Services Marketing

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)

• 8. Decend work and economic growth
• 9. Industry, innovation and infrastructure
• 12. Responsible consumption and production

Objectives

This course aims to explore the marketing function in the service sector in order to give students a broad understanding of its specific practices.

Presents key concepts of managed services and the most common practices of service vendors.

Strategic services marketing includes tools for "listening" to the customer. It's about using these tools effectively. It's also about working on the service offering, the mix from services marketing, to services linked to products and how those services are experienced, and to the marketing of electronic services.

In recent decades, the business services sector has experienced strong and sustained growth and development in most of the most developed economies.

Service companies thrive in environments of fierce competition and significant international challenges, which in turn present tremendous opportunities.

In this context of rapid and constant evolution, managers must reinvent their role and develop innovative marketing strategies. The course aims to respond to the needs of service companies, for whom quality of experience and customer satisfaction, innovation, and internationalization are enormous challenges they must meet.

Services marketing gives high priority to the various specificities of services, the role of customer satisfaction, and the services marketing mix.

The course aims to satisfy this need by explaining the conceptual foundations of services marketing, presenting and analyzing its core concept and scope of application, and presenting the various analytical approaches applied through various trends.

The main objectives are:

• Understand the concepts, theories, and models that constitute the knowledge base of services marketing.
• Know, understand, and learn to manage the main challenges facing service companies.
• Apply the basic principles of services marketing to a wide variety of businesses.
• To familiarize students with relationship marketing and customer relationship management concepts.

Competencies

General skills

• Be a skilful innovator and entrepreneur.
• Be able to analyze and summarize.
• Be able to communicate orally and in the languages of the community.
• Be able to engage in criticism and self-criticism.
• Be able to make reasoned and coherent presentations.
• Be able to organize and plan.
• Be able to put basic knowledge of the profession into practice.
• Be able to use English effectively for academic and professional purposes.
• Be able to use information: seek, analyze, select, organize and exploit information effectively.
• Be able to work in a team and a multidisciplinary network.
• Be able to work in an international context.
• Be environmentally and socially aware at work.
• Be skilled at adapting to new situations.
• Be skilled in ICT use. Be an independent, competent operator in technological environments with specialized software.
• Have an ethical commitment at work, with respect for democratic principles and values.

Specific skills

• Be able to analyze and understand the operation of the market and its influence on the activities of a company.
• Be able to apply market research theory and instruments to implement business strategies.
• Be able to critically evaluate business situations, and manage an organization effectively and efficiently.
• Be able to define and implement strategies and business models with intensive ICT use, and in particular the internet, social networks and e-business systems.
• Be able to devise and implement business initiatives in global markets.
• Be able to devise and implement integrated marketing plans.
• Be able to lead and manage processes of change in organizations, in particular in contexts of innovation and crisis.
• Be able to learn and apply knowledge and skills to strategic marketing management.
• Be able to plan decisions and product management for commercial distribution channels.
• Display leadership skills in strategic decision-making in general, and in marketing and communication, in particular.
• Understand and be able to convey the importance of an organization's approach to the market and customer relations.

Basic skills

• Students can apply their knowledge to their work or vocation in a professional manner and have competencies typically demonstrated through drafting and defending arguments and solving problems in their field of study.

Core skills

• Be a critical thinker before knowledge in all its dimensions. Show intellectual, cultural and scientific curiosity and a commitment to professional rigor and quality.

Content

1. New perspectives on marketing in the service economy
2. Consumer behavior in the context of services
3. Positioning services in competitive markets
4. Service product development: elements core and complementary
5. Distribution of services through physical and electronic channels
6. Establishment of prices and implementation of revenue management
7. Service promotion and customer education
8. Design and management of service processes
9. Balance between demand and production capacity
10. Creating the service environment
11. People management for the benefit of service
12. Relationship management and building loyalty
13. Claims management and service recovery
14. Improving service quality and productivity
15. Fight for service leadership

Evaluation

It is evaluated through 3 elements:

• Fast work: A short, quick assignment to gain a closer look at the subject. It accounts for 20% of the final grade.
• Subject project: creation, management, development and presentation of a comprehensive services marketing project based on a briefing based on a real-life case. It accounts for 50% of the final grade.
• Final exam. It accounts for 30% of the final grade.

Automatic translation pending.

Methodology

Theoretical sessions are held and the case method is used.

Bibliography

Key references

• Christopher Lovelock, Jochen Wirtz (2009). Marketing de Servicios: Personas, Tecnología y Estrategia (7 ed.). Pearson.
• K. Douglas Hoffman, John E.G. Bateson (2020). Services Marketing: Concepts, Strategies, & Cases (5 ed.). South-Western College Publishing.
• Raymond P. Fisk, Stephen J. Grove, Joby John (2013). Services Marketing Interactive Approach (4 ed.). Cengage Learning.

Further reading

Teachers will provide complementary bibliography and compulsory reading throughout the course via the Virtual Campus.