Starbucks Company is a multinational corporation found across the globe, providing high-quality coffee products to its customers worldwide. The organization is an American company whose capital is located in Seattle in Washington DC. The company is very successful and ranks as the best provider of coffee worldwide. This is attributed to how it invented the best experience for customers that transformed their thinking about coffee shops, making them want to use more coffee in their daily lives. The company brags about a very competitive advantage over the rest of the coffee providers across the world. Its brand is regarded as the best, with most coffee drinkers choosing to purchase from Starbucks compared to other providers. The service operations functions for Starbucks are numerous, ranging from the strategic location, quality management, proper management of inventory, and quality designs for services and goods. Service quality management is verifying that the core operations Continue reading
Services Marketing Tools
Services Marketing Mix – The 7 P’s of Services Marketing
Marketing mix is the key concept in the marketing task. It is the strategy used to perform marketing functions. Marketing mix is the planned package of elements which will support the organization in reaching its target markets and specific objectives. The common factor behind all the elements of marketing mix is that they are specific parameters which the marketing manager can exercise some control over, within the constraints of their firm’s resources. For example, the marketing manager can control the type of product to be developed, subject to the firm’s technology, as well as the places it is sold, subject to the firm’s distribution network. Ultimately, the aim of the marketing mix is to ensure that all P’s are focused on the target customers, serving their needs and creating value for them Elements of Services Marketing Mix The services marketing mix is also known as an extended marketing mix and Continue reading
Services Marketing Triangle
A service is any act or performance that one party can offer to another that is essentially intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything. Its production may or may not be tied to a physical product. Furthermore, service marketing can be defined as the marketing of activities and processes rather than objects. As services are mainly intangible products, they face a host of services marketing problems that are not always adequately solved by traditional goods-related marketing solutions. Services Marketing Triangle The services marketing triangle was created to handle the complexity that service marketers face when dealing with intangible products. The service marketing triangle highlights three key players, these are; Company: The management of a company, including full-time marketers and sales personnel. This is enabled through continuous development and internal marketing with their employees. Employees: This includes anyone that is working within close contact of the consumer. They Continue reading
Service Failure and Recovery
Service Failures Even with the best service organizations, failures can just happen — they may be due to the service not available when promised, it may be delivered late or too slowly (some times too fast??), the outcome may be incorrect or poorly executed, or employees may be rude or uncaring. All these types of service failures bring about negative experiences. If left unfixed they can result in customers leaving, telling others about the negative experiences or even challenging through consumer courts. Research has shown that resolving the problems effectively has a strong impact on the customer satisfaction, loyalty, and bottom-line performance. Customers who experience service failures, but are ultimately satisfied based on recovery efforts by the firm, will be more loyal. The Recovery Paradox It is suggested that customers who are dissatisfied, but experience a high level of excellent service recovery, may be more satisfied and more likely Continue reading
Service Recovery – Meaning, Strategies and Importance
Service recovery plays an important role in nowadays relationship marketing. Today, many organizations are facing challenges in the area of customer service and service delivery. It has been found that as the cost of attracting a new customer is more expensive than retaining an existing customer, therefore, organizations are striving to build long-term relationship with existing customers. This approach helps the organizations to keep their existing customers higher the loyalty level towards their businesses and also benefit the customers in enjoying a high level of customer service which is provided by the organizations. What is Service Recovery? Service failure happens all the time when organizations provide services to the customers. Although a zero defect product and well-trained service delivery can result in a negative service conflict because of the heterogeneity of customer’s outcome and process expectations. These unavoidable mistakes affect the goal of securing customer base. For customers, service failure Continue reading
SERVQUAL Model for Measuring Service Quality
Quality is the key to achieving customer satisfaction. Quality is a dynamic state associated with products, services, people and environments that meets or exceeds expectations. Quality is also rapidly embracing the nature or degree of impact an organization has of its stakeholders, environment and society. In the service industry, definitions of service quality tend to focus on meeting customers needs and requirements and how well the service delivered meets their expectations. In order to deliver and maintain service quality, an organization must first identify what it is that constitutes quality to those whom it serves. The key to ensuring good service quality is meeting or exceeding what customers expect from the service. It was clear to us that judgements of low and high quality service depend on how customers expect from the service. It was clear to us that judgments of high and low service quality depend on how customers Continue reading