Questions and Answers of Services Marketing Concepts

Do you think customers might take advantage of this guarantee and “stage” service failures to invoke the guarantee? If yes, how could Accellion minimize potential cheating on its guarantee?
Will the guarantee be successful in creating a culture for service excellence within Accellion? What else may be needed for achieving such a culture?
Review the four topics on Eric Langshur’s draft of the agenda for the board meeting. As a board member, what position would you take on each topic and why?
As a participant in the Task Force on Member Communications Strategy, what actions would you recommend to the board?
What is a new member potentially worth to MAS? (Hint: Use customer lifetime value analysis.) Beyond the financial issue, why is membership important to MAS?
How is MAS currently positioned against other environmental organizations in Massachusetts?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the Hilton HHonors program from the standpoints of:a. Hilton Hotels Corp and Hilton Internationalb. member properties (franchised hotels)c. guestsd. corporate
What action do you recommend for filling the head CSR position?
Compare and contrast the jobs of CAR and CSR. How important is each (a) to bank operations and (b) to customer satisfaction?
Consider the pricing structure of the gondolas. What sort of changes would you recommend? How would customers react? What revenue impact would your recommendations have?
American Airlines spends hundreds of millions of dollars on GDS fees. In the end, who is paying for these costs? How are the economic costs paid for in this channel?
American Airlines could distribute directly via the Internet and its own call centers in a highly cost-effective manner. Why then should American Airlines sell via travel agents at all?
What general lessons can be learned from Giordano for other major clothing retailers in your country?
Could Giordano transfer its key success factors to new markets as it expanded both in Asia and the other parts of the world?
What are Giordano’s key success factors and sources of competitive advantage?Are its competitive advantages sustainable, and how would they develop in the future?
Describe and evaluate Giordano’s current positioning strategy. Should Giordano reposition itself against its competitors in its current and new markets, and should it have different positioning
Describe and evaluate Giordano’s product, business and corporate strategies.
Discuss whether the brand portfolio of Banyan Tree and Angsana, as well as the product portfolio of beach resorts and city hotels, spas, galleries, and museum shops fit as a family. What are your
What advice would you give to Carol on future strategy for the business?
Based on all you’ve learned working throughout this book, what do you believe are the key drivers of success for service organizations? Try and develop an integrative causal model that explains the
Profile an individual whose leadership skills have played a significant role in the success of a service organization, identifying personal characteristics you consider important.
What is the role of senior management in moving a firm toward consistently delivering service excellence?
Contrast the roles of marketing, operations, and human resources in (1) a gas station chain, (2) a Webbased brokerage firm, and (3) an insurance company.
Analyze a service firm along the key aspects of the Service-Profit Chain. Assess how well the firm is performing at the various components of the Service-Profit Chain, and make specific suggestions
What is the relationship among leadership, climate, and culture?
Why is role modeling a desirable quality in leaders?
“Exemplary turnaround leaders understand the powerful, unifying effect of focusing on customers.”Comment on this statement. Is focusing on customers more likely to have a unifying effect within a
What is meant by transformational leadership?Explain how the challenges differ between an organization undergoing evolutionary change and one that requires a turnaround.
What is the difference between leadership and management? Illustrate with examples.
What are the causes of tension among the marketing, operations, and human resource functions? Provide specific examples of how these tensions might vary from one service industry to another.
Why do the marketing, operations, and human resource management functions need to be closely coordinated in service organizations?
Supporters of the Service-Profit Chain argue that strong links connect employee satisfaction and loyalty, service quality and productivity, value, and customer satisfaction and loyalty. Do you think
Understand the relationship between service leadership, culture, and climate.
Understand the role leaders, at all levels within their organization, play in building service success.
Appreciate the qualities needed in effective leaders in service firms.
Explain what human leadership involves in a services context.
Understand what actions are required to move a service firm from service loser to service leader.
Be familiar with the four levels of service performance.
Appreciate that the marketing, operations, and human resource management functions need to be closely integrated in service businesses, and understand how this can be achieved.
Do a literature search, and identify the critical factors for a successful implementation of ISO 9000, the Malcolm-Baldrige Model, and Six Sigma in service firms. (Refer to the Appendix 14.3)
Collect a few customer feedback forms and tools(customer feedback cards, questionnaires, and online forms), and explain how the information gathered with those tools can be used to achieve the main
How would you define “excellent service quality”for an enquiry/information service provided by your phone or electricity company? Call a service organization, and go through a service experience
How do concepts such as TQM, ISO 9000, MalcolmBaldrige Approach, and Six Sigma relate to managing and improving service quality and productivity?(Refer to the appendix)Application Exercises
What are the key tools for improving service productivity?
