Services Marketing Chapter 4 Planning and Producing the Service Performance

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Chapter 4Planning

and Producingthe Service

Performance


Objectives

1. To examine the role of service performance as core or supplementary elements of the product

2. To demonstrate techniques that might be used to differentiate the service offering

3. To describe the key elements that come into play when customizing the service performance

4. To explain the techniques of scripting and blueprinting that are used to plan the service performance more precisely


The Service Performance

• To plan a service performance successfully, it is necessary to understand a performance’s characteristics: – A service performance is likely to be a multifaceted

phenomenon. – A service performance exists only during its actual

enactment. – A service performance occurs over time and

involves a sequence of events.


Supplementing theBasic Service Performance

• Products can be seen as comprised of a core and supplementary elements.

• The core is the basic need-satisfying ability of the product while the supplementary elements enhance the core.

• Supplementing a service performance sometimes involves increasing its complexity.


Differentiating theService Performance

• The augmented product that an organization develops today can easily become tomorrow’s expected product from the customer’s point of view. Hence, organizations should keep a vigilant eye on ways to develop the potential product.

• Organizations need to be sensitive to the costs of developing and implementing supplementary service elements versus the benefits provided.


Customizing theService Performance

• There are significant trade-offs between the service effectiveness of customizing each service to customer's individual desires and the service efficiency of producing a standard service for all customers.

• Customization requires a good understanding of each customer's needs or wants.


Customizing theService Performance (cont’d)

• Customization requires a greater level of worker skills and technological support.

• Customizing the service performance can greatly enhance a service experience and the perception of service quality.


Scripting the Service Performance

• A service script is a chronologically ordered representation of the steps that make up the service performance from the customer's point of view.


Scripting theService Performance (cont’d)


Blueprinting theService Performance

• The service blueprint is a graphic representation of the essential components of the service performance.– It identifies the customers, the service personnel,

the points of interaction between customers and workers, the contact points between workers and other workers, and the frontstage evidence and backstage processes or activities.


Blueprinting theService Performance (cont’d)

• The greater the complexity of the service, the greater the number of steps in its service blueprint.

• The greater the divergence of the service, the greater the amount of flexibility or variability involved in any particular step in the service blueprint.


Blueprinting theService Performance (cont’d)


The Internet andService Performances

• The Internet revolutionized the service industry with:– The introduction of new services– Online versions of existing services– Internet-based services to organizations whose

core product is not service

Business

Services Marketing Chapter 4 Planning and Producing the Service Performance