In daily life, a consumer use
number of services. Some are chosen with lot of planning, some at random and
some as compulsion. Service consumption may vary as services may be more
or less tangible (or intangible). However, it can be categorized as three different
stages:
Stage I: Pre-purchase Stage
This is the stage where the customer is
making up his/her mind about a service purchase. It involves all
the groundwork and research before going to the service factory. This
stage is similar to consumer decision making process for goods where the
production is already completed. It comprises of the following:
1. Need Arousal
A person may feel need for a service
due to several factors. Some services are necessary, for example, basic
education and health. Service can fulfil personal needs like massage or spa.
Some services cater to aspirations, so we have coaching, tuitions and
specialized courses. Someone aspiring to become a cricketer will need the
services of a cricket coach. An aspiring model may need services of a
beautician, or may be a cosmetic surgeon!
Consumers use number of services as a
part of their routine, like banking, laundry and retail services. Some services
are needed to socialize. Restaurants and holidays are largely catering to such
needs. Need for experience is related to adventure trips and very popular among
young generation.
Sometimes consumers act on marketing
activities, i.e., promotions, offers and discounts. The need to avail service
is related to the attractiveness of the marketing activity.
2. Information Search
Once a need is recognized, customers
are motivated to search for services (providers) to satisfy the need. The
consumer may search on internet or may visit service provider to know more
about the need fulfilment process. The desired need may be fulfilled by number
of service options. Depending upon the need, when a customer search for the
information, all of them may not be consider all of them. Consumer will
search for only few select one for which they have positive feelings. These
options form the evoked set or consideration set.
For example, when a consumer wants to
go out to a restaurant for dinner, he/she will consider only few restaurants
and not all of them. Similarly, there are several movies running, but not all
are considered.
3. Evaluating Alternatives
After searching for more information
regarding few services options, few are evaluated for final decision. The
evaluation approaches may contains be different for different services as
services vary in terms of their attributes, perceived risk and expectations.
Service Attributes
Due to inseparability of services, it
is difficult to evaluate service before purchase. Hence following service
attributes provides an important distinction:
(a) Search Attributes: Service attributes are the tangible characteristics of the product that
a customer can evaluate before a purchase. Search attributes are applicable to
most products and the services where some amount of tangibility is present. In
such cases, customers can minimize the risk by physical inspection of the
service factory. For example, in restaurants and hotels, the customer can
relate the quality of food with the ambience.
(b) Experience Attributes: In such
services experiencing the service is a must to assess the attributes like ease
of use, reliability and customer service. The customers can rely on their own
past experience or recommendations from friends.
Service providers may provide the
experiences by putting up testimonials, reviews and videos on their website.
(c) Credence Attributes: Consumer may find it very difficult to evaluate some services even
after receiving them. They have to simply trust the skills of the service
provider. For example, it will be complex to understand quality of repair for a
car service.
Perceived Risk
Services that are highly intangible and
the performance are likely to be evaluated on experience or credence
attributes, customer perceives a high amount of risk entering the service.
The risks are;
- Functional: The service may not be performed to satisfaction
- Financial: The service may prove to be costly or may result in monetary loss.
- Temporal: The time given for the service may go waste or service may not fulfil time criteria.
- Physical: The service may cause in some health issues.
- Psychological: The fear of entering into an unknown service environment.
- Social: The brand image of the service provider.
- Sensory: Services effect of any of five senses.
Perceived Risk is a problem for both,
service providers as well as customers. Customers may go to reputed service
providers, use available information and reviews, examine the facility
physically or look for guarantees and warranties to minimize the risk.
Services providers may include the
practice of previews through websites or brochures, providing physical
inspection and trials, advertise the value, display credentials, and provide
evidences, informing about order status and service guarantees to hell the
customer minimize risk.
Service Expectations
Customer expectation of a service
outcome is formed during information search or due to past experiences or also
because of marketing efforts. Customer expects the different service quality
from different providers. It can change due to situations.
