AHMEDABAD UNIVERSITY

AMRUT MODY SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT

UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAMMES
2021-2022 MONSOON SEMESTER
ASSIGNMENT CHAPTER 10, 11 & 12 Section 1
MKT621 SERVICES MARKETING

Total Marks: 25 Time: 11.00-12.30 pm

Heema Patel
AU1713055

Answer any Five from the following.

1. Describe how the Mehrabian-Russell Stimulus-Response Model and Russell’s Model of

Affect explain consumer responses to a service environment.

Ans:

The Mehrabian-Russell Stimulus-Response Model:

The model states the conscious and unconscious perception and interpretation of the environment
influence how people feel in that setting. Similar environments can lead to very different
feelings and subsequent responses for each individual. For example, we may dislike being in a
crowded department store with lots of other customers, find ourselves unable to get what we
want as fast as we wish, and thus seek to avoid that environment.

In environmental-psychology research, the typical outcome variable studied is the “approach” or

“avoidance” of an environment whereas in services marketing, we can add a long list of
additional outcomes that a firm might want to manage, including how much time and money
people spend and how satisfied they are with the service experience after they have left the
firm’s premises.

Russell’s Model of Affect.

Russell separated the cognitive or thinking part of emotions from the two basic underlying
emotional dimensions. The emotion of anger due to a service failure could be described in terms
of high arousal and high displeasure, which would locate it in the distressing region in our
model. This is then combined with a cognitive attribution process. When a customer attributes a
service failure to the firm, the powerful cognitive attribution process feeds directly into high
arousal and displeasure. Similarly, most other emotions can be dissected into their cognitive and
affective components.

The strength of Russell’s Model of Affect is its simplicity, as it allows a direct assessment of
how customers feel when they are in the service environment. Therefore, firms can set targets for
the affective states they want their customers to be in. For example, a roller-coaster operator
wants its customers to feel excited. A spa may want customers to feel relaxed, a bank pleasant,
and so on.

2. What tools are available for aiding our understanding of customer responses and for guiding
the design and improvement of service environments?

Ans:

Tools for manager can use several tools to determine how customers use the servicescape, which
of its aspects irritate them, and which aspects they like. Some of these are as follows:

a. Keen observation of customers’ behaviour and responses to the service environment

by management, supervisors, branch managers, and front-line staff .

b. Feedback and ideas from front-line staff and customers using a variety of research
tools ranging from social media and suggestion boxes to focus groups and surveys.

c. Photo audit is a method of asking customers to take photographs of their service

experience that can be used later as a basis for further interviews of their experience
or included as part of a survey about the service experience.

d. Field experiments can be used to manipulate specific dimensions, like type of music
and scents, in an environment so that their effects can be observed. Experiments with
pictures, videos, or other ways to simulate real-world service environments, such as
virtual tours via computer, can be effectively used to examine the impact of changes
in design elements that cannot be easily manipulated in a field experiment.

e. Blueprinting or flowcharting can be extended to include the physical evidence in the

environment. Design elements and tangible cues can be documented as the customer
moves through each step of the service delivery process.

3. Identify the factors needed to make service teams successful in (a) an airline, (b) a
restaurant, and (c) a customer contact center. What are the factors that favor a strategy of
employee empowerment?

4. Describe the key components of the Service Talent Cycle.

Ans:

The figure below represents the Service Talent Cycle

Key components of the service talent cycle are:

a. Hire the right people

Employee satisfaction is necessary but not sufficient for having high-performing staff. The right
people are your most important asset whereas the wrong people are a liability. Firms should
therefore start by hiring the right people. This includes competing for applications from the best
employees in the labor market and selecting the best candidates from this pool for the
appropriate jobs to be filled.
To be able to select and hire the best people, a service firm must be able to encourage potential
employees to apply for a job with the firm and then accept its job offer in preference over others
for which service firms need to have a brand identity in the market. Potential candidates tend to
seek companies that are good to work for and have an image that’s congruent with their own
values and beliefs.

