The Marketing Book 5th Edition

Ticket

issuing

equipment

Reliability

Vehicle

Comfort

Speed

Speed/

Accuracy

Ticketing

Procedures

The core

service;

Transport

Front line

Personnel

The marketing of services 593

A further useful approach to understand-
ing the service–goods orientation of any partic-
ular product is provided by Shostack’s (1977)
‘molecular model’. This attempts to analyse the
elements of a service in terms of a molecular
model of interrelated services and goods com-
ponents. Thus, an airline offers an essentially
intangible service – transport. Yet the total
product offer includes tangible elements, such
as the airplane, as well as intangible elements,
such as the frequency of flights, their reliability

and the quality of in-flight services. When

many of these intangibles are broken down into

their component parts, they too include tan-

gible elements, so that in-flight service includes

tangible elements such as food and drink. The

principles of services marketing have most

relevance where the molecular structure is

weighted towards intangible elements. A hypo-

thetical application of the molecular model

approach to the analysis of the complex output

of a train service is shown in Figure 23.2.

Figure 23.2 An analysis of the output of a train service using Shostack’s ‘molecular model’. Intangible
elements of the service offer are represented by circles with broken lines, tangible elements by solid lines
Source: Shostack (1977).