Services are now at the heart of everything that is marketed and customer and employee

loyalty are at the heart of all service breakthroughs (Heskett, 1990). We live in the post-

industrialization era, which rely more on the services and less on the industries. It contributes

higher than agriculture and manufacturing industry as a percentage of GDP in the world

(WorldBank, 2015). In middle and high-income countries share of the services industry

dominates even when agriculture and industrial outputs are combined. This paradigm shift in

economy in the past few decades explains consumer demand for services in various fields

that includes hotel and tourism, health care, food, retail, information technology,

telecommunications, entertainment, legal, consulting and many other areas. Services

marketing, the need for concepts evolved in the academic literature since 1977 (Shostack,

1977). This has led to the development of many dimensions and perspectives that focused on

intangible resources, relationships and value co-creation (Vargo & Lusch, 2004) ranging

from integrative view of products and services to pure service dominant view of marketing.

Broadly, Services can be classified into four categories as per Lovelock (1983). They are

either directed at people’s bodies or minds or tangible possessions or intangible assets. Unlike

products, nature of services is that production and consumption are simultaneous processes

for the organization and the consumer. Service dominant logic can offer the solutions through

intangible offering and can gain the competitive advantage through clear differentiation and

positioning strategies which might be less easy with the physical products alone. In fact, more

the dominance of services then more the complexity in terms of consistency,

communications, quality, ownership, supply-demand synchronization, pricing and

reproducibility (i.e., intangibility, heterogeneity, inseparability and perishability). This

complexity deems some additional variables (in addition to 4P’s: Product, Place, Promotion

and Price) to be incorporated in the marketing philosophy namely people, physical evidence

and process for services. All these elements along with traditional marketing mix elements

will be explored in detail for a telecommunication company “AirTel” which is serving

millions of customers everyday.

1

Bharti AirTel Limited, an Indian MNC that has its presence felt in 20 countries is ranked 5th

telecommunication service operator in the world (AirTel, 2014). Founded in 1995, the vision

of the brand “AirTel” is to become the most loved brand by 2015. The company is known for

pioneering its unique business model minutes factory to build its 1.85bn customer base

worldwide profitably laying the road for many of its competitors to follow its core

competency model. Although the company is an international one and offers multi-platform

services in telecom, enterprise and digital TV, the focus here will be on telecommunication

services in India. Telecommunication services can be regarded as merely service dominant

along the Services continuum scale (Shostack, 1977). We examine how AirTel conveys its

brand positioning and personality using Service branding model proposed by Berry (2000)

and analyse how the brand differentiates its services to its target audience throgh its

communications and operations activities. Various models like service blueprint,

SERVQUAL attributes and gaps model have been used appropriately in evaluating the

services and whereever necessary, recommendations for improving the brand positioning are

also suggested alongside the discussion with relevance to the academic literature.

Brand Positioning and Personality – AirTel:

Brand personality assigns consumers meaning in which they can relate and effectively

increase brand awareness and popularity. As described by Aaker (1996), brand personality

builds the emotional relationship between the consumer and the brand and is very important

in differentiating services (Zeithaml, 1981). The brand lends its appeal to the target audience

through recognition (Malhotra, 1988; Sirgy, 1982) and helps to build trust and loyalty

amongst them. As proposed by Berry (2000), the components and relationships of the service

brand are the presented brand, brand awareness, external brand communications, brand

meaning and customer experience as illustrated in the figure 1. Dotted lines show the

secondary impact and the solid lines shows the main impact on the dimensions shown in the

figure.

2

Figure 1. Berry’s (2000) Service branding model

The logo of the brand has been redesigned in 2010 (EconomicTimes, 2010) to appeal to the

target global younger consumers. The changed dark red background color is designed to

refresh the brand to assign younger, energetic associations and to signify the heritage on a

global level. It also indicate the core values of the brand like leadership, performance,

dynamism and enthusiasm as this color has got resemblance with global recognizable brands

like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s for example. The white color is the recognition for humility.

