17 Communication Mix of Services

Dr. Jasveen Kaur

 

Communication Mix of Services

 

To successfully market a service, organizations must have a fully integrated communications program. Communications within the marketing context involves informing, persuading, and influencing consumer behavior. An integrated communications program is the coordinated use of the various communication mediums to accomplish a central objective. Communications include the promotional options of advertising, sales promotions, and personal selling. In additions, communications in the service sector include the firm‟s servicescape. (David L. Kurtz)

 

The Role of Marketing Communications

 

Communication is the most visible or audible-some would say intrusive-of marketing activities, but it value is limited unless it is used intelligently in conjunction with other marketing efforts. Marketing communications, in one form of another, are essential to a company‟s success. Communications must be viewed more broadly than as must media advertising, public relations, and professional salespeople. There are many other ways for a service business to communicate with current and prospective customers. The location and atmosphere of a service delivery facility, corporate design features such as the consistent use of colors and graphic elements, the appearance and behavior of employees, the design of a website-all contribute to an impression in the customer‟s mind that reinforces or contradicts the specific content of formal communication messages. Some specific role performed by marketing communication is as follow:

 

i) Position and differentiate service: Companies use marketing communications to persuade target customers that their service product offers the best solution to meet those customers‟ needs, relative to the offerings of competing firms. Even if customers understand what a service is supposed to do, they may find it hard to tell the difference between offerings from different suppliers. Companies may use concrete clues to communicate service performance by highlighting the quality of equipment and facilities and by emphasizing employee characteristics such as qualifications, experience, commitment, and professionalism. Some performance attributes are easier or more appropriate to communicate than others.

 

ii) Promote the contribution of service personnel and backstage operations: High-quality, frontline staff and back-stage operations can be important service differentiators. In high-contact services, frontline personnel are central to service delivery. Their presence makes the service more tangible and, in many cases, more personalized. An ad that shows employees at work helps prospective customers understand the nature of the service encounter and implies a promise of the personalized attention they can accept to receive.

 

Advertising, brochures, and websites can also show customers the work that goes on “back-stage” to ensure good service delivery. Highlighting the expertise and commitment of employees whom customers normally never encounter may enhance trust in the organization‟s competence and commitment to service quality. Advertising messages set customers‟ expectations, so advertisers must be reasonably realistic in their depictions of service personnel. They should also inform employees about the content of view advertising campaigns or brochures that promise species attitudes that behaviors so that employees know what is expected of them.

 

iii) Add value through communication content: Information and consultation represent important ways to add value to a product. Prospective customers may need information and advice about what service options are available to them; where and when these services are available; how much they cost ; and must specific features, functions, and service benefits are on hand.

 

iv)Facilitate customer involvement in service production: When customers are actively involved in service production, they need training to help them perform well- just as employees do. Improving productivity often involves making innovations in service delivery. Marketers often use sales promotions as incentives to encourage customers to make the necessary changes in their behavior for examples, giving price discounts is one way to encourages customers to try and switch to self- service. (Christopher Lovelock)

 

Marketing Communication Mix

 

Most service marketers have access to numerous forms of communication, referred to collectively as the marketing communications mix. Different communication elements have distinctive capabilities relative to the types of messages they can convey and the market segments most likely to the exposed to them (Christopher Lovelock). The components of communication mix are given below:

 

i)   Advertising: Advertising is non- personal mass communication by an identified sponsor. Advertising is a cost- effective and powerful means to reach the masses. It has the capacity to attract the market. Informative, educative and persuasive objectives can be achieved through advertising (K. Rama MohanaRao). A wide array of paid advertising media is available, including broadcast (TV and radio), print (magazines and newspapers), movie theaters, and many types of outdoor media (posters, billboards, electronic messages boards, and the exteriors of buses or bicycles). As the most dominant form of communication in customer marketing, advertising often is the first point of contact between service marketers and their customers, serving to build awareness, inform, persuade, and remind. It plays a vital role in providing factual information about services and educating customers about product features and capabilities. Despite being the most dominant form of communication in consumer marketing, the effectiveness of advertising remains hugely controversial. One of the challenges facing advertisers in how to get their messages noticed. How can a firm hope to stand out from the crowed? Longer, louder commercial and larger format ads are not necessarily the answer. Marketers are trying to be more creative with their advertising to allow their messages to be more effective (Christopher Lovelock)

 

ii) Publicity and public relations: Publicity is a communication campaign through a third party. Public relation is a deliberate attempt by the organization to establish relationships with various people (customers, suppliers, creditors, shareholders, media and social organization), who are capable of influencing, directly or indirectly, business prospects. Both publicity and public relations are powerful techniques for promotion of services.

