Skip to main content

Product/Traditional Marketing vs Services Marketing

In the past, we were all so focused on the traditional type of marketing. Usually with its main focus on products, and of course, the most popular strategy in marketing are the 4 Ps and how you manage them.

The 4 Ps, they also mean product, price, promotion and place. I've been so familiar with that ever since my MKT1001 Principles of Marketing course in NUS. Never forgot about that.

In my basic marketing class, I was taught of how to position the product. Many models such as the Ansoff Matrix was applied. Everything was about the product: How you should design the product, whether its functional, how much one should price it, what advertising strategies are needed to promote the product and where you should sell the product. The main focus was... the product.

Then when I come to Copenhagen Business School and took my Advanced Service Marketing course, it is all about the service - the experience. Marketing has shifted into a new paradigm that involves the service. Everything that you're selling, complements the service experience (traditionally, it's the service that adds on to the product).

So there were many service models used in that course. Many of which I had difficulty finding information about through the web. Does this mean that the world still isn't aware that service marketing is the new era of change?

marketingteacher(dot)com has been a favourite website among my marketing friends. But under their section of services marketing, very few information was found as compared to other types of marketing. (I wonder why?)

Reality has shown us successful examples of the service experience, whose main focus, it not entirely on the product.

Starbucks, for one, sells coffee. Coffee, is a commodity. Nothing special, but a great perk-me-up at the beginning of the day. Yea, they have some cool mix of coffee, but you can find similar concoctions in various shopping malls nowadays, just that it's not slapped with the brand: Starbucks.

So what makes Starbucks so special? In the service paradigm, we would call it, the EXPERIENCE. It's all about the experience. The design of the shop, the baristas, the culture, the way they serve the coffee. It's just different from what it has been many years ago. For the price that they are selling, it's not about the quality of the coffee. The price you pay includes the experience of buying and enjoying a coffee at Starbucks. That's what you're paying for.

When you pay $500 for a meal at a restaurant, you would expect good food. But ONLY good food?

The service, the ambiance, the surroundings are all embedded within your expectations even before you step into the restaurant. In your expectations, you are paying for the experience.

Feel enlightened? Haha. But this is just the tip of the iceberg for this course. Advanced Service Marketing has given me another perspective on Marketing which makes me realize that goods are now complements of the experience, instead of the reverse. This... is the new paradigm.

**thoughts of a services marketing student**

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Tips to a Successful Blog Shop

Recently, or maybe not that recent, I've noticed that there has been an influx of blogshops. For the unsure, blogshops are just like any other shop, selling just about anything, just that it is set up online. Being an avid shopper, as well as one who spends time on the internet often, I have seen myself succumb to buying from blogshops. Many a time, my purchases are sweeeeet! I've not met any dead sellers or had any trouble with getting my items. But don't get me wrong... I still shop at retail shops. In fact, I love both :) Blog shops are fun to scroll through when I just don't have the time to step out (when exams are round the corner). Apart from being a buyer from online shops, I have also tried selling stuff by setting up my own blog shop. It didn't go so well though. Naturally, I prefer buying to selling stuff. Those who buy from blogshops, you may think that it is easy work, but it is a hell lot of work for the sellers. They have to choose the supplies from ...

Do you like Shark's Fin Soup?

There has always been talks about how fishermen leverage on the huge market for the consumption of sharks' fins and throw the dying shark back to the water after snipping off their fins, aka "live-finning". In JC, I've even watched a documentary endorsed by our very own Stephanie Sun (Sun Yan Zi) about the harm that this is causing on those sharks and other marine life. All these news left me a bit apprehensive and I even swore to lay off shark's fin. However, a few years ago, I remember hearing from my mum, after she had read an article on the Straits Times that we can eat shark's fin without guilt . An excerpt below: However, these sensational pictures obscure the fact that many within the industry are against such practices. The vast majority of fins in the market are taken from sharks after their death. This is the preliminary finding of a review made with the assistance of shark experts, fishermen, captains of big fishi...

Localization of Advertisements

We all know that localization is important. Because it will be more relevant to the people looking at the ad. You can even see that from online marketing. For example, I signed up for Yahoo! email using yahoo.com instead of yahoo.com.sg, just because I thought the "sg" didn't look as cool. However, the ads that I got were all related to the US, which I learnt how to ignore in time. The good news it: recently, I was given the choice to change the ads to Singapore based ones, which were definitely better and more interesting. We've also seen the localization of musicals, which I have written about in another blog. The example was a personal experience of mine while watching the musical "We Will Rock You", where parts of the actors' scripts were changed to suit the Singapore culture. Evidence of localization in "We will Rock You" - adapted from pegpeg.wordpress.com 1. When the lead “accidentally” knocked into one of the audience down stage, he sa...