596 The Marketing Book
Extent of inseparability
Some services can only be provided in the
presence of customers, whereas others require
them to do little more than initiate the service
process. In the first category, the production of
personal care services, almost by definition,
cannot be separated from their consumption.
The involvement of consumers in the produc-
tion process is often of an interactive nature,
like where clients of a hairdresser answer a
continuous series of questions about the emerg-
ing length and style of their hair. In such
circumstances, the quality of service production
processes can be just as important as their
outcomes. Other services are more able to
separate production from consumption; for
example, a listener to a radio station does not
need to interact with staff of the radio station.
Customer involvement in production processes
is generally lower where the service is carried
out on their possessions, rather than on their
mind or body directly. The transport of goods,
maintenance of a car or the running of a bank
account can generally be separated from the
customer, whose main task is to initiate the
service and to monitor performance of it.
The marketing of highly inseparable ser-
vices calls for great attention to the processes of
production. Advertising claims about high
standards of service will count for little if an
organization does not have in place quality
management procedures, which are able to
ensure consistently high levels of employee
performance at the point of consumption. With
separable services, there are greater opportun-
ities for ‘back-room’ quality control checks
before service delivery takes place.
The pattern of service delivery
Services differ in the ways that they are
typically purchased. At one extreme, some
services are purchased only when they are
needed as a series of one-off transactions. This
is typical of low value, undifferentiated ser-
vices, which may be bought on impulse or with
little conscious search activity (e.g. taxis and
snacks in caf ́es). It can also be true of spe-
cialized, high value services that are purchased
only as required (e.g. funeral services are
generally bought only when needed).
By contrast, other services can be identified
where it is impractical to supply the service
casually. This can occur where production
methods make it difficult to supply a service
only when it is needed (for example, it is
impractical to provide a telephone line to a
house only when it is needed – the line itself is
therefore supplied continuously) or where the
benefits of a service are required continuously
(e.g. insurance policies).
A continuous service supply pattern is
often associated with a relationship existing
between buyer and seller. A long-term relation-
ship with a supplier can be important to
customers in a number of situations: where
buyers face a novel purchase situation (here,
the existence of a trusted relationship can help
to reduce perceived risk); where the produc-
tion/consumption process takes place over a
long period of time (e.g. a programme of
medical treatment); and where the benefits will
be received only after a long period of time
(many financial services). Ongoing relation-
ships can also help to reduce transaction costs
(for both buyer and seller) of having to re-order
a service every time that it is needed (e.g. a
subscription to a car breakdown recovery serv-
ice avoids the need to find a garage each time
that help is required). Increasingly, services
organizations are seeking to move the pattern
of delivery to customers from one-off and
transactional to continuous and relational.Extent of people orientation
For some services, by far the most important
means by which consumers evaluate a service
is the quality of the front-line staff who serve
them. Service sectors as diverse as hairdressing,
accountancy and law can be described as
people-intensive. At the other extreme, many
services can be delivered with very little human