The curved letter “a” is called the wave and highlights warm dynamic and friendly appeal of

the brand repositioned to become the most lovable brand by 2015. The current tagline that the

brand employs is “The Smartphone Network” to transit from a traditional model to a

company dedicated for smartphone (Mankotia, 2014). AirTel’s brand name, logo, uniforms

that employees wear and Servicescape contribute to visual identity in brand differentiation

which has been acknowledged by several scholars (Aaker, 1996; Boyle, 1996; Kotler, 1973;

Onkvisit & Shaw, 1989).

Figure 2. AirTel brand current logo (Source: www.airtel.com )

3

Service companies have only cues such as service’s price and the physical appearance of the

facilities (Zeithmal, 1981) and it is similar to the package of the physical product. Price

comparison is easier than the physical evidence cues, which are quiet hard to be compared by

the customers. AirTel’s physical evidence is linked to the organisation’s vision and goals.

This so called Servicescape takes the role in the form of package, facilitator, socializer and

differentiator as mentioned by Bitner (1992). There are three kinds of servicescape namely

self-service, interpersonal and remote servicescape. Self-service affects only consumers who

use the service. Interpersonal servicescape affects both the consumers and employees

whereas a remote servicescape in which only the environment affects only the employees.

In the interpersonal servicescape aspect, AirTel’s physical complexity is more elaborate,

which facilitates the interaction between the employees and consumers to deliver its pre-paid,

post-paid, data and digital TV services under one roof. The warm and cool interior facility

design and lighting in the relationship center differentiates from the competitor’s physical

appearance. This is the only tangible aspect among the five dimensions of service quality

(i.e., SERVQUAL attributes – reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and tangibles)

as mentioned by Parasuraman (1993) to have a significant impact on the consumers’

perceptions of service quality (Bitner, 1992). It is also a proof of service delivery in relation

to the price which determines the level of customer satisfaction. The AirTel iconic ringtone

that was composed by music director A.R. Rahman is still being used by AirTel today in all

its customer relationship centers, advertisements and also during the call waiting time for any

query in the remote servicescape. This music is clearly a consistent socializing and

differentiating element for the brand to convey its eternal youth identity through

communicating the personality status.

Positioning services effectively involve more than marketing efforts such as the designing the

service blueprint and the process itself is the product (Heskett, 1990,p. 53). In the remote and

self-service servicescape, AirTel is supported by IBM support processes and has good

relationship with the company for integrating the customer facing process alongside all

platforms. Examples can include customer SIM card activation time reduction from days to

hours, customer self-service through USSD/SMS facility, web and interactive voice response

system, generation of unbilled information to the postpaid customers via SMS. Although

these support systems are invisible to the customer as seen in the service blueprint figure 3,

the company integrates information from the websites, social media, retail outlet, advertising

and promotion, billing to communicate the Service Quality Proposition (SQP) to the

4

customers in a seamless and flawless way (Srikapardhi, 2014). Websites today are very

useful for consumers to find the information they needed and also is a very powerful

judgmental tool for the Indian consumers to perceive the service quality in terms of

competitive edge, efficiency, fulfillment and reliability (Santos, 2003; Zeithaml, et al., 1996).

An examination of AirTel’s Servicescape (including e-servicescape like website) can be very

useful in understanding consumers’ perception formation that can be used to position itself

from the competition. This will be discussed with recommendations to improve the

positioning of the brand.

Figure 3. Service Blueprint – AirTel

AirTel uses various platforms like advertising in radio, television, social media, news stories

and signage consistently to provide tangible cues, capitalize on WOM, advertise to

employees and create advertising continuity to make the service understood (Mortimer,

2002). The brand creates pervasiveness by making impossible for customers to get the

advertisements unnoticed. AirTel’s ads scores reasonably well on the grounds of imagery and

music. The communications that have been grasped by the consumers about the company like

WOM and publicity are the most common forms of external brand communications (Berry,

2000; Hill & Gandhi, 1992). Advertising literature indicates that cognitive, emotion and

experience are key intermediate advertising effects. AirTel recognizes this fact and

incorporates intangibility and emotions in its external communications for the consumers to

discern its brand identity. Also, the high quality service promise which is its functional core

5

protects itself from against the unlikely consumer experiences as suggested by Aaker (2004).