A customer may go with different expectations
to different restaurant. Consider this: A group of friends decided to go out
for dinner. There were different preferences of food amongst them and they
wanted quality of service. Thus, they decided to go to a multi-cuisine
restaurant, which is known for its service and ambiance. It was a Saturday and
there was no reservation. The desired level of expectations was the quality of
service and ambiance. They were also looking forward to restaurant’s happy
hours offer on select drinks. Hence they predicted that they might avail that
offer fruitfully if there is no rush. So within the circumstances, they were
ready to wait.
There expectations from the services
were defined as:
Desired Service: Usually consumers have an
expectation of desired level of service with a service provider. These
expectations are formed due to personal needs and beliefs about a service
provider. Group of friends desired to have a nice time with other and they also
wanted to enjoy food and drinks.
Adequate Service: This level
of service expectation is the customer’s alterations to service expectations
due to situational factors. Expecting some waiting due to weekend or because of
no prior reservations is what the customer is okay with even though it is not
desired.
Predicted Service: The
definition of service quality expectation that generate due to promises made by
service providers.
Zone of tolerance: The gap
between desired service and adequate service is known as zone of tolerance.
Since adequate service is defined by predicted level of service, zone of
tolerance is large if service provider promises reasonably. If service provider
increase level of predicted service expectations, zone of tolerance will be a
very less.
4. Purchase Decision
After the evaluation of alternatives,
the consumer is ready to avail the service. At this point the consumer may
decide:
- Whether or not to avail service – In the situations where no service provider is expected to provide adequate service, the consumer may postpone the service purchase.
- Which service provider – the decision is easy if there are less number of service providers, each one is significant different in terms of expectation and purchase is frequent.
- When to avail service – the customer may require deciding on time- price-quality trade off.
Stage II: Service Encounter Stage
The important point of discussion here
are:
- Moments of Truth
- High contact Vs Low Contact Services
- The Service-Production or Servuction System
Service encounter stage is the stage
where the customer moves on avail the service. To avail the service, customer
enters the service factory and interacts with the service providers. In this
very interaction customer carry its expectations from the service provider.
Service encounter is a period of time during which customer interacts directly
with a service provider.
Each such number of encounter are moment of truths. A
Swedish management consultant Richard Normann, relates the concept of moment of
truth to bullfighting. According to him, "Moment of Truth" is "
.....when the service provider and service customer confront one another in the
arena. At that moment they are very much on their own......It is the skill, the
motivation, and the tools employed by the firm's representative and the
expectations and behaviour of the client which together will create the service
delivery process."
Services also vary in terms to contact with the customer. There are services
that last few seconds (a phone call) to several numbers of years (enrolment in
a university for a four year course). High contact services are the
services have long committed customer-employee interactions. All the elements
of services work together in production of services and most of these services
are people processing services.
Low contact services are majorly
possession processing. There is little or no contact between customer and
provider. Most of the internet services are low contact services.
The Servuction system or service-
production system is the whole service process. It is made of
three subsystems, the Service Delivery System, Service Operating System
and Service Marketing System. The Service Delivery System or the service
factory is the part of the system where the customer contacts the provider.
It consists of the people, equipment, interior and exterior facility and
other customers. The service operating system or the technical core is the
backend operations of the service provider. The service marketing system is the
promotional activities of the company.
Stage III: Post Encounter Stage
After the service delivery customers
evaluate the service and compare it with their expectations. There
is a possibility of three outcomes:
- Services were lower than expectations – negative disconfirmation in case expectations were low and dissatisfaction to the extent of feeling of being cheated.
- Services were same as expectations – in case of low expectations the customers are contended with low quality and less price, whereas in case of high expectations same level of performance confirms brand loyalty
- Services were better than expectation – positive disconfirmation as the performance is more than what is expected. In case of low expectation customer feel valued for the money that they pay and in case of high expectation customers are delighted are they spread good word of mouth about the service firm.
Expectations
|
Performance
|
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Low
|
Same
|
High
|
|
Low
|
Negative Disconfirmation – Economy Services
|
Confirmation – Low quality
|
Positive Disconfirmation - Value for money
|
High
|
Dissatisfaction – Feels cheated
|
Confirmation – Brand Loyalty
|
Positive Disconfirmation – Customer Delight
|
Reference: Services Marketing: People, Technology, Strategy - Lovelock, Wirtz & Chatterjee & Service Marketing - Zeithmal, Bitner, Gremler & Pandit
