Essay on Introduction to Services Marketing

Today, service marketing confronts numerous challenges because the competition between companies grows tighter, while customers grow more and more concerned with saving instead of spending. In such a situation, the elaboration of effective marketing strategies is essential for the successful marketing performance of companies operating in services sector of economy. However, the elaboration of the effective marketing strategy is possible only on the condition of the adequate understanding of fundamental principles of marketing and key issues relevant to the successful marketing performance. In this regard, marketing theories and psychology of customers are crucial for the successful marketing performance and implementation of the effective marketing strategy. Today, the variety of theories allow companies elaborating marketing strategies based on a solid theoretical ground. Among the variety of theories, it is possible to distinguish the role theory, the script theory, and the theatrical perspective theory. Each theory has its strengths and weaknesses but their analysis can help to reveal the essence of the customer behaviour and give insights toward the elaboration of effective marketing strategies.

First of all, it is important to place emphasis on the fact that the contemporary services marketing grows more and more dependent on the customer behaviour. Companies cannot ignore the customer behaviour, preferences and needs of customers. At the same time, companies cannot rely entirely on customers tastes and preferences. Instead, one of the primary concerns of any company is raising the demand on services the company supplies to the market. In such a situation, the creation of the demand is very important and virtually unachievable without the use of a solid theory to back up practical steps the company may use to reach its marketing goals and objectives. In fact, consumer behaviour is vulnerable to considerable changes and companies have to learn how to change the behaviour of consumers. To meet this goal, companies need to understand psychology of customers and to find out factors that may affect the consumer behaviour.

At this point, it is possible to refer to the role theory which uncovers possible factors that may affect the consumer behaviour. The role theory holds the premise that consumers have schemas about their roles which they learn from their environment and in the course of their personal development. In fact, the idea of the roles people perform in their life and expect from others to perform is the milestone of the role theory. At the same time, people form their roles and perception of their roles through their personal development. As a rule, people define roles for themselves and others based on social learning. The social learning is a crucial factor that defines the role consumers perform. In addition, social learning defines the consumer behaviour because norms, values, tastes and preferences consumers develop in the course of their personal development define their choices in the services marketing. In other words, people take decisions on the ground of their social experience. For instance, if people have a positive experience of using services of a company, they are unlikely to choose other companies, if new services are offered by the company they buy services from. As a result, people depend on their social learning and make choices on the ground of their experience of social learning. In such a situation, companies have to develop the full potential of social learning and to encourage people to learn the target social experience. For instance, a company may attract customers by high reliability of its services and long history of operations (Woolhandler, et al., 2003). As a result, customers just grow accustomed to using services of the company and they are unwilling to change the supplier of services.



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