Ethics is essentially about the definition of what is right and wrong Difficulty does occur

in trying to agree just what is right and wrong and it can also be difficult to distinguish
between ethics and legality Ethics are very much culturally bound and what is considered
unethical in one society may be considered perfectly acceptable in another.
Example: It may not be strictly illegal to recommend unnecessary repairs to a car, but it
may nevertheless be unethical.
Ethical judgments about services are made by consumers at a number of levels:
Instrumental Level: At this level, customer takes a view of a service supplier’s ethics
and judge, whether it will be a good organization to do business with, e.g. a patient of
dentist, a client of a financial services intermediary
The high credence qualities of many services make this type of ethical evaluation very
important for service providers.
Product Level: At this level, buyers evaluate an individual product’s acceptability to
society at large.
Due to intangible nature of services, social costs and benefits of services can be less easy
to identify than for goods.
Nevertheless there is evidence that some segments of the population are widening their
evaluatory criteria to include the benefits which a service brings to society
Example: Financial services offering fund management to investors who are concerned
about the ethics of their investments
Corporate Level: At this level, buyers evaluate the overall ethics of a company. For this
reason many service organizations are keen to promote their ethical standards and to link
themselves to good social causes
Example: The Co-operation Bank has taken a distinctive position within the crowded
financial service marketplace by agreeing to run its business in accordance with a set of
ethical guidelines
THE MARKETING MIX
Marketing mix is the set of tools available to an organization to shape the nature of its
offer to consumers. Traditional marketing mix (4Ps): Product, price, promotion and
place. The principle of extended marketing mix is to break a service offering down into
a number of component parts and to arrange them into manageable subject areas for
making strategic decisions. Decisions on one element of the mix can only be made by
reference to other elements of the mix in order to give a sustainable product positioning.
Product: Products are the means by which organizations seek to satisfy consumer needs.
A product in this sense is anything which the organization offers to potential consumers,
whether it is tangible or intangible. Product mix decisions facing a services marketer can
be very different from those dealing with goods. Most fundamentally, pure services can
only be defined using process descriptions rather than tangible outcomes. Quality
becomes a key element defining a product of services while other elements of product
mix such as design, reliability, brand image and product range sound familiar to goods
marketer.
Pricing: Price mix decisions include strategic and tactical decisions about the average
level of prices to be charged, discount structures, terms of payment and the extent to
which price discrimination between different groups of customer is to take place.
Differences do, however, occur where the intangible nature of a service can mean that
price in itself become a very significant indicator of quality.
Promotion: Promotion mix includes various methods of communicating the benefits of
service to potential consumers. The mix is traditionally broken down into four main
elements advertising, sales promotion, public relations and personal selling
The promotion of services often needs to place particular emphasis on increasing the
apparent tangibility of a service. Also, in services marketing, the production personnel
can themselves become an important element of the production mix
Place: Place decision refers to the ease of access which potential customers have to a
service. It therefore involves physical location decisions (as in deciding whether to place
a hotel), decisions about which intermediaries to use to making a service accessible to a
customer (e.g. a tour operator uses travel-agents or sells its holiday direct to customers)
and non-locational decisions which are used to make service available e.g. use of
telephone delivery system
People: People are vital element of the marketing mix. Where production can be
separated from consumption- as in the case with most manufactured goods, management
can usually take measures to reduce the direct effect of people on the final output as
received by customers, e.g. buyer of a car. In service industries, everybody is called a
‘part time marketer’ in that their actions have a much more direct effect on the output
received by customers. People planning assume much greater importance in service
sector, especially true in those services where staffs have a high level of contact with
customers.
Physical Evidence: The intangible nature of service means that potential customers are
unable to judge a service before it is consumed, increasing the riskiness inherent in a
purchase decision. An important element of marketing planning is therefore to reduce this
level of risk by offering tangible evidence of the nature of the service.
Example: A holiday brochure gives pictorial evidence of hotels and resorts, the
appearance of staff can give evidence about the nature of service, etc.
Processes: Production processes are usually of little concern to consumer of
manufactured goods, but are often of critical concern to consumers of “high-contact”
services, where consumers can be seen as co-producer of the service.
Example: A customer at a restaurant is deeply affected by the manner in which staff
serves them and the amount of waiting which is involved during the production process.