b. Enable your people

Firms need to enable their employees in order to make them capable enough to work on their full
potential which in the end will lead to the firm working at it’s full potential and getting 100% out
of the firm’s resources. If a firm has good people, investments in training and development can
yield outstanding results. Having a good career-development program for employees helps them
to feel that they are being valued and taken care of and motivates them to work to meet
customers’ needs. There are many aspects to be covered while training employees, like;
organizational culture, purpose and strategy, interpersonal and technical skills and product or
service knowledge.
Training has to result in observable changes in behaviour as learning is not only about becoming
smarter but also about changing behaviours and improving decision making skills. To achieve
this, practice and reinforcement are needed at both ends.
After being the preferred employer, selecting the right candidates, and training them well, the
next step is to empower the front line and encourage them to show proactive customer service
performance that can go beyond the call of duty.

c. Motivate and energize your people

Once a firm has hired the right people, trained them well, empowered them, and organized them
into effective service delivery teams, it needs to ensure that they are engaged and will deliver.
Staff performance is a function of ability and motivation. Effective hiring, training,
empowerment, and teams give a firm able people; and performance appraisal and reward systems
are key to motivating them. Service staff must get the message that they will be rewarded if they
provide best quality service. Motivating and rewarding strong service performers are some of the
most effective ways of retaining employees. Staff members quickly realize that those who get
promoted are truly outstanding service providers, and those who do not deliver at the customer
level get fired. However, service businesses often fail because they do not utilize the full range of
available rewards effectively.

5. What is the role of CRM in delivering a customer relationship strategy?

Ans:

There are numerous firms in the world with even more number of customers, that can be
contacted via various ways like, tellers, call-middle staff, self-service machines, apps and web
sites, at multiple geographic places. To maintain a standard customer visit experience from
firm’s end can be difficult. CRM makes it a bit easy for them by:

 Recording and capturing and storing and updating the info of patron on various contact
platforms.
 Multi-channel integration to provide a unified customer interface across many different
service delivery channels (e.g., from the website to the branch office)
 Offer a unified consumer interface that gives you customization and personalization.
They additionally allow the enterprise to higher recognize, phase, and tier its purchaser
base.
 Better target promotions and cross selling; and even implement churn alert structures that
signal if a customer is in chance of defecting.
When a consumer is provided by a standard experience one gets registered in the good books of
them and is often recalled in a positive manner with higher chances of retention.

6. Identify some key measures that can be used to create customer bonds and encourage long-
term relationships with customers.

Firms can construct closer ties with their customers by bundling and/or cross-promoting
offerings. For instance, banks want to promote as many financial products to an account or
household as possible. Once a circle of relatives has a checking account, credit score card,
savings account, secure deposit field, vehicle loan, mortgage, and so on with the identical bank,
the relationship is so deep that switching becomes a major exercise and is not likely except the
clients are extremely disillusioned with the financial institution.
Encouraging Loyalty through Monetary and non-monetary rewards: Few customers purchase
from the best one dealer. This is especially authentic in conditions where provider shipping
includes separate transactions rather than being continuous in nature. In many instances, clients
are loyal to numerous manufacturers however keep away from others. These rewards can be
financial and non-monetary in nature.
Building higher level bonds: One goal of loyalty rewards is to motivate clients to mix their
purchases with one provider or at least make it the desired issuer. However, rewards-based
loyalty packages are quite smooth for other providers to duplicate. As a result, they hardly ever
offer the form of sustained competitive advantage presented via higher-degree bonds. The 3
principal forms of better-degree bonds, which might be
(1) social
(2) customization
(3) structural bonds.

Other measures firms can adapt in order to create customer bonds and encourage long-term
relationships with customers are:
Reducing Customer Defections by;
 Analyze Customer Defections and Monitor Declining Accounts
 Address Key Churn Drivers
 Implement Effective Complaint Handling and Service Recovery Procedures
 Increase Switching Costs