External brand communications are moderately effective for AirTel because of the firm’s

limited efforts to manage the internal marketing communications to the employees to deliver

the promise as shown in the figure 4. An example is, facilitating internal channels of

coordination between front end executives in relationship centers, retailers who sell the

company products and back end support staff pays-off to reduce the gap between service

delivery and customer expectations.

Figure 4. Services Marketing triangle (Kotler, 1997)

Consumer Service Experience:

Service always comes with an experience (Carbone & Haeckel, 1994). Dr. Jai Menon (2007),

Director of IT and Innovation, AirTel, said “Our new strategy is all about delivering a truly

differentiated experience and having the flexibility to continually improve the customer

experience”. AirTel’s advanced capabilities of integration enables to transform core aspects

of customer experience. One of the examples is the ability to cut down the time required to

activate the accounts by 90% through maximum efficiency. AirTel’s consumer experience

encompasses every aspect of company’s offering such as customer care quality, advertising,

servicescape, service features (not limited to Value-added features and 4G), connectivity,

ease of use and reliability. The company also understands that secret to a good experience lies

in embedding the core or fundamental value proposition in its offerings and not in the

multiplicity of features as described by Meyer & Schwager (2007). As we have seen about

advertising and servicescape above, the following will be addressed in context to operations

or quality of services being offered by AirTel.

The five key dimensions that is used to assess the service company are reliability,

responsiveness, assurance, empathy and tangibles. It is a revised model by Parasuraman et al.,

6

(1993), which was based on a study on five service companies including a telecommunication

firm. The five dimensions will be explained as follows with respect to AirTel, India.

Tangibles: The Company uses modern equipment in the relationship centers including mobile

handsets and kiosks that gives consumers a good perception about the brand. This element is

very important in the emerging countries like India, where the consumers evaluate strongly

based on the amount of sophisticated technology elements that is employed. Especially, the

younger consumer segments has a positive affinity to the brand. Employee uniforms which

are modestly formal and neat looking (not many service providers other than Vodafone and

AirTel stresses so much importance on this), bill desks at touch points and overall visually

appealing interior servicescape actually associates the brand meaning in the minds of the

consumers. The company uses its campaign information on its floor walls in most of the

relationship centers.

Reliability: As noted through observation, Value added services (VAS) are the highest

contributor of revenues for telecommunication companies in India including AirTel. The

consumers’ service perception of VAS is more for Vodafone, and AirTel is trailing behind

which is due to fact of lack of personalization, reliability and comfort in use attributes (Gupta

& Nagpal, 2014). AirTel brand has been modestly reliable for more than a decade for its

network clarity and customer care services as promised. This dimension has been the most

important for the brand to communicate its consistency through keeping its promises,

services delivered appropriately with provision and resolving the consumer problems.

Consumers are also highly dependable on the company to resolve their problems. The

reliability and trust factor is also amplified by the brand ambassadors with names of few like

A.R. Rahman, cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar, Shah Rukh Khan from the company’s

advertising strategies.

Responsiveness: In telecommunication, responsiveness is communicated by the length of

time customers wait in the relationship centers or in the customer care call(s) for assistance,

promptness of answers to questions and the level of detailed attention to the problems and

understanding of the issue.

7

Assurance: AirTel has sustainable high performance culture that assures the best innovative

quality services available in the country at an affordable cost. Assurance is an important

factor in delivering services especially in telecommunication queries where customers expect

a level of technical expertise and courtesy from the customer care executives as well.

