Services Marketing - Alternative View

Alternative View

A recently proposed alternative view is that services involve a form of rental through which customers can obtain benefits. What customers value and are willing to pay for are desired experiences and solutions. The term, rent, can be used as a general term to describe payment made for use of something or access to skills and expertise, facilities or networks (usually for a defined period of time), instead of buying it outright (which is not even possible in many instances).

There are five broad categories within the non-ownership framework

1. Rented goods services: These services enable customers to obtain the temporary right to use a physical good that they prefer not to own (e.g. boats, costumes)
2. Defined space and place rentals: These services obtain use of a defined portion of a larger space in a building, vehicle or other area which can be an end in its own right (e.g. storage container in a warehouse) or simply a means to an end (e.g. table in a restaurant, seat in an aircraft)
3. Labor and expertise rental: People are hired to perform work that customers either choose not to do for themselves (e.g. cleaning the house) or are unable to do due to the lack of expertise, tools and skills (e.g. car repairs, surgery)
4. Access to shared physical environments: These environments can be indoors or outdoors where customers rent the right to share the use of the environment (e.g. museums, theme parks, gyms, golf courses).
5. Access to and usage of systems and networks: Customers rent the right to participate in a specified network such as telecommunications, utilities, banking or insurance, with different fees for varying levels of access

In defining service marketing we can modify the definition of American Marketing Association on Marketing by adding the following changes. Services Marketing is an organisational function and a set of process for identifying or creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing Customer relationship in a way that benefit the organisation and stake holders.