Marketing Is About Service Encounter Concept of Marketing

Marketing as an Organization-wide Philosophy

Role of Marketing in Business

Marketing Begins and Ends with the Customer

Concept of Marketing Mix

Impact of Globalization on Marketing

What are Services

Service Encounters: The Building Blocks for Customer Perceptions

Impact of Globalization on Service Encounter

The Importance of Encounters

Marketing is about Service Encounter

Concept of Marketing

Marketing is all about managing strong relationship with customers. It is a process through which companies create value for their customers with the intention to build strong customer relationships in order to gain value from customers in return.

In this era of advancement, no company across the globe can ignore the significance of marketing. A company's monetary achievement mainly depends upon careful marketing efforts. Now the question arises that why financial success is linked with marketing. The answer is quiet simple. An excellent product with best quality and features cannot make any profit if people do not know about it. There will be no demand for the product and in turn sales will be adversely affected leading to no profit eventually. Thus marketing plays a significant role in today's modern era of global advancement.

Marketing as an Organization-wide Philosophy

The most vital purpose of marketing is to create awareness about products/services and make loyal customers. Through marketing customers get a chance to identify what a company is offering and company gets an opportunity to persuade them to buy products/services. In this competitive era, marketing is not only about making name of your product only. It's more about differentiating products from other competitors. It's about convincing the customer to spend his money on buying your product instead of the competitor's. It empowers organization to capture maximum market share, make brand name, make and retain loyal customers. As it fulfills several tasks, hence it is considered an organization wide philosophy.

Role of Marketing in Business

Marketing promotes awareness. This awareness is highly significant to make and retain loyal customers. Without awareness there will be no customers and without customers there will be no business. Hence, marketing is important for the success of any business.

Marketing Begins and Ends with the Customer

The concept of marketing revolves around customers. It is a process through which organizations create value for customers and build strong customer relationships. Marketing process can clearly indicate the significance of customers in the concept of effective marketing. This process begins with understanding the marketplace and the needs and wants of customers, then designing a customer-driven marketing strategy. Thirdly, constructing an integrated marketing program that conveys a superior value in order to build profitable relationships and creating customer satisfaction. All these efforts in return capture value from customers to generate profits and customer impartiality. This process of marketing clearly signifies the fact that marketing is a unique concept that begins and ends with the customer.

Concept of Marketing Mix

Marketing mix comprises of a set of four controllable tools that the firm blends with the intention to produce the response it wants in the target market. The four tools are product, price, place and promotion. An operative marketing program merges all the marketing mix elements into a unified marketing program planned to attain the company's marketing aims by delivering worth to customers.

Impact of Globalization on Marketing

With the increased globalization, organizations are keen to connect with the broader world around them. In the increasingly smaller world, organizations are connected with customers across the globe. Today, majority of the organizations are somehow affected by global competitors. Organizations are not only making an effort to sell their products in local market but also make sales in international markets. With this changing trend of marketing across the globe, the old techniques are not sufficient to make and retain a customer. In a globalized and highly competitive world successful marketing is not only about the product and the influence of the marketing mix. Several other factors need to be considered as well. With the overall advancement globally, the customer is more aware and conscious in making a buying decision. Thus, the four P's and product are not sufficient to satisfy a customer. Several other factors need to be focused. For instance, with the changing trend, a customer quiet often questions about services. Just because it doesn't start with P, a marketer cannot omit it while using marketing mix. Another valid concern of customers is that four P's concept defines the seller's view of the market, and tends to ignore the buyers view. On the contrary, with the competitive business environment, marketing revolves more around the customer....

This is the age of customer relationship where the four P's might be better described as the four C's i.e. customer solution, customer cost, convenience and communication. Another very important concept that results in effective marketing is service encounter. This new trend is immensely important to deal with the changing business situation across the globe. Making and retaining customers will become much easier if we use this technique rather than focusing on product and marketing mix only.
What are Services

All economic activities, whose yield is not a physical product, are generally consumed at the time it is produced and provides added standards (Zeithaml, Bitner & Gremler 2007). According to a research, with increased globalization, service industry has flourished. The forces that have led to this flourishing service marketing are industries, companies, and individuals that have defined the scope of the concepts, frameworks, and strategies that define the field.

Service Encounters: The Building Blocks for Customer Perceptions

In today's world, organizations are of the view that they can compete more effectively and can distinguish themselves with increased service quality, satisfaction and loyalty. It is sometimes called as "real time marketing." It is due to this service encounter that a customer builds a perception. As mentioned earlier, the entire marketing process revolves around the customer. In context of the customer, the most vivid impression of service occurs in the service encounter. The accessibility and use of suitable technologies administer the victory of a service encounter (D'Souza et al. 1995).

The customer is usually not just an inactive receiver of the service, but an active member in the service production process. In reality, in most service encounters, the dynamic contribution of the customer is not just supportive, but somewhat an important requirement. Overall, as customer participation increases, so does the difficulty of a given service encounter? This increase in the difficulty level in turn increases the importance of service encounter in marketing. Older methods of marketing like marketing mix and product cannot help in providing a service appropriately. Thus this concept of service encounter is used to market a product effectively and efficiently.

Impact of Globalization on Service Encounter

Increase in globalization demands a firm to look for global regulation with local customization. Globalization has made the world a progressively linked place. Few decades back, SMEs were functioning in a safe environment, but with changing trends a direct significance of globalization is free trade flow and increasing competition. Along with foreign competition, local demand is varying over to improved quality products at internationally competitive prices. The countries having relative benefits in relations to technology, structure and intellectual property will govern others and gain a bigger portion of the world market. This, in turn, motivates the SMEs to give more attention to quality, price and delivery concerns.

With the increased involvement of globalization in business, understanding and obliging consumer conduct in cross-cultural backgrounds has become significant for the service industry. It is, also, no longer uncommon to see service personnel of several nationalities within one business (Tu et al. 2007).

The Importance of Encounters

It is commonly said that first impression is the last impression. This saying holds true in context of service encounters as well. If a customer is interacting with an organization for the first time, that initial encounter will create a first impression of the organization. In this situation, the customer has no other bases to judge an organization except for the encounter he is having with the organization such as initial phone call or face-to-face interaction with the organizations representative. Thus this interaction known as service encounter plays a significant role in developing a service perception. Even if the customers have multiple encounters, each individual encounter is significant in creating a composite image in the customer's view point. Thus, positive encounters will help in making and retaining the customers and multiple negative encounters will adversely affect a customer's perception. On the contrary, combination of negative and positive encounters will create an uncertain situation. It will result in a confused customer that an organization may fail to retain (Saunders et al. 2010). Thus all encounters are significant in building customer relationships.

Marketing is about Service Encounter

Service encounter commonly known as "moment of truth" is referred to the customer interaction with the service or product for the first time. Service encounters are transactional communications in which one person (e.g., a salesperson, office clerk, and travel agent) delivers a service or good (e.g., a product, an appointment, and airline tickets) to another person (Victorino 2008). A service encounter is a period of time during which purchaser interact directly with a service.

The service…