Assurance creates customers confidence and is likely to be affected when the issue is

repetitive in nature even after the query is thought to be solved by the customer care

executive. In the digital world today, where people want to stay connected by every second,

this makes customers perceive it as moderate risk if the communication fails and the feel of

uncertainty might erode the customers’ loyalty and trust of the brand.

Empathy: The brand deliver services with its individualised plans, for instance, “myPlan” in

which customers can choose their proposition of talk time hours, mobile data, text messaging

limit, STD calls with in the country and roaming plans. Understanding that India is a

collectivist culture, the brand offers “One family one plan” to signify that this brand

recognises the culture and family values and provides to fulfil the gap through offering

uniquely in its first place. The Company empathizes with people in its promotion through

emotional campaign like “Barriers break when people talk”. This makes the customers feel

themselves unique and special.

8

Assessment of Organisation’s activities and recommendations to improve

AirTel’s brand positioning:

Service Quality:

AirTel is ranked 2nd amongst the most valuable Indian brands in 2014 and 1st in the

telecommunication sector. Although, this is a credible result for an organisation that is

operating for almost two decades, it is really essential for the brand to build its positioning for

a sustainable competitive advantage and attain the personality status of the most loved brand

by 2015. Based on observation and secondary data, recommendations will be made wherever

necessary to improve its service quality to satisfy customers or exceed expectations. As

illustrated by Parasuraman et al., (1985), SERVQUAL model is commonly used to assess the

service quality. Figure 5 illustrates the SERVQUAL gaps model of Service quality.

Figure 5. “SERVQUAL” Gaps model of Service quality (Parasuraman, et al., 1985)

9

Customer gap is the difference between perceptions and expectations of the customer

(Parasuraman, 1993). Based on the observation, expectations from customers are to have a

consistent pricing, clear communication messages and promises being delivered to them in a

consistent manner. Price is an easy way to compare alternative services (Aaker, 1996) and on

pricing, the company has changed its strategies from time to time which affect the service

reliability dimension. For example, AirTel’s VoIP- voice over internet protocol service plan

which was introduced by the company (Krishnamurthy & Abrar, 2014) to avoid the internet

services cannibalizing the voice services revenue made customers dissatisfied with this move

even though none of the competitors introduced a plan to provoke customers by charging

consumers differently for using Skype or similar ones. Although this has been rolled back

within few days, the perceived cause of events will influence the perceptions of customers’

satisfaction as well. Another example which may disrupt consumers’ perception is “AirTel’s

4G Plans are lower than 3G plans” (Mahajan, 2014) which might seem over delivering the

promises but infact aggragating desired service levels by the current 3G consumers. It is the

customers’ perceptions of service that determines the true brand values.

Apart from the customer gap, there are four other gaps that might exist within the service

organisation and hence referred to as provider gaps. They are knowledge gap, service design

and standards gap, service performance gap and communications gap.

Gap 1: Knowledge gap

Employees’ lack of first-hand information about the services offered was observed during the

conversation with the customer care executives on a query regarding automatic balance

deduction from the virtual account. This might be due to the improper knowledge of

employees who delivers the services or there is limited empowerment of the frontline

personnel. This is also true in queries related to Value Added Services (VAS) queries where

frontline executives facing customers directly can’t resolve the issue due to the insufficient

authority provided to them but know a great deal about customers. The gap widens due to

lack of upward communication to the management who can address it. Since Consumers

experiences are collected at “touch points” (Meyer & Schwager, 2007), each touch point

gives opportunities or challenges to the company to vary the expected and actual service

levels to delight the customer or anything less. This understanding of customer experience

requires capturing rich information across all customer interactions with the service provider

and even other service providers that support the overall customer activity (Teixeira, et al.,

10

2012) and also must know to act when customers expereince a service failure. Technology

must be used to build powerful relationship management and tailor the services uniquely to

the individuals (Bitner, et al., 2010)

