Key Concepts in Service Marketing: SERVQUAL and Consumer Behavior Drivers
The Service Marketing Triangle
The Service Marketing Triangle illustrates the three critical relationships necessary for successful service delivery:
Internal Marketing
The internal customers (employees) are the most critical part of the company. A service company cannot deliver value to its customers unless the internal customers are convinced and believe in the company. Companies should strive hard to inspire their employees to believe in the company’s vision and mission and act accordingly. Excellent companies like 3M, IBM, and Apple believe in the principle that internal customers are more important than external customers.
External Marketing
The company’s purpose should be to gain, retain, and grow its customer base. This can be done by delivering higher value to customers. The former CEO of GE, Jack Welch, rightly said that, “We cannot guarantee jobs to our employees; only our customers can.” External marketing is the interaction of the company with its external customers (potential and existing).
Interactive Marketing
Interactive marketing is the interaction between the employees of the company and the customers. Customers do not interact directly with the company but interact with the employees who represent the company in front of them. Employees help to build trust with the customers and become the human face of the company.
Definition of SERVQUAL
SERVQUAL is a service quality framework developed by Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry in 1988. It is designed to assess customer perceptions of service quality by identifying the gap between customer expectations before a service encounter and their perceptions of the actual service delivered. It is one of the most widely used tools in service marketing and management.
The Five Dimensions of SERVQUAL
Tangibles
Refers to the physical appearance of facilities, equipment, personnel, and communication materials.
- Example: A clean and well-organized bank lobby or neatly dressed employees.
Reliability
The ability to perform the promised service dependably and accurately.
- Example: Delivering services on time and maintaining accurate records.
Responsiveness
The willingness to help customers and provide prompt service.
- Example: Quick response to customer inquiries or complaints.
Assurance
The knowledge and courtesy of employees, and their ability to convey trust and confidence.
- Example: Competent staff explaining procedures clearly and politely.
Empathy
Providing caring and individualized attention to customers.
- Example: A service provider understanding a customer’s specific needs and adjusting the service accordingly.
SERVQUAL Conclusion
SERVQUAL is a powerful diagnostic tool for understanding customer service quality. By focusing on the gap between expected and perceived service, businesses can target specific areas for improvement and enhance customer satisfaction.
The Four Components of Service Delivery
There are four logically sequenced steps or areas that companies use to provide the best customer experience through their service delivery. Focusing on these elements can give a broader understanding of the scope of service delivery:
Service Culture
Service culture relates to the leadership principles, vision, mission, work habits, and values of a service provider company. Management controls these items, which set a basis for operations throughout the entire organization. Maintenance and development of these elements can develop the social processes of an organization and help serve the long-term success of the company.
Employee Engagement
Employee engagement focuses on those who work within an organization to provide service delivery. Human resources and other leadership supervisors can use their influence to shape employee attitudes, activities, and purposes that align with the service culture of the organization. This serves as the link between the service delivery design process and the excellence model that the customer experiences.
Service Quality
Service quality includes all strategies, performance management systems, and processes involved in service delivery. These items help define the management model that assists the client in reaching their end goal within the service delivery process. This element is the foundation of the service provider and client partnership.
Customer Service
Customer service focuses on providing the client with both the resources and knowledge they desire about their service delivery product. It includes items like account management, customer intelligence, and continuous improvement. This phase uses a continuous review and collaboration process to understand how customers perceive the organization’s service delivery and what can be done to make it better. This can work most effectively when the customer is part of the creation and delivery process.
Factors Influencing Buyer Behavior
Situational Factors
The situational factors influencing buying behavior include the influence of time pressure on product and brand choice, the atmosphere of the retail outlet, the occasion of purchase, etc.
Socio-Cultural Factors
Buyers or consumers do not make buying decisions, or decisions not to buy, in a vacuum.
Cultural Factors
Children acquire from their environment a set of beliefs, values, and customs that constitute culture. These beliefs, values, and customs go deeper and deeper as a person grows. Therefore, it is sometimes said that culture is learned as a part of social experience.
Reference Groups
There are certain groups that people look to for guidance in their behavior. These reference groups may guide the choice of a product but may not dictate the brand. Peer groups and peer pressure have generally been observed to play an important role in the purchase of credit cards, cell phones, etc.
Family
The family is another major influence on consumer behavior. Family consumption behavior to a large extent depends on the family life cycle. The stages in the family life cycle include bachelorhood, newly married, parenthood with growing or grown-up children, post-parenthood, and dissolution. Knowledge of these stages greatly helps in understanding the buying process. Often, family members play a significant role in the purchase of a particular service.
Psychological Factors
Perceptions
It is the process by which buyers select, organize, and interpret information into a meaningful impression in their mind. Perception is also selective, meaning only a small part is perceived out of the total information available. A buyer’s perception of a particular product greatly influences buying behavior.
Attitude
An attitude is a learned predisposition to respond in a consistently favorable or unfavorable manner with respect to a market offer (i.e., a brand, a particular shop or retail outlet, an advertisement, etc.). Attitude is a dispositional term indicating that attitudes manifest themselves in behavior only under certain conditions. Knowing a buyer’s attitude toward a product without knowing their personal goals is not likely to give a clear prediction of their behavior.
Motivation
Motivation is the driving force within individuals that compels them to action. This driving force is subconscious and the outcome of certain unfulfilled needs. Needs are basically of two types:
- First, the innate needs—those needs an individual is born with and are mainly physiological. They include all the factors required to sustain physical life (e.g., food, water, shelter, clothing, etc.).
- Secondly, the acquired needs—those which a person acquires as they grow, and these needs are mainly psychological (like love, fear, esteem, acceptance, etc.).
Personal Factors
Personality
Personality can be described as the psychological characteristics that determine how an individual will react to their environment. There are a number of dimensions (personality traits) against which an appreciation of an individual’s personality can be developed.
Lifestyle
Lifestyle, distinct from social class or personality, is a person’s pattern of living, generally expressed in their activities, interests, and opinions.
Demographic Factors
A buyer’s demographic factors like age, gender, education, occupation, etc., also influence purchase behavior. These factors are very significant in the study of buyer behavior.
Decision Making Roles in Service Purchase
For any purchase decision, several people might be involved, each playing different roles. Generally, and especially for services (both individual and organizational), these roles may be played by more than one person. For marketers, it is important to know who plays what role in the purchase decision to adapt the service format and promotional efforts to these key players.
In the purchase of any particular service, six distinct roles are played:
- Initiator: The person who has a specific need and proposes to buy a particular service.
- Influencer: The person or group of people who the decision maker refers to or who advises. These could be reference groups, both primary and secondary. It could even be a secondary reference group, like word-of-mouth or media, which can influence the decision maker.
- Gatekeepers: The person, organization, or promotional material which acts as a filter on the range of services that enter the decision choice set.
- Decider: The person who makes the buying decision, irrespective of whether they execute the purchase themselves or not. They may instruct others to execute. It has been observed that, typically in household, family, or individual-related services, one member of the family may dominate the purchase decision.
- Buyer: The person who makes the actual purchase or makes bookings for a service like travel, a hotel room, a hospital, or a diagnostic lab, etc.
- User: The person who actually uses or consumes the product. It can be other than the buyer. In a number of services, it has been observed that users are also the influencers.