Understand how TQM, ISO 9000, the Malcolm-Baldrige Approach, and Six Sigma relate to managing and improving service quality and productivity
Be familiar with the key methods to improve service productivity.
Know how to define and measure service productivity.
Appreciate the financial implications of quality improvements.
Understand important tools to analyze service problems.
Be familiar with key customer feedback collection tools.
Explain the key objectives of effective customer feedback systems.
Understand the difference between hard and soft measures of service quality.
Know how to use the gaps model for diagnosing and addressing service quality problems.
Be familiar with the different perspectives and dimensions of service quality.
Understand how quality and productivity relate to each other in a services context.
Design an effective service guarantee for a service with high perceived risk. Explain (a) why and how your guarantee would reduce perceived risk of potential customers and (b) why current customers
What can a firm do to make it easy for dissatisfied customers to complain?
Why don’t many more unhappy customers complain? And what do customers expect the firm to do once they filed a complaint?
Be familiar with the guidelines for frontline employees on how to One of the surest signs of a bad or declining relationship is the absence of complaints from the customer. Nobody is ever that
Recognize the actions customers may take in response to service failures.
Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of two frequent user programs, each one from a different service industry. Assess how each program could be improved further.
Again, what conclusions do you draw about yourself and the firms in Exercise 3? How would each of these firms potentially avoid your defection? What could each of these firms do to avoid defections
Identify two service businesses you used several times but have now ceased to patronize (or plan to stop patronizing soon) because you were dissatisfied. Complete the sentence: “I stopped using (or
Identify three service businesses you patronize on a regular basis. For each business, complete the following sentence: “I am loyal to this business because. . .”
What are the arguments for spending money to keep existing customers loyal?
What is tiering of services? Explain why it is used and its implications for firms and their customers.
Explain what is meant by a customer portfolio. How should a firm decide the most appropriate mix of customers to have?
Understand the part played by customer relationship management (CRM) systems in delivering customized services and building loyalty
Explain the different types of marketing relating to the customerfirm relationship and understand how membership relationships can be created.
As a human resources manager, which issues do you see as most likely to create boundary spanning problems for employees in a customer contact center at a major Internet service provider? Select four
Think of two organizations you are familiar with, one that has a very good and one that has a very poor service culture. Describe the factors that contributed to shaping those organizational
Consider the following jobs: emergency department nurse, bill collector, computer repair technician, supermarket cashier, dentist, kindergarten teacher, prosecuting attorney, server in a family
How can frontline employees be effectively motivated to deliver service excellence and productivity?
List five ways in which investment in hiring and selection, training, and ongoing motivation of employees will pay dividends in customer satisfaction for such organizations as (a) a restaurant, (b)
What are the key barriers for firms to break the cycle of failure and move into the cycle of success? And how should an organization trapped in the cycle of mediocrity proceed?
There is a trend of service delivery moving from high contact to low contact. Are service employees still important in low-contact services? Explain your answer.
Understand the role of service leadership and culture in developing people for service advantage.
Know how to motivate and energize service employees so they will deliver service excellence and productivity.
Understand the key elements of the Service Talent Cycle and know how to get HR right in service firms.
Understand the factors that make the work of frontline staff demanding, challenging, and often difficult.
Explain why service employees are crucially important to the success of a firm.
With a digital camera, conduct an environmental audit of a specific servicescape. Photograph examples of excellent and very poor design features. Develop concrete suggestions for how this environment
Visit a self-service environment, and analyze how the design dimensions guide you through the service process. What do you find most effective, and what seems least effective? How could that
Select a bad and a good waiting experience, and contrast the two situations with respect to the aesthetics of the surroundings, diversions, and other people waiting.
Visit a service environment, and have a detailed look around. Experience the environment, and try to feel how the various design parameters shape what you feel and how you behave in that setting.
Identify firms from three different service industries where the service environment is a crucial part of the overall value proposition. Analyze and explain in detail the value delivered by the
Why can it happen that different customers and service staff respond vastly differently to the same service environment?
What is the relationship or link between the Russell Model of Affect and the servicescape model?
Compare and contrast the strategic and functional roles of service environments within a service organization.
Understand the roles of spatial layout and functionality.
Understand the key ambient conditions and their effects on customers.
Know the dimensions of the service environment.
Know the theoretical underpinning from environmental psychology that helps us to understand customer as well as employee responses to service environments.
Be familiar with the data requirements for designing effective strategies to manage demand and capacity
Know how to inventory demand through reservations systems.
Know how to inventory demand through waiting lines and queuing systems.
Use marketing mix elements to smooth out fluctuations in demand.
Recognize that demand varies by segment, and predict segmentspecific variations in demand and their causes.
Use capacity management techniques to match variations in demand.
Understand what is meant by“capacity” in a service context.

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