Questions and Answers of Principles Of Services Marketing

A leading, up‑market credit card brand is considering the use of incentives within a direct marketing strategy in order to acquire more new customers. Debate the pros and cons of this move.
How are relationships and direct marketing related?
Think about ‘relationships’ you have as a consumer. How would you describe your associations?
What problems have big firms had implementing CRM?
CRM is very important to marketers as it brings marketing to the board’s attention. Explain how marketers could act more strategically in future.
Insureco is a long established insurance company selling both life and general insurance products. It has a direct marketing unit with a large database of policyholders. However, the company
As the marketing manager for an airline, how would you sum up the strengths and weaknesses of the following channels: travel agent, direct via a call centre and classified adverts; and the Internet?
Examine the following websites:www.easyjet.comwww.amazon.co.ukwww.dell.comwww.priceline.comwww.tesco.comwww.ford.co.ukCompare and contrast the features of each, and comment on how each company has
Click onto Amazon. com. Look at the associates and member page features. Take a close look and then ask yourself why they may be doing this from a data-gathering point of view.Does this make Amazon.
Think of a business, leisure or pastime activity in which you may be involved at the moment.Using the tips you have picked up in this chapter, construct a Web based business idea for that sector, and
Take a look at the list of Internet features and benefits listed in the chapter. Which do you think will have the most profound effect in changing the way businesses operate? Explain why.
Imagine that you have decided to run a direct business on‑line. What features would you want to include in your website to attract as many customers as possible, and maximise your revenue? Before
Matt Harding is a computer games designer who, at the age of 23, moved from America to Australia, and then decided to travel the world before settling down. Being a programmer, he set up a website to
What is the difference between sales promotion and direct marketing?
What are the major factors to consider before using incentives to tempt purchase of a product in a direct marketing context?
Explain the difference between opt‑in and opt- out offers.
You are the marketing manager of a medium-sized chain of restaurants and are considering the use of a loyalty card to boost retention rates. However, there are a number of other leisure related
What is the role of a loyalty magazine in the retention strategy of a car manufacturer? Justify the expenditure versus alternative uses of the money.
A ‘wine direct’ operation is considering the use of premiums to stimulate take‑up of an offer.Recommend an appropriate choice, explaining your reasoning clearly.
In what circumstances should you never use the telephone for contacting prospects? Give examples of companies or situations where this is the case.
Critically analyse the relative strengths and weaknesses of direct mail and e‑mail.
A large regional car distributor with outlets in the Midlands is planning to introduce the telephone into its acquisition and retention programme. Draw up a proposal that explains: the possible use
‘Apart from some specialist applications, SMS will never be of much use for direct marketers.’Discuss the extent to which you agree with this statement.
A high street bank has set up a major calling centre in‑house, capable of taking inbound and making outbound calls. Outline how such an asset could form part of a direct marketing approach to
‘Direct mail works best when integrated with other marketing media.’ Evaluate this statement, outlining examples where it is and is not the case.
Bartlett’s Office Services is a full range supplier of office equipment. Until now it has used trade press advertising and a salesforce to operate, but is now considering the use of websites to
Imagine you are the director of a new theatre company, and you need to acquire new customers for the start of the season. Compare and contrast websites as a medium with direct mail and the telephone
The Xerox Work Centre Pro is a digital printer which needed to be launched across eight European markets. We needed to find an idea that was meaningful to all markets and able to cut through the
Legend has it that Michael Dell started out as a college student in the 1980s dismantling an early version IBM PC, putting it back together and realising that he could assemble and sell the thing for
In the summer of 1998, Campaign magazine announced that marketing executives at Heinz had withdrawn its direct marketing magazine in 1998 after deciding the Heinz brand communicated itself more
Comfy Bedrooms is a leading manufacturer of designer bedrooms. It visits individual households and offers proposals on bedroom design. The company needs a continual feed of sales leads. What
Compare and contrast the relative merits of door drops and inserts. Which would be the probable better bet for a pizza delivery firm advertising in a small town?
Draw up a relationship based contact strategy for a firm selling fax machine solutions to large businesses. Integrate your media solutions with the firm’s salesforce activities.
