Developing a Service Brand Using the Service Mix
DEVELOPING A SERVICE BRAND USING THE SERVICE MIX
-Kunle Dixon Odukoya
Unlike product brands, service brands are identifiable activities or benefits that one party can offer to another that is essentially intangible and doesn’t result in a change in ownership.
Thus service brands are those utilities that have as their core, the five attribute of services vis
• Intangibility: not existing in physical form
• Invisibility: cannot be seen
• Inseparability: cannot be separated from the provider
• Perishability: transitory, i.e. not likely to last
• Heterogeneity: consisting of many different things
These attributes that form the nature of services are the foundation around which certain essential offerings are built to deliver relevant values that become the intangible benefits taken to the market place.
Examples of service industry categories include Transportation, Government and Public utilities, Financial services, Professional services, Telecommunications, Consultancy services, Recreation and Hospitality services, Education, among others.
In these industries and their likes, services are rendered without it necessarily resulting in a change of ownership, largely because the utilities delivered are intangible, invisible and inseparable from the providers. And this makes it a little more difficult to differentiate among service offerings. Then, the question is ‘how do you successfully brand a service offering?’
Standing out as a service brand
To stand out as a service brand, given the intangibility and other peculiar status of service offerings, the benefits must be augmented and offered in a way that the beneficiaries or target market can perceive relevant unique added values which match their needs most closely and differentiate one service brand from another. To achieve this is to effectively position your services; and to be candid, this is no mean feat.
Positioning a service brand is doubly challenging as it has to do with
-Kunle Dixon Odukoya
Unlike product brands, service brands are identifiable activities or benefits that one party can offer to another that is essentially intangible and doesn’t result in a change in ownership.
Thus service brands are those utilities that have as their core, the five attribute of services vis
• Intangibility: not existing in physical form
• Invisibility: cannot be seen
• Inseparability: cannot be separated from the provider
• Perishability: transitory, i.e. not likely to last
• Heterogeneity: consisting of many different things
These attributes that form the nature of services are the foundation around which certain essential offerings are built to deliver relevant values that become the intangible benefits taken to the market place.
Examples of service industry categories include Transportation, Government and Public utilities, Financial services, Professional services, Telecommunications, Consultancy services, Recreation and Hospitality services, Education, among others.
In these industries and their likes, services are rendered without it necessarily resulting in a change of ownership, largely because the utilities delivered are intangible, invisible and inseparable from the providers. And this makes it a little more difficult to differentiate among service offerings. Then, the question is ‘how do you successfully brand a service offering?’
Standing out as a service brand
To stand out as a service brand, given the intangibility and other peculiar status of service offerings, the benefits must be augmented and offered in a way that the beneficiaries or target market can perceive relevant unique added values which match their needs most closely and differentiate one service brand from another. To achieve this is to effectively position your services; and to be candid, this is no mean feat.
Positioning a service brand is doubly challenging as it has to do with