606 The Marketing Book
tangible clues about the nature of the service
production process. Portfolio management ser-
vices are not only produced largely out of sight
of the consumer, it is also difficult to specify in
advance in a brochure what the service out-
comes will be.
Managing the marketing effort
Services marketing cannot sensibly be separated
from issues of services management. The
increasing dominance of the services sector has
fuelled much of the current debate about the role
of marketing within commercial organizations.
While epitaphs for the marketing department
are probably premature, there is considerable
debate about the extent to which marketing
should be fully integrated into every employee’s
job function, rather than left as a specialist
function in its own right.
Should a service organization actually
have a marketing department? The idea is
becoming increasingly popular that the
existence of a marketing department in an
organization may in fact be a barrier to the
development of a true customer-centred mar-
keting orientation. By placing all marketing
activity in a marketing department, non-mar-
keting staff may consider themselves to be
absolved of responsibility for the develop-
ment of customer relationships. In service
industries where production personnel are in
frequent contact with the consumers of their
service, a narrow definition of marketing
responsibility can be potentially very harmful.
On the other hand, a marketing department is
usually required in order to co-ordinate and
implement those functions that cannot sen-
sibly be delegated to operational personnel –
advertising, sales management and pricing
decisions, for example.
In marketing-oriented organizations, the
customer is at the centre of all of the organiza-
tion’s activities. The customer is not simply the
concern of the marketing department, but also
all of the production and administrative per-
sonnel whose actions may directly or indirectly
impinge upon the customers’ enjoyment of the
service. In a typical service organization, the
activities of a number of functional depart-
ments impinge on the service outcome received
by customers: Personnel plans can have a crucial bearing on
marketing plans. The selection, training,
motivation and control of staff cannot be
considered in isolation from marketing
objectives and strategies. Possible conflict
between the personnel and marketing
functions may arise where, for example,
marketing demands highly trained and
motivated front-line staff, but the personnel
function pursues a policy which places cost
reduction above all else.
Production managers may have a different
outlook compared to marketing managers. A
marketing manager may seek to respond as
closely as possible to customers’ needs, only
to find opposition from production managers
who argue that a service of the required
standard cannot be achieved. A marketing
manager of a railway operating company may
seek to segment markets with fares tailored to
meet the needs of small groups of customers,
only to encounter hostility from operations
managers who are responsible for actually
issuing and checking travel tickets on a
day-to-day basis, and who may have misgivings
about the confusion which finely segmented
fares might cause.
The actions of finance managers frequently
have direct or indirect impact on marketing
plans. Ultimately, finance managers assume
responsibility for the allocation of funds which
are needed to implement a marketing plan. At
a more operational level, finance managers’
actions in respect of the level of credit offered
to customers, or towards stockholdings where
these are an important element of the service
offering, can also significantly affect the quality
of service and the volume of customers that
the organization is able to serve.