598 The Marketing Book
marketing needs has provided great opportun-
ities for companies who have extended their
product range into services, which are basically
similar in their marketing needs if not in their
production methods. Many of the UK grocery
retailers have considered that the way people
open bank savings accounts is similar to the
way that they select groceries, so have extended
their marketing expertise by applying it to the
savings market.
Although a number of bases for classifying
services have been presented in isolation, ser-
vices are, in practice, like goods, classified by a
number of criteria simultaneously. There have
been a number of attempts to develop multi-
dimensional approaches for identifying clusters
of similar services (for example, see Solomon
and Gould (1991), who researched consumers’
perceptions of 16 different personal and house-
hold services).
The services marketing mix
The marketing mix is the set of tools available
to an organization to shape the nature of its
offer to customers. The mix is not based on any
theory, but on the need for marketing managers
to break down their decision making into a
number of identifiable and actionable headings.
Goods marketers are familiar with the ‘4Ps’ of
product, price, promotion and place. Early
analysis by Borden (1965) of marketing mix
elements was based on a study of manufactur-
ing industry at a time when the importance of
services to the economy was relatively unim-
portant. More recently, the 4Ps of the marketing
mix have been found to be too limited in their
application to services. Particular problems
which limit their usefulness to services are:
The intangible nature of services is overlooked
in most analyses of the mix – for example, the
product mix is frequently analysed in terms of
tangible design properties which may not be
relevant to a service. Similarly, physical
distribution management may not be an
important element of place mix decisions.
The promotion mix of the traditional 4Ps fails
to recognize the promotion of services which
takes place at the point of consumption by the
production personnel, unlike the situation with
most goods which are normally produced away
from the consumer and therefore the
producer has no direct involvement in
promotion to the final consumer. For a bank
clerk, hairdresser or singer, the manner in
which the service is produced is an essential
element of the total promotion of the service.
The price element overlooks the fact that
many services are produced by the public
sector without a price being charged to the
final consumer.The basic list of four ‘Ps’ also fails to recognize
a number of key factors which marketing
managers in the service sector use to design
their service output. Particular problems focus
on: the importance of people as an element of the
service product, both as producers and
co-consumers;
the over-simplification of the elements of
distribution which are of relevance to
intangible services;
definition of the concept of quality for
intangible services, and identification and
measurement of the mix elements that can be
managed in order to create a quality service.These weaknesses have resulted in a number of
attempts to redefine the marketing mix in a
manner which is more useful for the services
sector. While many have sought to refine the
marketing mix for general application (e.g.
Kent, 1986; Wind, 1986), the expansion by
Booms and Bitner (1981) provides a useful
framework for the services sector. It should be
stressed that these are not empirically proven
theories of services marketing, but different
authors’ interpretations of the decisions that
face services marketers in developing services