Gap 2: Service design and standards gap

Service encounters are much more than the point of staff-customer interactions, sometimes

referred to as “moment of truth” or simply “customer contact” (Chase, 1981) and provide an

opportunity for emotional engagement (Berry & Carbone, 2007). It has been observed during

a tele conversation with the customer care executives that a customer who is waiting for a

query to be resolved, is then enquired and diverted to the concerned technical team for

resolution which is in total makes the wait time hectic for the customers. A key

recommendation to address this issue is the adequate training of frontline customer contact

staff with basic technical skills to use the technology as a customer-driven standard so that a

significant amount of calls can be dealt by a single executive contact point for the customers.

This facilitates measurement of service operations through customer defined service

standards rather than company driven service standards and incorporating as a measure of

hard standards in service blueprinting. This is expected to make changes in the overall

turnaround time by the renovation in the service process design for the average call wait time

and in turn reduce the service design and standards gap. In examining the company’s website,

having an online chat seems to be a viable option that can be incorporated in the service

blueprint to depict the possibility of serving the customer more effectively with the use of

technology (Bitner, et al., 2010). Customers must be communicated how the progress might

look like and the company must set goals and criteria to be examined at times.

Gap 3: Service performance gap

A good example of service performance gap is an issue (example) of delivering a promised

service which is “100% bill guarantee”. It has been noted that a chunk of consumers

complaining to the company for exaggerating the bill statements inaccurately in the post-paid

usage and a few complaints related to the data services charges in the pre-paid service

delivery. This underperformance of not living up to the promises might backfire what have

been regularly promised to consumers through various channels of communications by the

brand. AirTel needs to manage the customer expectation (CEM – Customer Experience

Management) in delivering the services of this kind. It has been noted from many instances

(Mouthshut, 2015) that the area that impacts most on the customer satisfaction is spontaneity

11

and coping of employee to the consumers’ problems in relevance to the service performance

gap.

Gap 4: Communications gap

Communications gap exist in terms of poor process depiction to customers on process and

physical evidence of touch points, inconsistency in updating information across relationship

centers and in brand communications. Process depiction to the consumers via Service

blueprint is missing in the relationship centers (physical evidence). For example, photographs

or videos can be used to depict the process to the consumers who can understand how to get

the query solved in a relatively easier way at all relationship centers. Inconsistency in

regularly updating the information (i.e., tangibles) between the relationship centers was noted

demographically. Although this might be due to the fact that customers don’t expect much

from the relationship centers in the semi-urban areas, this might create a mixed perception of

the brand in the consumers’ minds. Servicescape although more functional in its role, AirTel

needs to have it incorporated in the facility design uniquely so that customers have the clear

line of recognition of the brand from the competition (for example: Vodafone’s logo – red

color background is also similar to AirTel, which is the second largest network operator in

India and can disrupt the consumer perceptions in the brand recall and recognition).

Renovating the evidence combines with clear presentation of the brand with an element of

youth fashion will send clear external communication messages to the consumers as a good

advertising strategy.

Simply to put, Services are the way forward for companies to clearly differentiate their

offerings in the marketplace because of its intangibility, heterogeneity, perishability and

inseparability. AirTel conveys its brand personality as mentioned by Berry (2000) through

the company’s presented brand, external brand communications, customer experience with

the company, brand awareness and brand meaning. On Brand expression, the company is

recommended to change its logo with a mixture of black and red instead of just red

bacground to reduce the imitation cue of rival brand Vodafone and as a measure to increase

its uniqueness. Brand’s advertising strategy of Airtel is a plausible one and it communicates

the messages promptly to the consumers in all possible medium mainly via WOM because of

its good service quality and loyal customer base. Logo, name and advertising are just the

visible tip of the brand iceberg to signify “what the brand stands for”. For any brand to

communicate “who we are” it must keep its promises by creating customer experiential

12

values such as service quality, customer relations, service recovery strategies, personnel and

other operations. It is the later that creates brand loyalty and confidence. As the evaluation of

consumer experience depends on the customer’s expectations and his/her interaction with the

company’s offering in correspondence to the different moments of touch-points

(Mouncey,2003), the brand should try to reduce the customer gap by focusing on its

servicescapes for instance, on virtual servicescape, creation of interactive websites that are to

the customers are very important in appealing to customers with rich content (eg: videos) as

suggested by Luís, et al., (2013) to communicate the market leadership in its service

offerings.

