Column 10 · Service, Value, and Experience · Era 2, Planning (1970s)
Services Marketing
Formulation, content · Major · Cluster IV, Customer and Brand Assets
Description
Shostack argued that services are intangible processes that cannot be marketed by translating product-based frameworks, proposed a molecular model of tangible and intangible elements, and called for services marketing as a field of its own.
Managerial Implications
Services are intangible, so customers judge them by tangible cues: people, facilities, process, and communication. Manage the evidence deliberately. Blueprint the service process to find where customers form impressions and where failures occur. Even product companies sell mostly service now; the implication is to design the experience around the delivery, not only the thing delivered.