Questions and Answers of Essentials Of Marketing

Why is the marketing communications mix larger for service firms than for firms that market goods?
What roles do personal selling, advertising, and public relations play in (a) attracting new customers and (b) retaining existing customers?
What are the different forms of online marketing?Which do you think would be the most effective online-marketing strategies for (a) an online broker and (b) a new high-end club in Los Angeles?
Why is permission-based marketing gaining so much focus in service firms’ communications strategies?
Why is word of mouth important for the marketing of services? How can a service firm that is the quality leader in its industry induce and manage word of mouth?
How can companies use corporate design to differentiate themselves?
What are potential ways to implement IMC?
Which elements of the Services Marketing Communications Mix would you use for each of the following scenarios? Explain your answers.a. A newly established hair salon in a suburban shopping centerb.
Identify one advertisement (or other means of communications) that is aimed mainly at managing consumer behavior in the (a) pre-consumption,(b) service-encounter, and (c) post-consumption
Legal and accounting firms now advertise their services in many countries. Search for a few advertisements and review the following: What do these firms do to cope with the intangibility of their
Discuss the significance of search, experience, and credence attributes for the communications strategy of a service provider. Assume that the objective of the communications strategy is to attract
If you were to explore your current university and degree program you are now in, what could you learn from blogs, reviews and any other online word of mouth you can find? How would that information
Identify an advertisement that runs the risk of attracting mixed segments to a service business.Explain why this may happen, and state any negative consequences that could result.
Describe and evaluate recent public relations efforts made by service organizations in connection with three or more of the following: (a) launching a new offering, (b) opening a new facility, (c)
What tangible cues could a diving school or a dentistry clinic use to position itself as appealing to upscale customers?
Explore the websites of a management consulting firm, an online retailer, and an insurance company.Assess them for ease of navigation, content, and visual design. What, if anything, would you change
Register at Amazon.com and Hallmark.com and analyze their permission-based communications strategy. What are their marketing objectives?Evaluate their permission-based marketing for a specific
Conduct a Google search for (a) undergraduate business programs and (b) vacation (holiday) resorts.Examine two or three contextual ads triggered by your searches. What are they doing right, and what
How does blueprinting help us to better understand the service process from the perspectives of the key actors (i.e., customers and the employees from different service departments and functional
What are the typical design elements of a service blueprint?
How can fail-safe methods be used to reduce service failures?
Why is it important to develop service standards and targets?
How can consumer perceptions and emotions be considered in the design of service processes?
Why is periodic service process redesign necessary?What are the typical symptoms that indicate a service process is not working well?
What are the four key objectives of service process redesign?
What efforts are typically involved in service process redesign?
Why does the customer’s role as a co-creator need to be designed into service processes?
Explain what factors make customers like and dislike self-service technologies (SSTs), online services, apps, AI, and service-robot-delivered services.
How can you test whether an SST has the potential to be successful, and what can a firm do to increase its chances of customer adoption?
What are the likely implications of service robots for customer service processes?
What are service robots, and how are they different from traditional SSTs?
What type of services will be increasingly provided by service robots, by service employees, and by service employee–robot teams?
Review the blueprint of the restaurant visit in Figure 8.6. Identify several possible “OTSUs” (“opportunities to screw up”) for each step in the front-stage process. Consider possible causes
Prepare a blueprint for a service with which you are familiar. On completion, consider (a) the tangible cues or indicators of quality from the customers’ perspective(keeping the line of visibility
Think about what happens in a doctor’s office when a patient comes for a physical examination. How much participation is needed from the patient in order for the process to work smoothly? If a
Observe supermarket shoppers who use self-service checkout lanes, and compare them to those who use the services of a checker. What differences do you observe? How many of those conducting
Identify three situations in which you use self-service delivery. For each situation, explain your motivation for using self-service delivery rather than having service personnel do it for you.
What actions could a bank take to encourage more customers to transact online or via mobile apps and to use chatbots and robo-advisors instead of using more expensive service delivery channels such
Identify one website that is exceptionally user-friendly and another that is not. What are the factors that make for a satisfying user experience in the first instance and a frustrating one in the
Find an advanced physical service robot (e.g., in a hotel lobby or hospital), hologram-based robot, or voice-based chatbot. Conduct a few service interactions with this robot (e.g., ask for
What is the difference between ideal capacity and maximum capacity? Provide examples of a situation where (a) the two might be the same and (b) the two are different.
Describe the building blocks for managing capacity and demand.
What is meant by productive capacity in services?
Why is capacity management particularly important for service firms?
What actions can firms take to adjust capacity to more closely match demand?
How can firms identify the factors that affect demand for their services?
What actions can firms take to adjust demand to more closely match capacity?
How can marketing mix elements be used to reshape demand patterns?
