Differences between services marketing and product marketing.

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DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SERVICES

MARKETING AND PRODUCT MARKETING

By

Kevin Cheasty

In the last century the worlds economy has been transformed from a largely

agricultural based economy to an industrial based one and now in the more developed

countries the service based economy is dominant. However despite this growth in

services, the marketing of services still struggles for attention and recognition in a

field where for the majority the product is king. Amazingly many services are still

being marketed as if they are a product despite the fact that “the problems

encountered in services marketing are not identical to those encountered in goods

marketing”.

A service can be defined as “any act or performance that one party can offer to

another that is essentially intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything.

Its production may or may not be tied to a physical product”. This in comparison to a

product which can be defined as “when companies address needs by putting forth a

value proposition, a set of benefits they offer to customers to satisfy their needs. The

intangible value proposition is made physical by an offering, which can be a

combination of products, services, information and experiences”.

So services marketing differs from product marketing and the reason for this is that

services have four major characteristics that greatly affect the design of marketing

programs: intangibility, inseparability, variability and perishability. “Unlike physical

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products, services cannot be seen, tasted, felt, heard or smelled before they are

bought”. This represents a problem for the service marketer in that he or she must

convince consumers about the advantages of a service, something which is much

harder to achieve when the consumer cannot see, taste, feel, hear or smell the service

being offered. “Overcoming this can be achieved by making a service more palpable

by creating a tangible representation of it. This is what occurred with the development

of the bank credit card. ...

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