Service Marketing

Question 1

Services have 4 distinctive features

Answer 1

Intangibility
Heterogeneity
Inseparability
Perishability

Question 2

Intangibility

Answer 2

Many ways overcome intangibility
Ex: show big team of employees in ad to show that you have great service

Frame the service as a tangible path to follow

Things that are invisible or forgettable you want to remind people of
Ex: note and chocolate on bed of hotel room

Question 3

Heterogeneity

Answer 3

Variability within a particular service
Sometimes, you don’t want variability
When you order a soda at Wendy’s you want it to be the same every time
Standardization
Uniforms– perceived better service

Question 4

Inseparability

Answer 4

If consumer is uncooperative or unwilling to receive, service quality will be bad

Question 5

Perishability

Answer 5

Inability to inventory
Ex: hours as a hairdresser
Capacity for providing service
A problem when demand fluctuates

Question 6

Example of perishability

Answer 6

Ex: restaurant has 20 tables and is open for 5 hours
Scenario 1: 10 parties come to the restaurant each hour
Scenario 2: 60 parties come to the restaurant at 5 pm, empty otherwise

Shift demand
Ex: happy hour
Ex: increase acceptable waiting time by providing free wine
Idleness is distressing; we don’t like to be idle and wait

Question 7

Benevolent deception

Answer 7

White lie to help you feel good about the service
Ex: loading progress bar tells you it’s doing different stuff like “securing gateway” and “checking posts” to make you feel better

Question 8

Customer satisfaction

Answer 8

Common argument: “No company can last for long without satisfied customers”
Presumably, high satisfaction can help your brand become customers’ “first choice” within the category

Question 9

Managing satisfaction involves managing expectations

Answer 9

Ex: Domino’s manages expectations about speed by emphasizing how speedy other aspects of the process are
Promises that are easier to keep

Question 10

The availability heuristic

Answer 10

Rephrase questions you ask customers to make them think your business is awesome
Ex: “How can we make your amazing experience better?”
Ex: “List things we can improve” with too many lines so customer can’t think of that many and it seems like they aren’t doing much wrong

Question 11

“peak/end” rule

Answer 11

Evaluations tend to reflect an average of peak pleasure/pain and final level of pleasure/pain

Question 12

Service recovery paradox

Answer 12

Sometimes post-recovery satisfaction is greater than the satisfaction prior to the service failure
We want to delight people with how we recover