Customer gaps can be addressed through consistency across all brand touch points like

advertising, employee partners, social media, review sites, website, signage and WOM.

Provider gaps can be reduced by interpreting customers’ expecations and customer activity

through adequate market research, service operations by customer defined standards and

appropriate physcial evidence including virutal servicescape i.e., 24 hour online chat via

website, focus on customer relationship management through employee-technology job fit

and manage the service expectations, service recovery strategies and communication

strategies like upward communication and proper customer education through process

depiction via service blueprinting in the relationship centers.

A study suggests that Indian consumers are willing to spend more for good services

(BestmediaInfo, 2014). This adds an argument for the brand to employ the recommendations

to attain the desired brand personality status “to become the most loved brand by 2015”. As

the saying goes “There is no business without emotions” and customer experience must be

created in a way that will mutually benefit the company and the customer through an eternal

relationship.

13

References:

(2014), M., 2014. HDFC Bank Named India's Most Valuable Brand in BrandZ™ Ranking, as Service

Sector Brands Dominate - See more at: http://www.millwardbrown.com/global-

navigation/news/press-releases/full-release/2014/08/19/hdfc-bank-named-india's-most-valuable-

brand-in-bran. [Online]

Available at: http://www.millwardbrown.com/global-navigation/news/press-releases/full-

release/2014/08/19/hdfc-bank-named-india's-most-valuable-brand-in-brandz-ranking-as-service-

sector-brands-dominate [Accessed 07 March 2015].

(2015), M., 2015. Airtel Mobile Operator Reviews. [Online]

Available at: http://www.mouthshut.com/airtel [Accessed 09 March 2015].

Aaker, D., 1996. Measuring brand equity across products and markets. California management review, 38(3), pp. 102-120.

Aaker, D. A., 2004. Leveraging the corporate brand. California management review , 46(3), pp. 6-18.

Airtel, 2014. Management Presentation Bharti Airtel limited May 2014. [Online]

Available at: http://www.airtel.in/wps/wcm/connect/7cb62734-9f86-4265-9da8-

6dccd8f37be1/Bharti-Management-Presentation_vfc-

May+2014.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CONVERT_TO=url&CACHEID=7cb62734-9f86-4265-9da8-

6dccd8f37be1 [Accessed 22 February 2015].

Alamro, Ahmed & Rowley, J., 2011. Antecedents of brand preference for mobile telecommunications services. Journal of Product & Brand Management, 20(6), pp. 475-486.

Berry, L. L., 2000. Cultivating service brand equity. Journal of the academy of Marketing Science,

28(1), pp. 128-137.

Berry, L. L. & Carbone, L. P., 2007. Build loyalty through experience management. Quality progress, 40(9), pp. 26-32.

BestmediaInfo, 2014. Indian customer willing to pay premium for ‘excellent service’: AmEx study.

[Online]

Available at: http://www.bestmediainfo.com/2014/10/indian-customer-willing-to-pay-premium-for-

excellent-service-amex-study/ [Accessed 08 March 2015].

Bitner, M. J., 1992. Servicescapes: the impact of physical surroundings on customers and employees. The Journal of Marketing, pp. 57-71.

Bitner, M. J., Zeithaml, V. A. & Gremler, D. D., 2010. Technology’s impact on the gaps model of

service quality. Handbook of service science, pp. 197-218.

Boyle, E., 1996. "An experiment in changing corporate image in the financial services industry in the UK", Journal of. Journal of Services Marketing, 10(4), pp. 56-69.

