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Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. 9 | 1

Chapter 9 – Promoting the Interactive Service Experience

Tangibilizing the service means making the service more concrete, thus enabling customers to understand it better.

Nonsearchability - intangibles cannot be searched or inspected before they are purchased. Physical attributes such as the appearance of a health club and type of equipment installed can be checked in advance, but the experience of working with a trainer can only be determined through extended personal involvement


Advertising the Service

Advertising objectives– Goals of attracting customers:

attention, interest, desire and action (AIDA)

– Good advertising campaign will: make personal selling easier, generate publicity, help manage PR, and pave the way for effective sales promotions



1.Provide tangible cues – Service is complex, difficult to understand, fuzzy mental picture of service; build preference for the brand; uncertainty

EX: use spokesperson; gold credit card; bank’s marble columns; Accenture-international consulting firm & Tiger Woods



Provide Tangible Cues

• Shouldice Hospital in Toronto specializes in hernia repair. It offers prospective patients an opportunity to view an online simulation and explains the hospital experience with hernia repair on its website. It helps patients prepare mentally for the experience and shows them what role they need to play in service delivery to ensure a successful surgery and satisfying experience



2. Capitalize of WOM communication – more credible than commercial sources because it comes from personal or impartial sourcesReference other customers: we have done work for ABC Corp; please call Mr. Kim, their manager, who oversaw the implementation of our project.Create exciting promotions that get people talking about the great service the firm provides.Develop referral incentive schemes: offer current customers free or discounted service in return for introducing new customers



Blogs – online WOMhttp://www.tripadvisor.com Allow users to post their own reviews or ask

questions that more experienced travelers may be able to answer

http://www.tripadvisor.com/



3. Make the Service UnderstoodEven if customers understand what a service is supposed to do, they may have trouble distinguishing one firm from another.

Solution: provide tangible clues related to service performance, highlight quality of facilities and equipment, and emphasize employee characteristics such as their qualifications, experience, commitment, and professionalism.



Make the Service Understood

FedEx ads show the awards it has received for being rated as the highest in customer satisfaction for air, ground, and international delivery from J.D. Power and Associates, widely known and respected for its customer satisfaction research in numerous industries



4. Establish Advertising ContinuityMcDonald’s - Golden ArchesCreate recognition, reinforce service image

MasterCard’s TV and print ads emphasize the tangible things that can be purchased with its credit card- complete with a listing of the price of each item. In each ad, all of the items purchased with the card lead to a “priceless” experience ( a clever and memorable reference to the concept of intangibility)



4. Advertise to EmployeesBoost moraleCommunicate the importance of personnel to the public as well as employees.

5. Promise what is possibleDo not overpromise and underdeliver; be appealing but realistic



Enhancing the vividness of services advertising:– A vividness strategy is an advertising

approach that uses concrete language, tangible objects, and dramatization techniques to tangibilize the intangible



Enhancing the vividness of services advertising:– Interactive imagery uses pictorial representations,

verbal associations, and letter accentuations that combine an organization's name and its service to establish a strong link between service name and performance in customer minds.

– Logo for Dominoes Pizza is a pizza box with domino markings (pictorial representations)

– Image-laden verbal associations: Meals-on-Wheels


Applications – Tangible Cues

1. Provide tangible cuesOvercome low familiarity; distinct mental picture


Applications – Promise What is Possible

2. Promise what is possibleMake Realistic PromisesOffer Service Guarantees

For those who arrive at the airport with only time enough to catch their flight, parking has been a nightmare until the development of GoldParker System, which guarantees a convenient parking place to its members


Applications – Promise What is Possible

Offer ChoicesCreate Tiered-Value Service Offerings

Eddie Bauer, a catalog retailer offers three different delivery options: 5 to 7 days via standard delivery; 3 to 4 days via express delivery; or 2 days via express plus delivery. The delivery rates are higher for faster service.


Manage Internal Marketing Communication

Create Effective Vertical CommunicationsCompany newsletters and magazines, emails, recognition programs; keep employees informed of everything that is being conveyed to customers through external marketing

Create Effective Horizontal CommunicationsCoordination between departments; open channels of communication between marketing, sales, and operations.

4362ch9 sp10

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