Strategic Marketing Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Strategic Marketing - Assignment Example (Zeithaml & Bitner, 2004; Daly, 2004). We Classification of industries or businesses facilitate some generalizations about appropriate marketing strategies for each classified group. The service sector has multiple varieties of businesses ranging from airlines, telecommunications to professional services to even one person businesses such as body masseurs. This multiplicity makes categorizations of services more tedious than physical goods (Samiee, 1999). Lovelock and Yip (1996) classified services into various groups. One important grouping was - People Processing Services: These services necessitate the customer's presence while the service is being provided. Most of such services are aimed or applied to people and so their presence is essential. In order to buy, use and appreciate these services customers must be ready to spend time, co-operating with the service operation (Lovelock, Vandermerwe & Lewis, 1996). Typical examples of such services are medical services, passenger tran sport, hotels, fitness centers and beauticians. It is the marketing of these services which is radically different from marketing of physical products. The focus of this paper is the marketing efforts of one such service viz.Hotel services. We have chosen Marriott Hotel's marketing efforts and examine them for their focus and propriety. The entire paper has theoretical support covering various aspects of service marketing. Peculiarities of Services A service is an activity or benefit that one party can offer to another which is essentially intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything.Kotler (2000) demonstrates that in the goods continuum the distinction between products and services is far from clear as one traverses from tangibility to intangibility. The lack of distinction is particularly prominent mid way through this continuum where tangibility and intangibility may gel indistinguishably. However the fact remains that the tangibility dimension of the offering is a critical distinction and can identify a service offering. For instance, in a hotel stay once the stay has been completed nothing tangible is left with customer for preservation except experience, hence hotel stay is a typical person processing service offering. Such an offering may have tangible dimensions to it like the complementary food and products; however it may be seen that most of these are 'consumed' and do not survive the stay. Even if so me tangible offering e.g. souvenirs etc does survive the hotel stay; it does not emanate from the main service but is only incidental to the service offering. On the whole the services retain their intangible and perishable characters in most offerings. Chief characteristics associated with services can be stated as below: Intangibility - Services are not physical. They can neither be possessed nor seen or felt. The tangible indicators of service are few, if any, and they are not good enough indicators to reduce consumer uncertainty. This increases the work of service marketers who must diligently determine how to effectively communicate the service process and the final outcome the