Bell’s Scotch Whisky has decided to start building up a database and intends using DRTV as its prime name generation medium. Outline the main benefits of DRTV to Bell’s, and explain what
A dog food supplier decides to use a door drop ‘knock and drop’ programme to distribute 2 million coupons nationwide. Explain what media alternatives it should have also considered, and assess
When Crocs wanted to increase their sales they used analysis of known behavioural attributes to gain an understanding of their customers and decide on a strategy for contacting them. The resulting
In the razor selling business, Gillette’s most cut-throat competition is itself. Dominating the market with a reported 85 per cent of sales, Gillette builds on its success with constantly evolving
You are shown a website and asked to identify it as either a brand-building advert, a direct-response ad, or a mixture of the two. What clues would you use from the advert itself to help you identify
Picking any Sunday colour supplement, go through the magazine and identify the objectives, target audience and creative principles of the direct-response adverts contained within.
Define positioning and branding, and explain why they are so important in creative considerations.
Outline what creative principles an international distress charity should take into account before e‑mailing prospective donors.
In what instances, if any, is it acceptable to break the direct marketing ‘rules’ of collective wisdom gathered in this chapter?
You have been asked to put together a creative execution of a direct-response ad for Stilton blue cheese, a relatively expensive cheese sometimes eaten on special occasions. Explain how you would
While the attendences of international one-day and test-match fixtures was as high as ever, the ordinary county cricket scene in England was not well supported. The profile of cricket followers was
Friends of the Earth is one of the highest profile charities in the UK. Barely a week passes without its name appearing in connection with its key campaigns including ‘industry and pollution’,
Why is testing so important to managers, and why is direct marketing better suited to testing than conventional marketing?
John Brown Supplies sells office equipment to small and medium-sized businesses in its locality. Each sale averages a gross margin of £30, and next year’s budget is £100,000. Use the seven-step
Most mail-order operations make very little use of market research as a tool to help them, preferring to rely on testing instead. If you were addressing them as a market researcher, what benefits of
City Products is a mobile phone retailer in London. It wants to test an offer to its own database using direct mail, and has calculated its break-even response rate to be 3. 0 percent. Previous
Merchants Financial Services has a customer base of 500,000 existing customers. In September, the marketing manager will mail the complete file but wants to test two new formats, two new creative
A university wants to recruit students for the next academic year, and wants to use press advertising for the first time to achieve this. The marketing manager decides to test two creative approaches
This comment by one of the fundraising team really summed up a worry for the fundraising department of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). Its traditional donor base (recruited and
The children’s nursery rhyme about Old MacDonald’s farm tells about the cow, the pig, the horse and the sheep that the farmer kept, but says nothing about farm services. Farming in Western
Discuss the relationship between GDP and the size of a nation’s services sector. Identify key causeand-effect relationships.
Critically assess the concept of the marketing mix. To what extent is an extended marketing mix ofseven Ps suitable for services, or is the extended mix itself too general, given the diversity of
Critically assess the extent to which the marketing of goods is different from the marketing of services.What does service dominant logic contribute to this debate?
Universities have engaged in ‘distance learning’ for many years, but from around 2010 a potentially game-changing development appeared in universities’ business environment — ‘MOOCs’, or
In the context of industrialization, critically discuss the concept of service productivity and methods used to measure it.
What is meant by service failure? Critically evaluate strategies that a fast-food restaurant can employ to recover from service failure.
Is it a pub? Is it a restaurant? Or is it theatre? The operators of T.G.I. Friday’s would hope that their customers see it as all three. For diners who tire of the scripted industrialized service
If you were a customer experience manager for a consumer services company, what issues would likely be on your agenda? What challenges would you need to address in implementing a programme to improve
Many analyses of the service encounter have drawn analogies with the theatre. Critically assess the extent to which this analogy is valid.
What is the value to services marketers of the concept of ‘flow’? Are there any important differences between application of the concept in online and offline environments? What ethical issues
Cycling has become increasingly popular in recent years, spurred on by many factors, including increasing concern for personal fitness, rising costs of running a car, gridlocked city streets, an
Identify and discuss factors that might influence a bank’s decision on whether to extend the opening hours of a branch. Suggest strategies that may cost-effectively satisfy customers’ need for
Critically evaluate the use of regression-based location decision models for a high-volume/low-value service provider of your choice.
