Services Marketing

Services are primarily intangible and tend to be an experience which is consumed at the point of purchase; they cannot be owned since they quickly ....., and once they have occurred they cannot be repeated in exactly the same way.

Marketing personnel often speak of the nature of a service as ..... from the point of consumption and from the service provider.

The right of ..... is not extended to services, since we merely experience them; we cannot sell them once they have been consumed.

The Western economies have seen ..... of the traditional manufacturing sectors and growth of the service economies.

People are the key ..... in any service: services are usually produced and consumed simultaneously, and aspects of the customer experience are adjusted to serve the needs of the individual consuming them.

Many of us can recall a situation in which the personal service offered has enhanced or ..... a vacation, an overnight stay or a restaurant meal.

Every customer ..... staff member needs training and development in order to maintain high quality personal service.

This training ought to start during ..... into the company, which will involve the new staff in the organization's culture for the first time and brief them on operating policies and procedures.

The organization must also pay attention to Continuing Professional Development, in which every staff member sees his or her professional career as ..... process of training and growth.

The ..... and attitude of these service personnel is critically important: the way that complaints are dealt with can mean the difference between keeping and losing customers or between making and destroying the company's reputation.