The marketing of services 597
involvement – a pay and display car park
involves minimal human input in the form of
checking tickets and keeping the car park
clean.
The management and marketing of peo-
ple-based services can be very different from
those based on equipment. While equipment
can generally be programmed to perform con-
sistently, personnel need to be carefully recrui-
ted, trained and monitored. The marketing of
people-intensive services cannot be sensibly
separated from issues of human resource man-
agement. For the marketer, people-based ser-
vices can usually allow greater customization
of services to meet individual customers’
needs (although this is changing with the
development of computer-based delivery
systems).
The significance of the service to
the purchaser
Some services are purchased frequently, are of
low value, are consumed very rapidly and are
likely to be purchased on impulse with very
little pre-purchase activity. Such services may
represent a very small proportion of the pur-
chaser’s total expenditure and correspond to
the goods marketer’s definition of fast moving
consumer goods (FMCGs). The casual purchase
of a lottery ticket would fit into this category. At
the other end of the scale, long-lasting services
may be purchased infrequently and, when they
are, the decision-making process takes longer
and involves more people. Life insurance and
package holidays fit into this category.
Just as the marketing of FMCGs differs
from that of consumer durables, so the market-
ing effort required to sell these two extreme
types of services will need to be adapted. For
more complex services, care must be taken to
identify the decision-making unit and to target
it with appropriate messages. Risk is more
likely to be perceived as a major issue with this
type of service and must be addressed in a
company’s promotional programme.
Marketable versus unmarketable
services
Finally, it should be remembered that many
services are still considered by some cultures to
be unmarketable. Many government services
are provided for the public benefit and no
attempt has been made to charge users of the
service. This can arise where it is impossible to
exclude individuals or groups of individuals
from benefiting from a service. For example, it
is not possible in practice for a local authority to
charge individuals for the use of local
footpaths.
A second major group of services which
many cultures do not consider to be marketable
are those commonly provided within house-
hold units, such as the bringing up of children,
cooking and cleaning. While many of these
services are now commonly marketed within
western societies (e.g. child minding services),
many societies – and segments within societies- would regard the internal provision of such
services as central to the functioning of family
units. Attempts by western companies to
launch family-based services in cultures with
strong family traditions may result in failure
because no market exists.
What was considered yesterday by a soci-
ety to be unmarketable may be an opportunity
for tomorrow. Firms who have been quick to
seize the opportunities presented have often
had to contend with an initially apathetic or
hostile public, as has happened in the UK with
the emerging market for privatized prison
services, public water supply and toll roads.
Multiple classifications
The great diversity of services have now been
classified in a way which focuses on their
marketing needs rather than their dominant
methods of production. It will be apparent that,
within any sector, there are likely to be major
sub-categories of services which have distinc-
tive marketing needs, and which may share a
lot with other sectors. This commonality of