“The service company can differentiate its service delivery in three ways: through people, physical environment and process”
(Kotler P, 2005).
Introduction:
In today’s competitive marketplace companies are competing strategically through service quality for better differentiation. In certain time of period the successful companies were using marketing mix model of four elements: Product, price, promotion and place. However later on, Booms and Bitner suggested the extension of the 4-Ps framework to include three additional factors: People, Physical evidence and process as marketing. The additional 3-Ps has been adopted in the service marketing literature, and also 7-Ps marketing mix model is more useful for services industries like Transport and Logistics.
People for most services are the most important and irreplaceable element of the marketing mix. “Successful companies focus on the services-dominant paradigm with investment in people, technology, human resource policies and compensation linked to service performance of employees. It’s very important because contact employees’ attitudes and behaviours significantly influence the quality of service.” (Johnston R, & Clark G, 2005). In other words they represent the “face and voice” of their organizations to customers. Personnel, who come into contact with customer, have to make positive first impression to achieve customer satisfaction. They are responsible for representation of the image of the service company for which they operate. It is important that employees’ attitudes and behaviours are suitable to the delivery of service quality. For example in Travel industries, service personnel must have knowledge of advertising. The advertising should have positive effects on contact personnel. It should provide tangible clues to the customers and make service offering well understood. It is also necessary for service companies to make sure that
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