Service Marketing
1.0 OVERVIEW OF THE SERVICE INDUSTRY We have always had service industries, and indeed there are numerous biblical references to services as diverse as inn keeping, money lending and market trading. Over time, the service sector has grown in volume and in the importance attributed to it.
According to Baker J.M et al, The Marketing Book 5th Ed, (2003), early economists saw services as being totally unproductive, adding nothing of value to an economy. He quotes Adam Smith as having included the efforts of intermediaries, doctors, lawyers and the armed forces among those who were ‘unproductive of any value’ (Smith, 1977) and this remained the dominant attitude towards services until the latter part of the nineteenth century. Economists now recognize that tangible products may not exist at all without a series of services being performed in order to produce them and to make them available to consumers. So an agent distributing agricultural produce performs as valuable a task as the farmer. Without the provision of transport and intermediary services, agricultural products produced in areas of surplus would be of little value. Services in recent years have had a major impact on national economies and many service industries have facilitated improved productivity elsewhere in the manufacturing, transportation and agricultural sectors.
In this assignment we shall attempt to account for the account for the explosion and importance of the service industry in Zambia, its major characteristics and which of those service characteristics are likely to have an impact for each marketing mix element.
In order for us to effectively account for the explosion of the service industry in Zambia we will define a service, Lovelock and Wright (2001), define a service as an act or performance offered by one party to another. Although the process may be tied to a physical product, the performance is essentially intangible and does not normally result in ownership of any of
According to Baker J.M et al, The Marketing Book 5th Ed, (2003), early economists saw services as being totally unproductive, adding nothing of value to an economy. He quotes Adam Smith as having included the efforts of intermediaries, doctors, lawyers and the armed forces among those who were ‘unproductive of any value’ (Smith, 1977) and this remained the dominant attitude towards services until the latter part of the nineteenth century. Economists now recognize that tangible products may not exist at all without a series of services being performed in order to produce them and to make them available to consumers. So an agent distributing agricultural produce performs as valuable a task as the farmer. Without the provision of transport and intermediary services, agricultural products produced in areas of surplus would be of little value. Services in recent years have had a major impact on national economies and many service industries have facilitated improved productivity elsewhere in the manufacturing, transportation and agricultural sectors.
In this assignment we shall attempt to account for the account for the explosion and importance of the service industry in Zambia, its major characteristics and which of those service characteristics are likely to have an impact for each marketing mix element.
In order for us to effectively account for the explosion of the service industry in Zambia we will define a service, Lovelock and Wright (2001), define a service as an act or performance offered by one party to another. Although the process may be tied to a physical product, the performance is essentially intangible and does not normally result in ownership of any of
Bibliography: Baker J.M et al, (2003), The Marketing Book 5th Ed., Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford. Dibb S. et al., (2006), Marketing, Houghton Maffun, Boston. Hoang P., (2007), Business and Management, IBID Press, Victoria. Kotler P. & Armstrong G.,(2009), Principles of Marketing 13th Edn, Prentice Hall, New Jersey. Lovelock C. & Wright L.,(2001), Principles of Service Marketing and Management 2nd Ed., Prentice Hall, New Jersey Lovelock, C T. and Barrows, C. (1999) Introduction to Management in Hospitality, 6th edition. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Shea, L.J