Services Marketing and Management
Volume 18, Number 3 Article by Anand Kasturi September, 2006
Services Marketing and Management : By Audrey Gilmore, 2003, Response Books, New Delhi, pp 215, Price: Rs 350. :
The subject of services and their management has become increasingly more important for academics and practitioners over the last few decades. In both developing and developed economies, the component of services in the overall Gross Domestic Product is high and increasing. The largest chunk of employment also tends to be in services, rather than in manufacturing1.
Even organisations traditionally considered to be in manufacturing have a significant presence of hidden services within their operations – either in the form of supporting/ ancillary services to customers, and/or internal service between links in the supply chain.
With increased competition and decreased regulation across world markets, products by themselves are usually not enough to attract and retain customers. All organisations are, to varying extents, beginning to realise that the service they provide to their customers, even if bundled with a product, is a critical differentiating factor. Brown, Fisk and Bitner2 have described the evolution and legitimisation of services research in three stages: Crawling Out (pre-1980), Scurrying About (1980-85), and Walking Erect (1986-1994). The authors believe that the hot debates on the differences between services and products and the definition of services that characterised the ‘Crawling Out’ stage have diminished in scope and ferocity. However, the books under review show that these issues still remain alive today.
Services Marketing and Management is targeted at students and practitioners especially in the area of marketing. In Part 1 (there are three parts) this slim book provides an overview of some commonly accepted principles of managing services. All the important aspects are covered here – differences within services management, defining services and the services marketing mix, customer loyalty and retention marketing, and service quality and its measurement. In Part 2, the author explores these principles in the context of a few specific industries/ sectors – retail banking, tourism and hotel contexts in the for-profit sector, and museums and charities in the not-for-profit sector. The author then discusses a few topics not usually seen in services marketing books – organisation structures, management styles, management competencies and internal marketing. These four ‘people management’ areas are discussed in the context of services management.
In Part 3, the author covers a few ‘contemporary issues’ related to services management – for example, relationship marketing vs transaction marketing, service delivery/ customer experience management, the impact of technology, and people management.
Service Quality: Research Perspectives is a very different kind of book. It is aimed, the authors profess, not at the general mass of management students or managers seeking to make improvements, but at students interested in research and theory about service quality with a focus on consumer services. The topics therefore include selected streams of thinking and research from a variety of disciplines including marketing, organisational studies and operations management. The core area of the book, however, is that of Human Resource Management/ Organisational Behaviour, and researchers from that field form its primary audience.
The book begins with the usual introduction to services (how they are different, why they are important), then moves to the defining and measurement of service quality (including the ‘how’ aspects of focus groups, critical incidents and so on). The next chapter covers concepts and models related to areas like service operations, operations management, and customer involvement, and their relationship to service quality. Following this is a discussion on the ‘people management’ aspects – service climate, the linkage (or lack of it) between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction, and HRM. The final chapter, ‘Where Are We and Where Do We Go From Here?’, deals mainly with the need for service quality management to focus its attention on the area of people management, and suggests areas for future research.
The two books have different strengths, but there are also many similarities. Both offer a wide range of references for research students to explore. Standard textbooks tend to focus more on descriptions of the various aspects of service management; these two books are rich in reviews and discussion of relevant literature.
Both books leave the reader with some questions and concerns related to contemporary management of services/ service quality. Along with everything else related to business, the area of services management is also seeing many rapid changes, and both researchers and practitioners are facing new challenges continuously. Both books succeed in drawing on existing bodies of knowledge, and yet going beyond. They leave with the reader – whether researcher, student, or practitioner – with many important questions and suggestions for the future.
Both books offer meaningful lenses through which to view services management. In Services Management and Marketing, Gilmore’s discussion on the specific contexts of retail banking, tourism and hotels will be useful to both practitioners and students from these important industry areas, as well as related ones. Services management textbooks and other literature usually focus on the principles, and leave the issue of application to the reader. Given the intangibility and subjectivity of services, this gap is often not bridged effectively. Services are easily talked about; they are almost commonsensical; most vision statements of organisations will have ‘customer satisfaction’ featuring somewhere – and yet customer dissatisfaction is widespread! One of the reasons is the lack of application focus – and Gilmore’s book offers a way to fix this problem.>
While Schneider and White in Service Quality: Research Perspectives don’t get into specific industry areas, they offer in-depth summaries of important research along key threads of service quality management.
