Service Marketing- Definition, Types, and Benefits

1. Service Marketing- definition, types, and benefits According to the definition of the American Marketing Association, service is defined as “activities, benefits and satisfactions which are offered for sale or are provided in connection with the sale of goods” (Kapoor, 2011). Service marketing is a broad class of marketing strategies that particularly focus on selling anything, which is not a physical product Service marketing is a broad class of marketing strategies that particularly focus on selling anything, which is not a physical product. This could be anything including personal services like spa treatments, medical care, rental services for vehicles or spaces, concerts, signing or dancing lessons etc.  According to the definition of the American Marketing Association, service is defined as “activities, benefits and satisfactions which are offered for sale or are provided in connection with the sale of goods” (Kapoor, 2011).  The marketing can be conducted through any method that can communicate appeal or benefits of a service to its customers through valid approaches like informational content, advertisements, promotional deals, and many other resources of marketing materials.  All organisations that provide services of any kinds utilize service marketing strategies. There are two categories of service marketing:  • Business-to-customer (B2C) - organisations provide services to individuals. • Business-to-business (B2B) - organisations provide services to other businesses.  Organizations that provide services to individual customers commonly use service marketing. For this purpose, they generally research consumer behaviourto generate appealing advertisements for certain demographics. This helps them to narrow their marketing focus to a concentrated effort. 

3. On the other hand, organizations that use B2B servicing or provide services to other organizations apply their marketing techniques to their industrial marketing efforts. For this purpose, they generally follow approaches, which are more focused to person-to-person contact because sales executives from the service provider organizations have to negotiate with representatives from the client businesses.  Advantages of Service Marketing:  As a result of growth in various service sectors and the benefits it provides to the growth of organizations, service marketing is growing exceptionally well in the past decades. Here are some of the benefits of service marketing- 1. Recurrent sales: When service marketing fulfils the needs of customers perfectly, it leads to recurrent sales. Satisfied customers come back to purchase the product again.  For example, a customer, who is happy with various banking services like online banking, phone banking etc. may go for a loan or other services. Thus, banks’ service marketing efforts become fruitful in translating more sales. 2. Customer reviews: When a happy customer spreads his/her good experience about the products with a number of other people, this leads to more marketing efforts. In our time of Internet and instant communication, customer reviews play very crucial role to determine other customer’s purchasing decision. Organisations through applying suitable servicing marketing strategies can ensure prevention of negative reviews. Extra efforts are taken make sure that customers are adequately satisfied to spread good reviews about their good experience. 

4. 3. Contribution to economic growth: For developing countries, service marketing is particularly beneficial to make contribution to the countries’ economy. Applying effective service marketing strategies, companies can gain trust of consumers. This can lead to increase in the level of employment, foreign exchange reserves, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and exports.  Reference: Kapoor, R., Paul, J., and Halder, B. (2011). Service marketing: Concept and practices. New Delhi: Tata McGraw Hill.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFvbgddv7C4

5. According to the definition of the American Marketing Association, service is defined as “activities, benefits and satisfactions which are offered for sale or are provided in connection with the sale of goods” (Kapoor, 2011). Service marketing is a broad class of marketing strategies that particularly focus on selling anything, which is not a physical product. The marketing can be conducted through any method that can communicate appeal or benefits of a service to its customers through valid approaches like informational content, advertisements, promotional deals, and many other resources of marketing materials. There are two kinds of service marketing- Business-to-customer (B2C) and Business-to-business (B2B).

6. Key Points 1. Service marketing is a broad class of marketing strategies that particularly focus on selling anything, which is not a physical product. 2. The marketing can be conducted through any method that can communicate appeal or benefits of a service to its customers. 3. There are two categories of service marketing- Business-to-customer (B2C) and Business-to-business (B2B). 4. There are three main advantages of service marketing- recurrent sales, customer reviews, and contribution to economic growth. 5. Service marketing is growing exceptionally well over the past decades. Published by Brainware University