuading target customers they are better
Attract and maintain customers

Question 5

AIDA model

Answer 5

Explains how consumers move from awareness to interest and desire, and finally to action
Awareness
Interest
Desire
Action

Question 6

Prospects

Answer 6

Since prospects are unknown in advance, traditional communications mix is needed to communicate to prospects

Question 7

Users

Answer 7

Cost-effective channels are available for reaching existing users

Question 8

Employees

Answer 8

Serve as a secondary audience for communication campaign through public media

Question 9

Important roles of service marketing communications

Answer 9

Promote tangible cues to communicate quality
Add value through communication content
Facilitate customer involvement in service production
Promote the contribution of service personnel and backstage operations
Stimulate and shift demand to match capacity

Question 10

Intangibility and the 4 problems it creates (GNAM)

Answer 10

Generality
Non-searchability
Abstractness
Mental impalpability

Question 11

Generality

Answer 11

Services that comprise a class of objects, persons, or events, making it difficult to distinguish from other services

Question 12

Non-searchability

Answer 12

Cannot be searched or inspected before purchase

Question 13

Abstractness

Answer 13

No one-to-one correspondence with physical objects

Question 14

Mental impalpability

Answer 14

Customers find it hard to grasp benefits of complex, multidimensional new offerings

Question 15

How to overcome intangibility problems

Answer 15

Use tangible cues
Use metaphors

Question 16

Services marketing communications mix (ASPPSC)

Answer 16

Advertising
Sales promotion
Personal communications
Publicity and public relations
Service delivery points
Corporate designs

Question 17

3 sources of messages received by target audience

Answer 17

Production channels (firm, employees, outlets)
Marketing channels (advertising, PR, promotions, internet)
Messages outside of the organization (WOM, blogs, media)

Question 18

Advertising

Answer 18

Build awareness, inform, persuade, and remind

Question 19

Direct marketing

Answer 19

On-demand technologies empower consumers to decide how and when they prefer to be reached allowing firms to build strong relationships (newsletters)

Question 20

Sales promotions

Answer 20

Should be specific to a time period, price, or customer group
Generate attention and put the firm at the top of mind

Question 21

Personal selling

Answer 21

Interpersonal encounters educate customers and promote preferences for brand or product (common in b2b)

Question 22

Public relations

Answer 22

Involves efforts to stimulate positive interest or association in an organization and its products through third parties
eg: teaching senior managers how to represent themselves at events

Question 23

Messages through service delivery channels

Answer 23

Service outlets (banners, poster, screens, etc)
Frontline employees
Self-service delivery points

Question 24

When should communications take place?

Answer 24

Service firms do not generally promote during heavy usage periods
Timing is closely matched to the perceptions and behaviour the firm wants to manage

Question 25

Objective-and-task method

Answer 25

Define the comms objs along the services marketing comms funnel
Determine tasks needed to achieve these objs
Estimate costs for the program

Question 26

Empirical-research method

Answer 26

Run a series of tests or field experiments with different communications budgets to determine the optimum level of communications spent

Question 27

Ethical issues in comms

Answer 27

Advertising, selling, and sales promotions all lend themselves to misuse
Comms often overpromise benefits and quality of service
Unwanted intrusion of aggressive marketing into people’s personal lives

Question 28

Corporate design in comms

Answer 28

Unified and distinctive visual appearance for all tangible elements, allows for a firm to stand out from competitive markets and be recognizable