For teachers, these approaches provide alternatives to using cases. Students may or may not get the essential ‘nuggets’ in their analysis/ discussions of a case; the focused practical/ research frameworks offered in these two books will help improve the quality of any analysis and solution-finding exercise.
Finally, both books have ventured into relatively uncharted waters. In Services Marketing and Management, the coverage of the not-for-profit sector deserves mention. Management books, and management education in general, focus overly on the commercial, for-profit sectors, while the not-for-profit sector’s needs, which are different, and yet just as important, usually remain ignored. Managers at NGOs will surely find this section in Gilmore’s book useful; she covers a range of marketing-related issues in the management of charities. In addition, she uses the sector as a context to illustrate many other points in the book – with examples, cases and discussion/ questions.
The subject of ‘people management’ and its relevance in services management has received relatively less attention than areas such as marketing and operations – especially in practice. Schneider and White’s discussion on the ways that service quality can be introduced/ integrated into the HRM/ OB field is rich with implications for both researchers and practitioners.
Interestingly, Gilmore approaches the same issue, but from different angles, in her chapters on ‘Organisational Influences on Services Marketing’, ‘Internal Marketing’, and ‘Management Styles’ and ‘Management Competencies’. While most texts on services marketing include some material on people management, Gilmore’s discussions venture beyond obvious areas such as the frontline employee, interaction with customers, and employee motivation/ empowerment.
Both books may be criticised more for their errors of omission than those of commission. Gilmore’s discussions on the principles of services management do not mention some important, well-known people/ models/ concepts in the field. For example, Christopher Lovelock’s name and ideas are totally absent, even when discussing aspects of services marketing to which he has directly contributed. Again, while she discusses the very important area of customer loyalty, Gilmore makes no mention of Earl Sasser and Frederick Reichheld and their models/ arguments related to loyalty; and on the subject of services marketing related to hotels, Gilmore does not cover the topic ‘yield management’, which is arguably one of the most crucial areas for management decision-making in that industry.
The criticism against Service Quality: Research Perspectives is more subtle. Bennis and O’Toole have strongly argued that the laboratories of business research are the corporations; and for business schools (and research) to be effective, they must move out of the zone of ‘scientific’ research into the area of practical application. Although Schneider and White have clarified that their book is not meant for practising managers, it is a pity that their comprehensively put-together models and ideas related to service quality are not extended beyond the orientation of ‘pure research’ into the vibrant area of practice. And yet, any practitioner with just a little interest in research will be able to extract a raft of opportunities from Service Quality: Research Perspectives.
In summary, the two books offer brief yet interesting insights into some important aspects of services and their quality, marketing and management. Importantly, both books are slim! The authors manage to pack an impressive breadth of topics along with depth of discussion in these diminutive books.
The books assume a certain pre-knowledge of the area; they will be truly appreciated by the reader who already has a grip on the basic principles of service management and seeks deeper insights. Students and researchers will gain from both books, since they provide a large number of references and linkages with related research and literature. Teachers can use both books effectively, after the introductions to the subject are over. Practitioners – even from not-for-profit sectors that provide service of one form or another – can benefit from Services Marketing and Management; to get the maximum out of Service Quality: Research Perspectives they must be able to leverage the rich material presented, and thus go beyond it to focus on the implications the book has for them at work.
References and Notes
- The statistics are available from a number of sources – some of them are cited by Schneider and White. For Indian data, see Mukhopadhyay, Jiban K, and Sarita Aiyar, 2000, Statistical Outline of India: 2000 – 2001, Tata Services Limited, Mumbai.
- Brown, Stephen W, Raymond P Fisk, and Mary Jo Bitner, 1994, ‘The Development and Emergence of Services Marketing Thought’, International Journal of Service Industry Management, Vol 5 No 1, pp 21-48.
- Bennis, Warren G, and John O’Toole, 2005, ‘How Business Schools Lost Their Way’, Harvard Business Review, May, pp 96-104.
Reprint No