This week, we are discussing service as a product. Most people, when they think about service as a product, automatically think about the obvious attributes of being non-tangible (No physical attributes, usually immediately used at the time of purchase, once used there is little to no residual evidence of the transaction, etc.) However, from a marketing standpoint, there are many unique factors marketers must control to successfully provide a service. Employees come with various degrees of service orientation. Service orientation is a collection of personal attributes that make a person more capable of providing good service. Those with high service orientation are said to have a natural need to please others, they naturally enjoy interacting with people, they are easy going and exhibit strong teamwork. Finding employees with high service orientation can be difficult. You will notice that the attributes are "natural", which doesn't they can't be learned, but they are attitudinal based making learning sometimes difficult. In 1992, Bitner introduced the concept of the servicescape. Servicescape analysis considers all the experiences a customer goes through when choosing to use a service and how it affects future patronage. These experiences are affected by landscaping, signage, artifacts (cultural items like Mexican flags in a Mexican food restaurant), music, floor plan, lighting, uniforms, and employee interactions. The way that these experiences are built and combined have been found to be important since Rosenbaum and Montoya discovered that customers were more prone to visit and then revisit service establishments if they felt a congruency between the establishment's servicescape and their own values and self-identity. Clearly there is a lot more to servicescapes than I discuss here, but this makes the point that marketing for services are more difficult than many folks understand. Chick-fil-a has been successful hiring and training employees to be the epitome of service oriented. Additionally, they have created a servicescape that many in the industry consider to be ideal. Employees, food and service environment work very well together. They have overtaken KFC to become the top chicken restaurant in the US and the fifth largest restaurant chain. Additionally, their culture is unconventional. Closing on Sundays, except when they have opened stores on Sunday to give out free food to victims of natural disasters. They tout "Christian values" as a company culture, which has created a unique challenge for Chick-fil-a and their competitors. Please follow this link and watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=px6aseNUlZw&feature=emb_logo Caution: This is not a morality analysis. Answer the questions only as they pertain to marketing strategy. Please be professional; as a marketer, you should always be objective in your analysis. Having read the topic and reviewed any appropriate associated resources, in a forum post, respond to the following discussion question(s) or prompt(s): Clearly, Chick-fil-a's strategy of opposing gay marriage is highly controversial and in some people's eyes, immoral. However, the result is an increase in sales. In similar cases, the sales increase is short-lived. Chick-fil-a's increases have stayed fairly steady. As a marketing professional told to analyze this phenomenon, what do you attribute this to? Do you believe that this is a situation where the combination of an excellent servicescape, high level employee service orientation and superior food creates a service brand so strong that it may be beyond controversy? Why