 

iii) Direct marketing: When intermediaries are not involved between producers and customers, it is called direct marketing. It is one of the alternatives for the producers to reach the market. Direct sales offers through sky shops on television, direct contact of customers through mail, e- commerce and so on are examples. Service provider can use direct marketing for promoting services. By transmitting the service process and other features and options through the electronic media, customers can be motivated and their doubts about the service offer clarified. Direct mail to a prospect initiates need gratification process (K. Rama MohanaRao)

 

iv) Sales promotion: A useful way of looking at sales promotions is as a communication attached to an incentive. Sales promotion usually is specific to a time period, price, or customer group. The objective is to accelerate the purchasing decision or motivate customers to use a specific service. Sales promotions for service firms may take such forms as samples, coupons and other discounts, gifts, and competitions with prizes.

 

v) Personal selling: Interpersonal encounters in which efforts are made to educate customers and promote preference for a particular brand or product are referred to as personal selling. Many firms, especially those marketing B2B services, maintain a dedicated sales force or employ agents and distributors to undertake personal selling efforts. However, this approach has limited applications as it is very costly as well as difficult to reach the mass market (Christopher Lovelock).

 

Designing a Communication Campaign

 

Communication campaign is attended to get a desired response from a target audience. The basic principle that guides any communication campaign is receiver orientation. Proper understanding characteristics of the receiver- culture, habits, beliefs, attitudes, abilities, knowledge, and associations and so on- should be the foundation for designing a communication campaign. The following are the important decisions the management should take in relation to campaign designing:

 

i) Selecting the target audience: A clear definition of audience is prerequisite for the campaign design. The consumers of a service may belong to varied groups. The marketer has to decide which group the company wants to feature in its campaign. the selected group generally should have the capability of leading the other groups in preferring the service. The selection of the target audience provides solutions to many problems relating to communication. The answers to such questions as what to communicate, when to communicate, where to communicate, how to communicate can be obtained accurately with the decision on target audience.

 

ii) Determining the objectives of communication: Once the audience is identified, the objectives of communication should be determined. The objectives are in relation to the response sort for campaign. Although the ultimate objective of the campaign is to generate sales either in the short run or in the long run or both, each of the specific campaigns is directed at achieving specific objectives. Each and every buyer will pass through different stages before arriving at the decision on the purchase. Researchers have identified six stages in the buyer- readiness process. These stages called the hierarchy of the effects. The stages are: awareness, knowledge, liking, preference, conviction and purchase. The buyers need to be stimulated at every stage, either through a single campaign or through a series of campaigns

 

iii) Generating the campaign: Message generation is vital in designing a communication campaign. Depending on the desired response from the market audience, the message needs to be developed. As per the AIDA (Attention Interest Desire Action) model, the message should have the capability of the attracting attention, holding interest, arousing desire and making the audience action oriented. They are four important issues in formulating the message. These are:

 

a) Message Content: The message content includes an idea, theme or an appeal which is unique selling proposition for the service in the market. Marketers generally use three kinds of appeals. They are rational appeals, emotional appeals and moral appeals. Through rational appeal the marketers try to educate the consumers about the service offer and other environmental factors in the market. The consumers are stimulated think logically while making a purchase decision. Emotional appeals can be positive or negative. Positive emotional appeals such as joy, love or celebration motivate the purchase of some services whereas negative emotional appeals such as fear, guilt or shame motivate people to buy some services. The moral appeals are directed at social sensitivity. Generally, public and social organizations launch their campaign with moral appeals.

