The marketing of services 605
As real labour costs have increased and
service markets become more competitive,
many service organizations have sought to pass
on a greater part of the production process to
their customers in order to try and retain price
competitiveness. At first, customers’ expecta-
tions may hinder this process, but productivity
savings often result from one segment taking
on additional responsibilities in return for
lower prices. This then becomes the norm for
other follower segments. Examples where the
boundary has been redefined to include greater
production by the customer are supermarkets
who have replaced checkout operators with
customer-operated scanners and restaurants
which replace waiter service with a self-service
buffet.
While service production boundaries have
generally been pushed out to involve con-
sumers more fully in the production process,
some services organizations have identified
segments who are prepared to pay higher
prices in order to relieve themselves of parts of
their co-production responsibilities. Examples
include car repairers who collect and deliver
cars to the owner’s home, and fast food firms
who avoid the need for customers to come to
their outlet by offering a delivery service.
Despite handing over parts of the produc-
tion process to consumers, many services
remain complex, offering many opportunities
for mistakes to be made. In many service
sectors, giving too much judgement to staff
results in a level of variability which is incom-
patible with consistent brand development.
The existence of multiple choices in the service
offer can make training staff to become familiar
with all of the options very expensive. For these
reasons, service organizations often seek to
simplify their service offerings and to ‘de-skill’
many of the tasks performed by front-line
service staff. By offering a limited range of
services at a high standard of consistency, the
process follows the pattern of the early devel-
opment of factory production of goods. The
process has sometimes been described as the
‘industrialization’ of services.
Physical evidence
The intangible nature of a service means that
potential customers are unable to judge a
service before it is consumed, increasing the
risk inherent in a purchase decision. An impor-
tant element of marketing planning is therefore
to reduce this level of risk by offering tangible
evidence of the promised service delivery. This
evidence can take a number of forms. At its
simplest, a brochure can describe and give
pictures of important elements of the service
product – a holiday brochure gives pictorial
evidence of hotels and resorts for this purpose.
The appearance of staff can give evidence about
the nature of a service – a tidily dressed ticket
clerk for an airline gives some evidence that the
airline operation as a whole is run with care
and attention. Buildings are frequently used to
give evidence of service characteristics.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, UK
banks outbid each other to produce grand
buildings which signified stability and sub-
stance to potential investors, who had been
frightened by a history of banks disappearing
with their savings. Today, a clean, bright envi-
ronment used in a service outlet can help
reassure potential customers at the point where
they make a service purchase decision. For this
reason, fast food and photo processing outlets
often use red and yellow colour schemes to
convey an image of speedy service.
Tangibility is further provided by evidence
of service production methods. Some services
provide many opportunities for customers to
see the process of production; indeed, the
whole purpose of the service may be to see the
production process (e.g. a pop concert). Often,
this tangible evidence can be seen before a
decision to purchase a service is made, either
by direct observation of a service being per-
formed on somebody else (e.g. watching the
work of a builder) or indirectly through a
description of the service production process (a
role played by brochures which specify and
illustrate the service production process). On
the other hand, some services provide very few