Service Management

This book is written recognizing the growing importance of services and the unique challenges faced by service managers. The management of service marketing function is more complex, the service product is more difficult to design and introducing marketing orientation into a firm dominated by operations is yet another forceful task. The growing opportunities of services sector influenced the various service organizations to adopt effective management and marketing as key words to make the entire organization customer oriented. New service products are evolved keeping in mind the needs of the customer and adopting innovative strategies in delivering quality service to customers. The applications of modern marketing principles in the service industry will no doubt enhance the quality of service, increase the level of efficiency, establish leadership and finally maximize profile.

The theme for the book is developed from various sources and organized in an identifiable patter to enable the reader to grasp the concepts, challenges and competitive issues of marketing services. The book begins concepts of marketing in services, explaining the seven Ps of service marketing with reference to strategic management in service business. It then analyses the customer participation in the service delivery. It then, moves on to explain the strategies used for planning effective utilization of capacity. While these theories and practices hold good in general, there is a requirement to translate and adopt these concepts appropriately to an industry or an individual firm. They can be applicable across a very broad spectrum of commercial and social activity. Thus the second part of the book describe the characteristics of various service industries and the marketing management principles adopted by them.