14

Carbone, L. P. & Haeckel, S. H., 1994. Engineering customer experiences. Marketing Management, 3(3), pp. 8-19.

Chase, R. B., 1981. The customer contact approach to services: theoretical bases and practical

extensions. Operations research, 29(4), pp. 698-706.

Corporation, I., 2007. Bharti grows at a stunning pace by keeping its, New York: IBM Corporation 2007.

EconomicTimes, T., 2010. New logo more global, younger and aspirational: Sanjay Kapoor, CEO

Bharti Airtel. [Online]

Available at: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2010-11-18/news/27612278_1_new-

logo-symbol-ceo-bharti-airtel [Accessed 22 February 2015].

Gupta, G. & Nagpal, S., 2014. Value Added Telecom Services: Examining the Impact and Linkages. IM

QUEST, 10(1), pp. 1-10.

Haucap, J. & Ulrich, H., 2011. Consumer behavior towards on-net/off-net price differentiation. Telecommunications Policy, 35(4), pp. 325-332.

Heskett, J. L., 1990. Service breakthroughs. s.l.:Simon and Schuster.

Hill, D. J. & Gandhi, N., 1992. Service Advertising: A Framework to Its Effectiveness. Journal of Services Marketing, 6(4), pp. 63-76.

Kotler, P., 1973. Atmospherics as a marketing tool. Journal of retailing, 49(4), pp. 48-64.

Kotler, P., 1997. Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, Implementation, and Control. 9th ed. s.l.:Pearson Education .

Krishnamurthy, K. & Abrar, P., 2014. Startups worried about Airtel’s VoIP move, despite rollback.

[Online]

Available at: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Startups-worried-about-Airtels-

VoIP-move-despite-rollback/articleshow/45687438.cms

[Accessed 07 March 2015].

Lovelock, C. H., 1983. Classifying services to gain strategic marketing insights. The Journal of Marketing, pp. 9-20.

Luís, J. et al., 2013. Drivers of in-group and outof-group. European Journal of Marketing, 47(7), pp. 1067-1088.

Mahajan, A. C., 2014. Airtel Slashes 4G Rates. Gets Cheaper than 3G!. [Online]

Available at: http://trak.in/tags/business/2014/11/26/airtel-4g-rates-slashed/ [Accessed 08 March 2015].

Mahit, 2014. Airtel leads the league when it comes to Highest Rural Subscribers Base, for the month

of July 2014. [Online]

Available at: http://telecomtalk.info/airtel-leads-highest-rural-subscribers-base-july2014/121813/ [Accessed 27 February 2015].

Malhotra, N. K., 1988. Self-concept and product choice: an integrated perspective. Journal of Economic Psychology, 9(1), pp. 1-28.

15

Mankotia, A. S., 2014. Airtel turning itself into a company built on and for a smartphone network.

[Online]

Available at: http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-09-

03/news/53522512_1_smartphone-network-srinivasan-gopalan-bharti-airtel [Accessed 25 February 2015].

Menon, J., 2008. Bharti Airtel grows at a stunning pace by keeping its focus on the customer. [Online]

Available at: www.ibm.com/services/us/.../tc_bharti_ariel_grows_odc03064-usen.pdf [Accessed 23 February 2015].

Meyer, C. & Schwager, A., 2007. Understanding customer experience. Harvard business review, 85(2), p. 116.

Mortimer, K., 2002. Integrating advertising theories with conceptual models of services advertising.

Journal of Services Marketing, 16(5), pp. 460-468.

Mouncey, P., 2003. Building Great Customer Experiences. Interactive Marketing, 5(1), pp. 93-95.

Onkvisit, S. & Shaw, J. J., 1989. Service Marketing: Image, Branding, and Competition. Business Horizons, 32(1), pp. 13-18.

Parasuraman, A. L. L. B. a. V. A. Z., 1993. More on improving service quality measurement. Journal of retailing, 69(1), pp. 140-147.

Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V. A. & Berry, L. L., 1985. A conceptual model of service quality and its implications for future research. The Journal of Marketing, pp. 41-50.

Reichheld, F. F., 2003. The One Number You Need to Grow. Harvard Business Review, 81(2), pp. 46-

55.

Santos, J., 2003. E-service quality: a model of virtual service quality dimensions. Managing Service Quality: An International Journal, 13(3), pp. 233-246.

Shostack, G. L., 1977. Breaking free from product marketing. The Journal of Marketing, pp. 73-80.

Shostack, G. L., 1984. Designing Services That Deliver. Harvard Business Review, 133(February), p. 9.

Sirgy, M. J., 1982. Self-concept in consumer behavior: A critical review. Journal of consumer research , 9(3), pp. 287-300.

Srikapardhi, 2014. Airtel,IBM 2014 Deal – What is it all about : Our indepth Analysis. [Online]

Available at: http://telecomtalk.info/airtel-ibm-2014-deal-what-is-it-all-about-our-indepth-

analysis/115632/ [Accessed 27 February 2015].

Teixeira, J. et al., 2012. Customer experience modeling: from customer experience to service design.

Journal of Service Management, 23(3), pp. 362-376.

Telecominfo, 2013. Vodafone India and Idea Offers Better Friendly Self Care Services Than Airtel.

[Online]

Available at: http://telecomtalk.info/vodafone-india-and-idea-offers-better-friendly-self-care-

services-than-airtel-infographics/112313/ [Accessed 08 March 2015].

16

TelecomInfo, 2014. Airtel customers feel cheated with misleading 3G recharge benefit on its official

portal. [Online]

Available at: http://telecomtalk.info/airtel-cheating-customers/122963 [Accessed 08 March 2015].

Telecominfo, 2014. Airtel hikes it’s 2G Data packs for Postpaid users, Now 2GB Data Cost Rs.278

approx. [Online]

Available at: http://telecomtalk.info/airtel-2g-data-pack-postpaid/122808/ [Accessed 08 March 2015].

Telecominfo, 2014. TT Analysis : 76% of subscribers are not willing to switch to Airtel myPlan or Idea

iPlan. [Online]

Available at: http://telecomtalk.info/76subscribers-are-not-willing-to-switch-to-airtel-myplan-or-

idea-iplan/127718/ [Accessed 08 March 2015].

Telecominfo, 2015. Airtel Web Based self care services for Prepaid Customers Not reliable : Our

Experience. [Online]

Available at: http://telecomtalk.info/airtel-web-based-self-care-services-for-prepaid-customers-not-

reliable-our-experience/114186/ [Accessed 08 March 2015].

Uniyal, P., 2014. Can your wife be your boss and cook at the same time? Airtel ad confuses Twitterati,

evokes mixed reaction. [Online]

Available at: http://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/feelings/can-your-wife-be-your-boss-and-

cook-at-the-same-time-airtel-ad-confuses-twitterati-evokes-mixed-reaction/

[Accessed 08 March 2015].

Vargo, S. L. & Lusch, R. F., 2004. Evolving to a new dominant logic for marketing. Journal of marketing, 68(1), pp. 1-17.

WorldBank, 2015. Growth of the Service Sector. [Online]

Available at: http://www.worldbank.org/depweb/english/beyond/global/chapter9.html

[Accessed 14 February 2015].

Yadav, K, R. & Dabhade, N., 2013. Impact of service quality on customer satisfaction of mobile users: a case study of Airtel. International Journal of Innovative Research and Studies, pp. 139-163.

Zeithaml, V. A., 1981. How consumer evaluation processes differ between goods and services. Marketing of services, 9(1), pp. 25-32.

Zeithaml, V. A., Berry, L. L. & Parasuraman, A., 1996. The behavioral consequences of service quality.

the Journal of Marketing, 60(2), pp. 31-46.