The service sector is growing rapidly worldwide. Majority of developed and developing countries experience the development of many service industries, which participate significantly in the national economies. Show P. Kotler suggested that ”service is an activity or benefit that one party can offer to another that is essentially intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything. Its production may or may not be tied to a physical product”. There are four characteristics of service: Intangibility, Inseparability, Variability, and Perishability (Kotler and Keller, 2007).
In order to deliver the overall service offer to a target market, the marketing mix elements should be coherent, coordinated, integrated and consistent with each other to produce the synergistic effect of them. (Lovelock, 2001). The main objective of service marketers is to create and provide service that satisfies consumer needs and expectations, therefore achieving organizational goals. Consequently, marketers should work on understanding how people make their buying decisions and what determines their satisfaction during the service consumption stages: pre-purchase, service encounter, and post-encounter. To gain a competitive advantage in the global market, successful organization should adopt the marketing strategy (overall cost leadership / differentiation / focus) that is based on the marketing concept which holds that the key to achieving company’s organizational goals is being more effective than competitors in creating, delivering, and communicating superior customer value to target customers, and therefore ensuring profits through customer satisfaction. The positioning of services is even more important than the positioning of goods because services tend to be intangible, so differentiation becomes a key issue in making the service distinctive in the perception of the customer's mind. Positioning is concerned with the identification, development, and communication of the attributes which a service company intends to use to make its market offering recognizable and superior to the competing services. A customer-focused organization requires improving service quality as a critical element of differentiation. It's related to the long-term evaluation of the service performance and is crucial to customer satisfaction which is the difference between perception and expectation, moreover, customer satisfaction will become a key factor for business success in the future. In order to develop long-term relationships, it is necessary to build customer involvement, commitment, and trust. In service companies focused on building loyalty, customer service plays an important role in their marketing strategies and is an essential element in creating service quality and customer satisfaction. An organization which strategy focuses on delivering service excellence was more successful. This era is the era of customers and for the success and survival in this competitive market, organizations should emphasize on quality service and this should be integrated into the strategy (Chowdhary and Prakash, 2007). Author: Hend Hassan, lecturer at LIGS University References Chowdhary, Prakash, (2007) "Prioritizing service quality dimensions", Managing Service Quality: An International Journal, Vol. 17 Issue: 5, pp.493-509, https://doi.org/10.1108/09604520710817325 Kotler, P., and Keller (2007) A Framework for Marketing Management 3rd ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Lovelock, C.H., Patterson, P.G. and R.H. Walker, (2001). “Services Marketing: An Asia-Pacific Perspective”, 2nd edition, Prentice Hall, NSW. Read Online (Free) relies on page scans, which are not currently available to screen readers. To access this article, please contact JSTOR User Support . We'll provide a PDF copy for your screen reader. With a personal account, you can read up to 100 articles each month for free. Get StartedAlready have an account? Log in Monthly Plan
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journal article A Conceptual Model of Service Quality and Its Implications for Future ResearchJournal of Marketing Vol. 49, No. 4 (Autumn, 1985) , pp. 41-50 (10 pages) Published By: Sage Publications, Inc. https://doi.org/10.2307/1251430 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1251430
Read and download Log in through your school or library Alternate access options For independent researchers Read Online Read 100 articles/month free Subscribe to JPASS Unlimited reading + 10 downloads Purchase article $41.50 - Download now and later Abstract The attainment of quality in products and services has become a pivotal concern of the 1980s. While quality in tangible goods has been described and measured by marketers, quality in services is largely undefined and unresearched. The authors attempt to rectify this situation by reporting the insights obtained in an extensive exploratory investigation of quality in four service businesses and by developing a model of service quality. Propositions and recommendations to stimulate future research about service quality are offered. Journal Information The Journal of Marketing (JM) develops and disseminates knowledge about real-world marketing questions relevant to scholars, educators, managers, consumers, policy makers and other societal stakeholders. It is the premier outlet for substantive research in marketing. Since its founding in 1936, JM has played a significant role in shaping the content and boundaries of the marketing discipline? Publisher Information Sara Miller McCune founded SAGE Publishing in 1965 to support the dissemination of usable knowledge and educate a global community. SAGE is a leading international provider of innovative, high-quality content publishing more than 900 journals and over 800 new books each year, spanning a wide range of subject areas. A growing selection of library products includes archives, data, case studies and video. SAGE remains majority owned by our founder and after her lifetime will become owned by a charitable trust that secures the company’s continued independence. Principal offices are located in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC and Melbourne. www.sagepublishing.com Rights & Usage This item is part of a JSTOR
Collection. Why are services inseparable?Services are inseparable from their production because they are typically produced and consumed simultaneously. This is not true of physical products, which are often consumed long after the product has been manufactured, inventoried, distributed, and placed in a retail store.
What are the characteristics of services inseparability?Inseparability is the characteristic that a service has which renders it impossible to divorce the supply or production of the service from its consumption. Other key characteristics of services include perishability, intangibility and variability (or heterogeneity).
What is inseparability service marketing?Inseparability refers to the idea that it's not possible for brands to separate the production of a service from the consumption of that service. Customers commonly purchase and use a service at the same time. Inseparability is one of four characteristics that make something a service.
What are the implications of inseparability in service Marketing?Inseparability has a number of important marketing implications for services (Figure 2.4). First, whereas goods are generally first produced, then offered for sale and finally sold and consumed, inseparability causes this process to be modified for services.
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