Marketing is no longer a discipline limited to products (tangible) selling and creation of customer satisfaction. Over the past few decades, with massive advancements sweeping the sectoral changes all across has not left marketing prevail untouched. The basic nature of the whole domain has been witnessed to have undergone some major changes and hopefully for the benefit of all stakeholders. It can be easily assessed from observing the environment and routine activities happening around that the demand for services is showing an upward trend. Marketing can’t simply focus on product development or innovation; in order to survive in any industry, the marketer now needs to render better services. The significance of services has increased manifold to an extent that even if a customer demands for a tangible goods, there are other associated elements that can affect his satisfaction or experience pertaining to that physical good. The various associated elements apart from the product features nd benefits (traditional view) that lead to customer delight includes physical evidence, process, support services and several peripherals. Forinstance, visit to a restaurant or an eating joint doesn’t simply concern the taste of the food in a customer’s view. It is also accompanied by the interaction with the front end employee, the ambience, aesthetics involved, level of hygiene maintained along with several other factors. This implies that the entire nature of marketing is gradually changing and services are indispensable as they would have to be rendered either in pure or additive form. It is applicable in all industries without exception. Yet, the level of significance laid down on service might vary dependent upon the nature of service demanded or situation or purchase along with the environmental factors. This can be understood from the fact that irrespective of the successful running of pharmaceutical companies providing all varieties of medicines, the relevance of the medical services in the form of diagnosis and treatments can’t be denied. Pharmaceutical industry needs the support of the medical service sector in order to run as it is actually the medical practitioners who are directly dealing with the patients or masses at large and it is as per their directions that the patients are purchasing medicines or undergoing hospitalization/surgeries. Another critical element which emerges out of this discussion is the increased level of responsibility of these marketers towards their customers. Marketers from the service sector especially for the ones which are based on people-processes have a major dependency on the way service is provided to the customer. And, when these services are so critical and rare in nature, the onus for performing such services with elements of reliability and responsiveness becomes extremely important. This leads to relating the services with various other dimensions too that can be referred to as service quality. In simple words, service quality can be defined as the various parameters or dimensions on which the customers assess the services being provided to them by the marketer. Some of the popular dimensions of service quality based on consumer behavior researchare reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and tangibles. All these variables or components together are also referred to as the ‘rater’ model. It is also known as the SERVQUAL model in service marketing. The customer might not be able to explicitly measure his satisfaction on these parameters but when asked to rate the services on a stipulated scale for the given dimensions, service quality can be measured. It is an unavoidable area of study for the service marketers in every industry as the measure of service quality provides a realistic picture to the service providers regarding the factors or dimensions which are of relative higher significance to the customers and what are the customers’ focus areas. If analyzed and executed effectively, this set of information can be lead to organizational efficiency through better strategy formulation along with application due to informed decision-making. The results of service quality aids the marketer in understanding the service gaps existing at various levels and hence, it would lead to directing efforts in the right direction resulting in effective goals achievement and preventing waste of efforts and resources. This indeed is a tool of implementing efficient management in an organization especially when it is dealing with core services. The inputs gained from any service quality research would be useful for the marketing as a self-appraisal tool in terms of customer satisfaction and company’s performance from the customer’s perspective. Itclearly supports the theory that something which is not measured.. Is not managed well and vice-versa. Thus, the relevance of service quality is a concept of huge utility to the service marketer of any industry. All the successful businesses whether operating at a small scale or large scale. One common feature of all these business firms is that they keep the customer interests foremostin order to create customer delight by examining even the minutest details and leaving no opportunity to satisfy them.
Dr. Tanvi Gupta
Post: Asstt. Prof.
