Service Product Meaning, Package and Designing

Table of Content:-

1. Meaning of Service Product
2. Service Product Package
3. Designing the Service Product Package

Meaning of Service Product

Physical goods and services can be looked at in terms of benefits offered along with their features and specific attributes associated with those benefits. The concept of services is built upon the notion that tangible service offerings (or even physical products) can be segmented into various levels, each catering to meet customer needs, delivering advantages, and encompassing distinctive features.

The service component in an offer made by a firm implies the performance that the customer buys. It is a carefully orchestrated series of events and activities strategically designed by the marketer to provide the desired outcome. Service is essentially a set of activities, deeds or performances. Generally, organizations program and implement these processes. It is a predetermined series of activities.

For example, a hotel may seek to provide friendly service to customers by designing a service product that ensures warmth at each point of interaction the customer has with the staff.

Service Product Package

The service product does not necessarily mean only the physical product per se. A service product has to include a complete package of assorted activities that are associated with the delivery of services to the best customer satisfaction. This service package includes the intangible service that the customer buys in the shape of the ambience of the hotel or the taste of the food served to him in a restaurant. A service product could also denote the tangible and physical product sold to the customer. It will then include along with the use of that product, the associated services as per the expectation of the customer.

For example, when a customer buys a facial treatment at a beauty parlour he/she may be buying healthy and good-looking skin on his face but along with it he/she has to buy the beauty treatment products too to avail the services of the beauty clinic. Thus, a service product may mean different things at different times and to different people. The services product services product to us however should mean here the provision of commercial services to fulfil the services need of the customers falling into different categories.

Designing the Service Product Package

The service product due to its intangible nature poses numerous challenges for marketers. A marketer has to deliver the intangible and yet convince the receptor that he/she has delivered a value as per his expectations. The marketer has to ensure that the process of delivery adopted and the people involved in the delivery meet the expectations of the customer. The marketer has to evolve a system that fully integrates the intangibles with the tangible components of the service.

This is similar to not only providing good food by the restaurant, but the food must be as per the taste of the customer, the ambience provided should please the customer and simultaneously the customer must never feel let down by having taken food at such a restaurant. Marketers need to address customers’ concrete food requirements while also aligning them with intangible desires such as appetite, taste preferences, ambience, status, and the post-purchase sense of having received the utmost satisfaction.

Managing the service offering requires the following steps:

1. Developing the Service Concept
2. Developing Base Service Package
3. Developing an Augmented Service Offering
4. Managing Image and Communication

Developing the Service Concept

The consumer benefit concept, service concept, service offer, and service delivery system are all integral components of a service product.  These elements play a major role in shaping the overall experience for customers. The consumer benefit concept delineates the advantages that individuals gain from a specific educational package, while the service concept encompasses the overarching benefit that the service organization provides through the education offer’s design. The concept of marketing orientation involves shaping the offer according to the identified sought-after consumer benefits.

According to Gronroos, it is important to define the service concept at two levels. The general service concept refers to the essential utility being offered (a computer training organisation offers a solution to the problem of keeping up-to-date information flows within the organisation) while at the core of the service offer a range of specialized packages (software training packages for bank employees).

The service concept refers to the perception of service held by customers, employees, and managers. It describes:

1. The service benefits and outcomes offered to the customers,
2. The way that the employees deliver the service, and
3. It encompasses the strategic alignment in services conceived by the managers.

The process of developing a service concept requires transforming a service idea into a well-defined statement of a service concept. A typical concept statement includes a description of problems or needs that potential customers may encounter. It also outlines the reasons behind the introduction of a new service, highlights its distinctive features and benefits, and provides a compelling rationale for its purchase.

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Developing a Basic Service Package

The basic service package outlines a comprehensive range of services necessary to fulfil customers’ needs within their respective target markets. This package, then, determines what customers receive from the organisation. A well-developed basic package ensures the inclusion of necessary outcome-related features and guarantees a good technical quality of the outcome. The way the service process functions can undermine even an excellent service package.

Therefore, it is important to note that a good service package does not mean that the said service is good, or even acceptable. According to the quality models of services, “the service production and delivery process, particularly the customer perception of the buyer-seller interactions or the service encounter, is an integral part of the service.” This is why service marketers need to extend the basic service package into an augmented service offering before explaining the service as an offering.

There are two groups of services:

1. Core services, and
2. Supplementary services.

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