 

b)   Message Structure: Message structure relates to the organization of message content in such a way that rightful conclusions are drawn from the message. The effectiveness of the message content depends upon how it is structured. Whether to suggest conclusions or to leave to the audience to draw conclusions, whether to place one- sided arguments or to present two- sided arguments, whether to put strong arguments in the beginning or the end are the issues that need to be decided.

 

c)   Message Format: The format of the message depends upon the medium selected for the campaign. If it is print media, the decisions relating to headline, space, copy, design and illustration are important. For video media, that is, TV, cinema, internet and so on, the body language, location, time and so on, decide the format.

 

d) Message Source: Who has to deliver the message is an important decision. Studies have proved that message source influences the audience. The source selected may be an expert in the field or may be celebrity who is popular with the target audience.

 

iv) Selecting the media: The rapid pace of change in media and growing complexity of media options make the selection of the media channels very complex. Print media, audio channels, electronic channels and tele channels have expanded their scope of operations. Each medium has distinctive advantages as well as limitations. Communicators have to ascertain the reach, frequency, credibility and the cost of the preferred medium besides the media habits of the target audience to be able to select wisely. One medium may not fulfill the objectives. Combination of media may be necessary to stimulate the audience interest.

 

v) Budgeting for marketing communications: How much money is required for the communication campaign? The answer is critical to marketers in the absence of accurate evaluation matters and measures and measures to establish cause- effect relationships, companies often depend upon traditional approaches in deciding the budget for marketing communication. There are four such methods. „The Affordable method‟ is to use the money the company can afford to spend upon the communications. The „Percentage to sale‟ method establishes a relationship between sales and expenditure on communication. The „Competitive Parity method‟ advocates following the competitors budget. The „objective-and- task‟ method calls upon marketers to define specific campaign objectives and list out the task to be performed to achieve such objectives. The total estimated cost for the performance of the task becomes the budget (K. Rama MohanaRao)

 

Service Communication Challenges

 

Discrepancies between what are communicated about a service and what is a customer receives- or perceives that he receives- can powerfully affect consumer evaluations of service quality (Valarie A Zeithaml). The factors that contribute to these communication challenges include:

 

1)     Service Intangibility: Because services are performances rather than objects, their benefits can be difficult to communicate to customers especially when service in question does not involve tangible actions to customers or their possessions. Intangibility creates five problems for marketers:

 

· Generality: It refers to items that comprise a class of objects, persons or events – For example, airline seats and cabin service. Many services and service promises are described in generalities, making them difficult to differentiate from those of competitors.

 

· Abstractness: Service benefits such as financial security, expert advice or safe transportation do not have one- to- one correspondence with physical objects, it can be challenging for marketers.

 

· Non search ability: It refers to fact that intangibles cannot be searched or inspected before they are purchased. Physical service attributes, such as the appearance of a health club and the type of equipment installed, can be checked in advance, but the experience of working with the trainers can only be determined through extended personal involvement.

 

· Mental impalpability: Many services are sufficiently complex, multidimensional, or novel that it is difficult for consumers- especially new prospects- to understand what the experience of using them will be like and what benefits will result.

 

· Incorporeal existence: The service product neither is made out of physical matter nor occupies physical space. Although the delivery mechanism may occupies space, service itself does not implication is that showing service is difficult, if not impossible.

 

2)  Management of service promises: Serious problem occur when companies fail to manage service marketing communications- the vows made by sales people, advertising and service personnel, and serviced falls short of what is promised. This sometimes occurs because the part of the company making the promise lacks the information necessary to make accurate statements. For example, business – to- business sales people often sell services, particularly new business services, before their actual availability and without having an exact date of when they will be ready for market.

 

3)   Management of customer expectations: Appropriate and accurate communication about services is responsibility of both marketing and operations. Marketing must accurately reflect what happens in actual service encounters; operations must delivers what is promised in communications. For example, when a management consulting firm introduces a new offering, the marketing and sales departments must make the offering appealing enough to be viewed as superior to competing service offerings.