What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages of the different types of queues for an organization serving large numbers of customers? For which type of service might each of the queuing types
How can firms make waiting more pleasant for their customers?
What are the benefits of having an effective reservation system?
How can service firms use residual service capacity after all strategies of matching supply and demand have been exhausted?
Explain how flexible capacity can be created in each of the following situations: (a) a local library,(b) an office-cleaning service, (c) a technical support helpdesk, (d) an Interflora franchise.
Identify specific examples of firms in your community(or region) that significantly change their product and/or marketing mix in order to increase patronage during low demand periods.
Select a service organization of your choice, and identify its particular patterns of demand with reference to the checklist provided in Table 9.1 and answer the following: (a) What is the nature of
Which are the most relevant in(a) a supermarket;(b) a city bus stop on a rainy, dark evening;(c) a doctor’s office; and(d) a ticket line for a football game expected to be a sell-out.
Give examples, based on your own experience, of a reservation system that worked really well and of one that worked really badly. Identify and examine the reasons for the success and failure of these
What are the four main purposes service environments fulfill?
Describe how the Stimulus-Organism-Response(SOR) model and the valence and intensity model of affect explain consumer responses to a service environment.
What is the relationship or link between the valence and intensity model of affect and the servicescape model?
Why do different customers and service staff respond very differently to the same service environment?
Explain the dimensions of ambient conditions and the ways in which each can influence customer responses to the service environment.
What are the roles of signs, symbols, and artifacts?
What are the implications of the fact that service environments are perceived holistically?
What tools are available for aiding our understanding of customer responses and for guiding the design and improvement of service environments?
Identify firms from three different service industries where the service environment is a crucial part of the overall value proposition. Analyze and explain in detail the value that is being
Visit a service environment and have a detailed look around. Experience the environment and try to understand how the various design elements shape what you feel and how you behave in that setting.
Select a bad and a good waiting experience, and contrast the two situations with respect to the service environment and the other people waiting.
Visit a self-service environment and analyze how the design dimensions guide you through the service process. Which elements do you find most effective, and which seem least effective? How can the
Take a camera and conduct a photo audit of a specific servicescape. Photograph examples of excellent and very poor design features. Develop concrete suggestions on how this environment could be
Why are service personnel so important for service firms?
What is emotional labor? Explain the ways in which it may cause stress for employees in specific jobs.Illustrate with suitable examples.
What are the key barriers for firms to break the Cycle of Failure and move into the Cycle of Success?How should an organization trapped in the Cycle of Mediocrity proceed?
List five ways in which investment in selection and hiring, training, and ongoing motivation of employees will have a positive impact on customer satisfaction for organizations such as (a) a
Describe the key components of the Service Talent Cycle.
What can a service firm do to become a preferred employer and receive a large number of applications from the best potential candidates in the labor market?
How can a firm select the best suited candidates from a large number of applicants?
What are the key types of training service firms should conduct?
Identify the factors needed to make service teams successful in (a) an airline, (b) a restaurant, and(c) a customer contact center.
What are the factors that favor a strategy of employee empowerment?
How can front-line employees be effectively motivated to deliver service excellence?
How can a service firm build a strong culture that emphasizes service excellence and productivity?
What is the relationship among organizational culture, climate for service, and leadership?
Why is role modeling a desirable quality in service leaders?
An airline runs a recruiting advertisement for cabin crew that shows a picture of a small boy sitting in an airline seat and clutching a teddy bear. The headline reads: “His mom told him not to
Use the Service Talent Cycle as a diagnostic tool on a successful and an unsuccessful service firm you are familiar with. What recommendations would you prescribe to each of these two firms?
Think of two organizations you are familiar with—one that has a very good climate for service and one that has a very poor service climate. Describe the factors that shaped those climates. What
Which issues do you see as most likely to create boundary-spanning problems for employees in a customer-contact center at a major cable service provider? Select four issues and indicate how you would
Identify the factors needed to make service teams successful in(a) an airline,(b) a restaurant, and(c) a customer contact center.
Profile an individual whose leadership skills have played a significant role in the success of a service organization and identify personal characteristics that you consider important.
Why is customer loyalty an important driver of profitability for service firms?
Why is targeting the “right customers” so important for successful customer relationship management?
How can you estimate a customer’s lifetime value(LTV)?
How do the various strategies described in the Wheel of Loyalty relate to one another?
How can a firm build a foundation for loyalty?
What is tiering of service? Explain why it is used.What are its implications for firms and their customers?
What are some key measures that can be used to create customer bonds and encourage long-term relationships with customers?
Why are benefits related to the core service (e.g., customization, transaction convenience, and service priority) generally more effective in building loyalty than rewards that are unrelated to the
What is the role of churn management in an effective loyalty strategy, and what tools can be used to understand and reduce customer churn?
Why are loyalty programs often important for a customer loyalty strategy?

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