Human Resource Knowledge

Marketing strategy for service firms

The main aim of marketing is to create a customer and to convince him to make use of your product / service. Marketing plays a significant role in service sector.

Internal Marketing

This means the service firm must effectively train and motivate its employees to improve customer contacts and to provide the satisfaction to the customer by rendering a consistent and high quality service to improve the customer relations.

Interactive Marketing

It means that perceived service quality depends heavily on the quality of buyer-seller interaction. The quality of the service depends upon both the service, the service deliverer and on the quality of delivery. The customer judges service quality not on the basis of technical aspect but mostly on functional aspect.

Service quality falls due to increase in the competition or cost of increase in providing the service and dropping of productivity. Then the service firm should prove its uniqueness by:

*Increasing its differentiation.

*Giving better quality of service.

*Increasing its productivity

Marketing of Services

The term service is rather a general concept and it includes a wide range of services. They are the business and professional services such as marketing research, advertising, insurance, banking, Computer Applications, legal and medical services. The other services which are meant for leisure activities include—entertainment, and recreational services. The services like education, fine arts etc., are meant for fulfilling psychological and emotional needs.

During the last decade services marketing has increased its importance with the advent of competition In this competitive market, marketing has become a key differentiator between corporate success and failure. In this article we will try to discuss the marketing aspect in each of the services that are given below:
Tourism, Travel and Hotel services marketing

A.Marketing: Tourism

In tourism marketing-Marketing of destination is done. When a destination is sold to a customer or a group of them, all who are involved in providing some service in relation to tourism would get benefited. A destination could be of historical importance or a landscape or a unique monument created.

A creative strategy must be adopted to attract the tourists:

*To convince the tourists, that the place (that is to be marketed), as their travel destination.

*To inform and educate the potential tourists to visit that place.

*To motivate the tourists to visit the targeted destination.

Aimed at the place marketing one must think of creative advertising i.e. apart from the pictures of the place, the significant historic and cultural background of that particular place has to be advertised.

B. Marketing: Travel Services

Inspiring the tourists to a place should certainly include the convenient travel facilities, which a tourist would like to avail. If there is no convenient mode of transport-though the place is attractive, the tourists may hesitate to visit or ignore that place due to lack of transport facilities. Therefore, proper transportation facilities should be arranged and marketed them to tourists.

Reaching the destination is the ultimate goal in travel service. This may include the following aspects:

Safety
Comfort
Time
Economy
Other factors related to above

These are the aspects that are considered by a tourist while traveling. Therefore, a travel marketer must consider these prime factors while marketing the travel services.

C. Marketing: Hotel Services

The next aspect considered by the tourist after the travel convenience is food and shelter at the desired place of destination. Hotel services include important components like: accommodation, food and beverages, recreational activities and other services.

Hotel advertising is an effective and generally, a long-term effort to inform the customer about the existence, and also give details about the location and type of facilities available in the hotel. Effective advertising not only attracts prospective hotel customer, but also gives a long lasting impression in prospector’s mind.

*Projecting that they have better accommodation than the others.

*Advertising for food and beverages (showing them the variety and range).

*Advertising for the various recreational activities that are available with them.

*Availability of shops and car rental service and other facilities.

While marketing Hotel services, one should carefully consider the above facts and provide tourists an economical accommodation with the desired combination of traditional food with a suitable price; which can considerably attract the tourists to their hotel.

A feed back from travelers is desirable in all the above outlined services to know the level of satisfaction of the clientele for the services. This will not only ensure improvement in services as per the feed back. The improved quality of services rendered makes more and more regular customers.

Labels: Marketing

posted by Paresh @ 11:10 AM