Market Analysis

Services Marketing

1. Interview a manager/owner of a beauty parlor or a saloon. Discuss with that person the strategies she/he adopts to ensure customer satisfaction. Understand his/her perspective of service quality and how it is used as a strategic tool to enhance customer satisfaction. Please remember he/she may not be aware of the jargons we use frequently in the class room. Submit a report on your findings.

2. Visit two super markets/departmental stores/malls of your choice in Bangalore whose target customers are distinctly different. Observe the product range on display, layout, process, behavior of frontline personnel etc. Compare and contrast the seven elements of services marketing mix deployed by both the service outlets based on your observations.

3. Visit a bank/insurance company/investment services company of your choice. Observe their working. Interview the manager/supervisor. Collect whatever literature available (brochures/leaflets etc).Also visit the website of that organization. Based on this prepare a report on the provider gaps that are present and possible strategies to bridge them.

4. Visit a fast-food joint/full service restaurant of your choice. Observe their working by spending sufficient time that overlaps the lean and peak demand periods.

Interview the manager/ supervisor (obviously during the lean period) to ascertain

a. Capacity constraints they face

b. Patterns of demand (fluctuations during the day/week)

c. Strategies adopted by them to balance capacity and demand

Prepare a report on how demand and capacity are aligned along with suggested strategies for further fine tuning of their operations.

5. Visit any automobile service center of your choice. Interview the manager/frontline employees to ascertain

a. Hard standards monitored by them

b. Soft measures that are monitored

c. Whether the standards are customer defined or company developed

Based on your observations and interviews prepare a detailed report on the evolution, design and appropriateness of service standards and evaluate their efficacy on all the five dimensions of quality.

6. Choose a service you have availed recently. Develop a blue print for that service which should capture customer actions and actions by front-line and back stage employees, including support personnel.

Identify the areas, if any for improving the service delivery, based on this blue print and redesign the service accordingly.

7. Review a recent book on service operations/services marketing/service innovations etc. Apart from providing a brief summary of the book you have to come out with your critique on the relevance/usefulness of the concepts covered in the book, list out areas of disagreement and identify areas for improvement.

8. Submit a written analysis of the case “Park Royal Hotel: Positioning and Managing for Turn around”(Case number 16b of Essentials of Services Marketing, Hoffman &Bateson .Hard copies will be made available on request).Your analysis should cover all the five questions given at the end of the case.

9.Take any service sector of your choice(including medical
tourism, educational services,NGOs etc).Write a paper highlighting
a. The special characteristics of the sector
b.Segmentation
c.Marketing mix
d.Emerging trends/developments
e.Challenges and opportunities
f.Future strategies.

10. Take any educational instititute of your choice (including IBS).Do a
gaps analysis. Focus particularly on gap number 2.Suggest some hard
standards, soft standards and one time fixes to be adopted by the
institute to bridge this gap.

11. In chapter 16 (Page 506) of Z&B, criteria for evaluating the
effectiveness of advertisements have been spelt out. Choose any five
advertisements pertaining to services of your choice. Evaluate each of
these advertisements using these criteria. Critique these
advertisements with regard to their overall effectiveness/
ineffectiveness in bridging gap4.

12. Choose any two online (web based) services .Compare them with
regard to the presence or otherwise of provider gaps1to4.Suggest
suitable measures for improving the service delivery, based on your
analysis.