Analyse the potential problems and opportunities for a dry-cleaning company seeking to expand through franchising.
Jane is 53 years old and lives with her cat in a northern suburb of Melbourne. She works full-time on the other side of town, so she prefers to drive rather than catch public transport. On the
Discuss the theoretical reasons underlying a phone company’s decision about whether to outsource some of its customer-facing tasks, and identify the likely advantages and disadvantages of a
Critically assess methods used by banks to develop ongoing relationships with their personal customers.
Using a service company’s loyalty scheme of your choice, critically assess its overall value to the company in developing profitable business.
The ways in which people from different countries buy cups of tea or coffee have been steeped in tradition. The English tearoom has been quintessentially English, usually providing homely
Identify the causes and consequences of risk in the services purchasing process. Critically assessmethods that an Internet service provider can use to overcome problems of buyers’ perceived risk.
Critically examine how the methods and effectiveness of market segmentation differ between a sellerof pre-recorded videos and the operator of a cinema.
To what extent do you think that buyer behaviour can be reduced to ‘rules’-based models applicableto a variety of service buying situations?
Internet banking is now taken for granted by many people, who may be relieved at not having to visit a bank branch or use a telephone call centre to undertake many banking transactions. Mobile
Tesco is widely recognized as a very successful brand. In 2012, it was estimated by Verdict Research that Tesco accounted for £1 in every £8 of all consumers’ retail spending in the UK, derived
Critically assess the role of brands for services organizations, using examples from a service sector of your choice.
Discuss the factors that might influence the positioning strategy of a regional chain of bars.
Critically examine the marketing advantages and disadvantages of small-and large-scale service providers in either the hospitality sector or the provision of local bus services.
A quick scan of any business telephone directory or an Internet search would reveal an interesting trend occurring in the marketing of service businesses. It is the idea of service companies
Analyse the reasons why the assessment of service quality can be conceptually and practically muchmore difficult than the measurement of quality for manufactured goods.
Critically assess the role of expectations in defining and measuring service quality.
Discuss the factors that a consumer service organization should take into account when deciding on thelevel of service quality to provide. Would the factors be different in a business-to-business
What happens when a company’s customers want access to its services 24 hours a day, and they want immediate availability, not a promise of availability tomorrow or sometime in the future? One
Critically assess the concept of ‘internal marketing’ in the context of the services sector. Do you thinkthat marketers have made a useful contribution to the issue of how to engage employees in
The perishability of services and variability of customer demand call for flexible working practices byfront-line employees in the services sector. Identify methods of improving employee flexibility
The service-profit chain portrays a linkage between employee and customer satisfaction. Criticallydiscuss the nature of this linkage and the problems of trying to quantify it.
The pricing of train fares in Britain has evolved over the past 40 years in response to changes in the operating environment of railways. As it has evolved from a centrally planned public service to
Discuss the problems facing a company seeking to set a launch price for an innovative new service that it has developed. Identify the problems and, using examples, suggest methods by which it could
Give examples to illustrate situations where price competitiveness may be largely absent in services markets. Critically evaluate the effects of a lack of price competition and what measures, if any,
Identify the reasons why marketers have become increasingly involved in the pricing of public-sector services. Discuss the social and ethical issues involved in public-sector pricing of services.
Yield management (or revenue management) can be seen in a wide variety of industries, such as airlines, hotels, car rentals, cruising, casinos, television advertising, apartment rentals, retailing
Identify the likely effects on a cinema chain of uneven patterns of customer demand. Critically assessthe methods that the cinema could use to overcome problems encountered.
Discuss the view that it is not so much variable pricing in itself that may undermine consumers’ trust in a brand, but the transparency of the ‘rules’ by which variable pricing is applied.
Given that yield-management methods require an accurate forecast of demand, critically assess methods by which an airline can forecast demand for flights across its route network for the following
Banks had never been popular among the general British public, but from 2008 their reputation fell to a new all-time low. Many media commentators, politicians and the public saw bankers in general as
Critically evaluate the differences between goods and services in the development of a communication strategy.
A good service should not need any promotion - reputation built on service quality should be sufficient to sell the service.’ Critically discuss this statement in the context of a service sector of
What additional factors need to be considered by a public-sector service organization developinga communication strategy for its service, compared with the factors facing a private-sectororganization?

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