Harsh V. Verma ¹

Affiliations
1 Faculty of Management Studies University of Delhi, Delhi 110007

Abstract

The marketing environment both at the side of demand and supply is undergoing a subtle but very profound change. The concept of value, value creation process, and value provider is not what it used to be. The pivot around which the marketing process was built in the industrialization wave used to be the product. Now the free and unhindered movement of men, materials, process and knowledge the parity seem to be dawning on the systems creating ultimate peril for the marketers. The manifestations of this malaise are loyalty erosion, switching and promotion sensitivity. The influence of product element is wearing away leaving marketers to look for edge elsewhere. The value now needs to be liberated and transcended from the narrow confines of the product. The marketer needs to break free from the boundaries imposed by the 'productness' of the offering. It is only when the offer is pushed into a higher value orbit, then only a marketer can hope to achieve the desired consequences like the commitment and bonding.

Keywords

Networked System, Feature-benefit Marketing, Consumer Rationality, Commoditization, Rallying Points, Value Orbit, Productness, Rational And Emotional Appeals

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Sheetal B. Sachdev ¹, Harsh V. Verma ²

Affiliations
1 Bhagini Nivedita College University of Delhi, Delhi
2 Faculty of Management Studies University of Delhi, Delhi

Abstract

Service marketers bemoan what they perceive as an unprecedented increase of customer expectations in many service industries. Customer expectations are on rise with each competitive advance. While at most everybody has an intuitive sense of what expectations are, service marketers need a far more thorough and clear understanding of expectations in order to comprehend the concept of service quality and to measure and manage it. A literature review suggests that the measurement of service quality is full of controversy associated with many issues, of which an important few are : the type of expectations customers hold in the evaluation, important manageable service quality dimensions / attributes that define it in its full framework and dimensional consistency across the service categories. The paper examines these aspects in select services. The results suggest that (1) Customer 'would' and 'should' expectations differ significantly at most of the times, (2) 'would' expectations are comparatively closer to the service performance, (3) all the suggested dimensions of service quality are important, and (4) service quality may not always be the same five-factor structure as proposed by Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry from time to time.

Keywords

Service Quality, should Expectation, would Expectation, Quality Dimensions

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Harsh V. Verma ¹

Affiliations
1 Faculty of Management Studies University of Delhi, Delhi

Abstract

There is a growing realisation that customer satisfaction is necessary but not sufficient for survival. The firms must organise efforts to create a completely satisfied customer. The issue is whether marketers really act upon this prescription. This study is aimed at discovering the incidents of failures in the context of service marketing. An attempt is made to identify failure incidences; their perceived severity and adequacy of recovery efforts in select service industries. It has been found that firms stumble in doing a good job at basic or core service level what to talk about augmentations. Besides, inter-personal failures are perceived to be the most severe. The firms are not able to make effective recovery in most of the cases from the customer's point of view.

Keywords

Recovery Management, Total Satisfaction, Service Failure

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