ANALYSIS OF THE SERVICE OFFER

A number of elements within the service offer can be identified, some of which are
fundamental to the nature of the product, while others refine or differentiate it
For Products in general, an analysis by Kotler et al (1999) distinguishes between three
different levels of an individual product
The Core Product Level: This is defined in terms of the underlying need which a
product satisfies
The Tangible Product Level: The core product is made available to consumers in some
tangible form – this tangible form is expressed in terms of the products features, styling,
packaging, brand name and quality level
Augmented Product Level: This is the tangible product plus additional services and
benefits, included to satisfy additional needs of consumers and/or further differentiate a
product from its competitors
The service offer analyzed here is in terms of two components
The Core Service; which represents the core benefit
The Secondary Service; which represents both the tangible and augmented product
levels
ELEMENTS OF THE SECONDARY SERVICE LEVEL
The secondary level of the service offer can be analyzed in terms of a number of
elements. The principle elements are discussed below
Features:In the tangible product, features represent the specific components of the
product that could be added or subtracted without changing its essential characteristics. In
much the same way, most service offers can be analyzed in terms of differentiating
features. For Example, Bank Al-Falah offers different types of current accounts to appeal
to segments of the population with slightly differing needs It may also include ease of
access (e.g. by telephone, internet or through local branches), use ATM card etc.
Styling:Styling means giving the product a distinctive feel or look. The inseparability of
service offer makes the relationship between customer and service provider of paramount
importance and it is through this relationship that a service manager can develop a
distinctive style.
Example: There is a difference between the style Citi Bank and National Bank, although
they are both in the business of banking sector
Packaging:Service packaging can refer to the way in which tangible and intangible
elements are bundled together to provide a comprehensive service offer
Example: A mortgage offer may be packaged to include buildings insurance and a
surveyor’s report. Also the design of takeaway containers can ease the handling of take-
away food as well as conveying messages which distinguish the provider of the service
from its competitors
Branding:The purpose of branding is to identify products as belonging to a particular
organization and to enable differentiation of its products from those of its competitors.
Instead of individual services being branded, it is more likely that the process of branding
will focus on the service provider’s corporate image. In this way both fast-food
restaurants and accountants are usually differentiated on the basis of their corporate name
and reputation rather than the specific services which they offer.
Physical Evidence: Service marketers are more likely to differentiate their services from
the competition by adding tangible features, e.g. distinctive designs of brochures, staff
uniforms and service outlets
Service Delivery:Just as delivery can be important differentiator for goods, it can also be
equally important for a service.According to Gronroos (1984), service marketers should
use the concept of accessibility rather than seeing service provision in terms of
distribution/delivery as with goods.A number of resources affect this accessibility, e.g.
human resource (especially contact personnel), machines, buildings, etc.These resources
can be managed by a service organization to enhance the accessibility of its service to
consumers. The service itself may be intangible but these resources make the delivery of
service a reality
Process: Most services are evaluated as much by their production process as by their
final outcomes. Service designs should therefore pay attention to processes and the
manner in which service personnel interact with customers during this process.
People:People involved in the process of delivering a service can be crucial in defining
that service and customers’ perception of it.Personnel therefore become an important
element of the service offer and management must define the role expectations of
employees and support this with training where necessary.
Quality: The level of quality to which a service is designed is a crucial element in the
total service offering. Quality is an important factor used by customers to evaluate the
services of competing organizations. In service marketing, quality is the perceived level
of performance of a service, but with major difficulty in measuring service quality can be
much more difficult than measuring the quality of goods.
CUSTOMERS’ PERCEPTION OF SERVICE ATTRIBUTES
These are translated into desired attributes, which Sasser et al. have labeled as;
Security the consumer’s desire for the safety of themselves and/or his/her property
Consistency reducing mental anguish associated with unpredictable patterns of service
delivery
Attitude of the service provider, e.g. was provided with a smile?
Completeness the comprehensiveness of the service length)
Condition the environment in which the service is provided
Availability whether the service is available at the time and place that it is of most value
Timing (length of time required for and pace of performance of the service