Generally, financial services refer to services provided by the finance industry either public or private finance industry. Financial services defined as services that related to facilities such as saving accounts, checking accounts, leasing, loans and money transfer provided by banks, credit unions and finance companies.1
Flower of service is a visual framework for understanding the supplementary service elements that surround and add value to the core product. Flower of service is introduced by Christopher Lovelock that distinguishes between facilitating and enhancing supplementary services. These different supplementary services can be classified into eight petals. The core service is the reason why service provider exists in the market. However, in order to create value to customer, additional services are required. These services known as supplementary services. It is crucial for the service provider to realize that if the supplementary services are not sufficiently provided, the core benefit of the services cannot be consumed fully. According to the flower of service there are two kinds of supplementary services which are facilitating supplementary services and enhancing supplementary services
Facilitating supplementary services are either needed in service delivery or help in the use of core product (Lovelock et al, 2012). Basically, facilitating elements is a must have or compulsory for the service provider to provide in order to be able to deliver their services. The elements under facilitating supplementary services are information, order-taking, billing and payment (Lovelock et al, 2012). On the other hand, enhancing elements add extra value to the customer. Enhancing elements is differing from its counterparts as it is not compulsory for the service provider to provide. A firm needs to have enhancing elements to create value added to the customer. This is due to the fact that value added is important for a service provider firm to gain
References: Losee, R.M. (1997). A Discipline Independent Definition of Information. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 48 (3), 254- 269 Riley, J. (2012). ICT- What is Good Information?. Retrieved October 8, 2013 from http://www.tutor2u.net/business/ict/intro_information_qualities.htm Definition of Exception. (2013). Retrieved October 7, 2013 from http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/exception Murray, J Wirtz, J., Chew, P. & Lovelock, C. (2012). Essentials of services marketing. (2nd e.d.). FT Press. Oduori, F,N. (2010, July). New service development: Strategy and process in the hospitality sector in Kenya. Retrieved October 5, 2013, from http://www.edamba.eu/userfiles/file/Oduori%20EDAMBA%20INITIAL%20RESEARCH%20PROPOSAL.pdf Definition of financial services. Retrieved October 6, 2013 from http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/financial-services.html Supplementray services model Hemmington, N. (2007). From service to experience : Understanding and defining hospitality business. The Services Industry Journal, 27 (6) , 1-19. Mayer, C. (2011, April 15). How does a defect of the core and supplementary service influence customer satifaction. Retrieved October 5, 2013, from http://www.modul.ac.at/uploads/files/Theses/Bachelor/Thesis-2011-Mayer-Clara.pdf