 

4)   Customer education: Service companies must educate their customers. If customers are unclear about how service will be provided, what their role in delivery involves, how to evaluate services they have never used before, they will be disappointed.When disappointed, they will often hold the service company, not themselves, responsible.

 

5) Internal marketing communication: Multiple functions in the organization, such as marketing and operations, must be coordinated to achieve the goal of quality service provision. If company marketing communication and other promises are developed without input from operations, contact personnel may not be able to deliver service that matches the image portrayed in marketing efforts. (Valarie A. Zeithaml)

 

Strategies to Overcome Marketing Challenges

 

Major approaches to overcome the service communication challenges are explained as follows:

 

1.  Address Service Intangibility: Approaches to address service intangibility are:

 

a) Tangible cues: Formally used strategies in advertising include the use of tangible cues showing the tangibles provide clues about the nature and the quality of the service.

 

b) Use metaphors: Some companies have created metaphors that are tangible in nature to help communicate the benefits of their service offerings and to emphasize key points of difference relative to competing alternatives. (Christopher Lovelock)

 

c) Use narrative to demonstrate the service experience: Many services are experiential, and a uniquely effective approach to communicating them involves story based appeals. Showing consumers having realistic and positive experiences with services is generally more effective then describing service attributes.

 

d) Present vivid information: Effective service marketing communication creates a strong or clear impression on senses and produce. One way to use vivid information is to evoke strong emotion such as fear.

 

e)   Use interactive imagery: Imagery can enhance recall of names and facts about service. It integrates two or more items in some mutual action, resulting in improved recall.

 

f)   Feature service employee in communication: As customer contact personnel are tangible representation of service, featuring actual employees doing their jobs in advertising is effective for both customers and employees because it communicates to employees that they are important.

 

2.   Manage service promises: In services sales and marketing departments make promises about what other employees in the organization will fulfill. Because what employees do cannot be standardized, greater coordination and management of promises are required. This coordination can be accomplished by creating a strong service brand and by coordinating all of the company‟s marketing communication.

  1. Manage customer expectations: Accurately promising when and how service will be delivered is one of the important ways to deliver the communication gap. Among the most effective strategies to manage customer expectations are to make realistic promises; to offer service guarantees, options, and tiered- value offerings; and to communicate criteria customers can use to assess services.
  1. Manage customer education: Customer must perform their role properly for making services effective because if customer forgets to perform their roles, or perform them improperly, disappointment may result. For this reason, communication to customers can take the form of customer education. Company can educate the customer by using strategies such as preparing customer for service process, confirm performance to standards and expectations and clarify expectations after the sale.
  2. Manage internal marketing communication: The fifth major category of strategies necessary to match service delivery with promise is matching internal marketing communication. Internal marketing communication can be both vertical and horizontal. Vertical communications are either downward, from the management to employees, or upward, from employees to management. Horizontal communications are those across functional boundaries in an organization. A third strategy is internal branding, which consist of various strategies to sell the brand inside the company. Other strategies include creating effective upward communication, aligning back-office and support personnel with external customers and creating cross- functional teams. (Valarie A. Zeithaml)

 

Conclusion

 

The promotion and education element of 7 Ps requires somewhat different emphasis from the communication strategy used to market goods. The communication tasks factoring service marketing include emphasizing tangibles clues for services that are difficult to evaluate, clarifying the nature and sequence of service performance, highlighting the performance of customer contact personnel, and educating the customer about how to effectively participate in service delivery.

 

Learn More:

  • Rampal, M.K., Gupta, S.L. (2000). Service Marketing. India: Galgotia Publishing Company.
  • Clow, Kenneth E., Kurtz, David L. (2009). Service Marketing. India: Biztantra.
  • Lovelock, Christopher, Wirtz, Jochen, Chatterjee, Jayanta (2011). Services Marketing. India: Pearson Publications.
  • Rao,K. Rama Mohana (2013). Services Marketing.India:Prentice Hall.
  • Zeithmal, A Valarie, Bitner, Mary Jo, Gremler, Dwayne D., Pandit, Ajay (2013). Services Marketing. India: McGraw Hill Education Private Ltd.