Which of the following statements about predicted service is TRUE?
A. If the consumer predicts good service, the level of adequate service is likely to be
higher than if he or she predicted poor service
B. Predicted service estimates the level of service for all future transactions
C. With no more than three inputs, a consumer can determine the future predicted
service of nearly all types of service providers on all occasions
D. Predicted service is unaffected by situational factors or personal needs
E. Predicted service is calculated by the service provider not the customer
The sources of customer expectations are all controlled by the service provider.
Prestige pricing is a special form of cost-plus pricing by service marketers who offer
some sort of status service like providing cold storage for a mink coat or maintenance
for a Rolls Royce.
Service quality, like advertising, has a cumulative effect on a company’s profit.
Studies of service guarantees indicate their existence has no impact on employee
morale.
Research done by a financial services company asked the respondents to describe the
company using the brand name of an automobile. This is obviously an example of
quantitative research.
Price visibility does not influence reference prices when selecting a stockbroker.
The seven elements of the marketing mix for services are product, promotion, place,
price, process, progress and people.
Service quality can help companies attract more and better customers to the business
through offensive marketing.
Signs, symbols and artifacts should not be expected to create first impressions or
communicate service concepts.
In a supermarket, customers who have only a few items will wait longer than
customers who have a full cart of groceries because supermarkets use a differentiating
queue.
The lack of inventory capability in services is due to the service characteristic of
intangibility.
The primary capacity constraint on service production for an interior decorator is time.
The process of managing multiple and sometimes conflicting market segments is
known as yield management.
By renting its 21 executive suites for slumber parties on the weekend, the Hyatt
Regency Reston in Reston, Virginia is shifting demand to match capacity by varying its
service offering.
An important trend in services research is to measure only the negative consequences of
service quality and ignore the positive because it does not need improvement.
The last step of building a service blueprint is to add the physical evidence of the
service.
The first rule of service quality is to do it right the first time.
Inappropriate physical evidence can result in provider gap 2.
Process reengineering is one of the easiest ways to develop service-oriented internal
processes.
In a sense, the servicescape can be viewed as nonverbal communications.
SERVQUAL is a type of requirements research.
If customer waits are common, a first step is to analyze the operational processes to
remove any inefficiencies.
Since customers naturally look for price anchors, as well as familiar services, against
which to judge focal services, price framing is an appropriate strategy to use for pricing
many types of services.
Service marketing researchers all agree that the terms satisfaction and quality are
interchangeable.
A concert production that charges less for matinee shows than for its evening
performances is shifting its demand to match capacity by differentiating on price.
“Improving skills among contact employees” is an effective customer-defined service
standard.
Promotional pricing may be less meaningful for services, for which price anchors do
not exist, than for goods, for which they do.
Lead user research brings in customers who are opinion leaders or innovators and asks
them what requirements existing products or services are not currently meeting.
“Answering questions promptly” would be an example of a hard customer-defined
standard.
Many companies find themselves in the position of having to manage expectations
downward.
“Having more room in your airplane seat” would be an example of a soft
customer-defined standard.
When in doubt as to how to treat a customer who has not been provided a service as
promised, the service provider should always try to overcompensate that customer.
Research indicates that if an individual has to wait longer than eight seconds for an
Internet site to download, then he or she will likely abandon plans to visit the site and
move on to another site. In terms of the service quality dimensions that are used to
evaluate web sites, a site that took longer than eight seconds to download would be
lacking in _________.
A. Assurance
B. Reliability
C. Fulfillment
D. Empathy
E. Efficiency
Because Virginia’s brother died while he was cashing a check at the local bank,
Virginia has always hated any type of banking. When it became necessary for her to go
to the bank to empty her brother’s safe deposit box, she complained the whole time
about the inept service, the too-cold air conditioning and the poor parking. Virginia’s
customer satisfaction was adversely influenced by:
A. Poor service quality
B. Her perception of service quality
C. Her emotional state
D. Her attributions for service success
E. Her perception of equity
Instead of having a hair stylist color her hair, Chandris prefers to dye her own hair.
Which of the following roles is Chandris performing?
A. Customer mix manager
B. Competitor
C. Productive resource
D. Contributor to quality and satisfaction
E. Recruiter
The Canfields want to landscape their 15-acre yard. The couple plans an herb garden in
back that will lead to an English cottage garden. In the west side yard, they are planning
on a Japanese garden and a rose garden will be located in the east side yard. They have
hired a landscaper to draw the design and to do the actual planning. The Canfields want
input on the landscaping. They have asked the landscaper to set up several points where
they can give their inputs, correct anything they do not like and make changes before
the plan is finalized. Most landscapers would be bothered with this seeming
interference, but the landscaper the Canfields chose has used this method for years as a
way to measure his company’s customer service performance. The landscaper is using a
method of gathering customer information most similar to which of the following
methods?
A. Trailer calls
B. Market-oriented ethnography
C. Process checkpoint evaluations
D. Requirements research
E. Critical incidents studies
Service companies can close provider gap 3 by doing any of the following EXCEPT:
A. Teaching customers to perform their roles appropriately
B. Synchronizing supply and demand
C. Motivating intermediaries to meet company service goals
D. Empowering employees
E. Developing customer-defined service standards
When a local Taco Bell extended its operating hours on Friday and Saturday nights to
24-hour service to satisfy its college market, it was instituting a(n):
A. Compliant standard
B. Concrete substitution
C. Internal anchor
D. One-time fix
E. Quick solution
Historically, the Japanese have had poor dental care. As part of their beauty regimen,
the Japanese do have a habit of lightening and whitening their skin. Teethart has
developed “tooth manicure” salons, which allow Japanese to match their teeth
coloration to their skin. Each treatment takes place in a small booth, which contains an
ergonomically-designed chair, muted lights and New Age-style music. The walls are
painted calming shade of blues and greens. Teethart uses the _____ element of its
service to reduce stress associated with dental procedures.
A. Product
B. Production
C. Process
D. Place
E. Physical evidence
Because they are viewed as _____________ by customers, natural disasters such as
tornadoes or hurricanes may lower service expectations for services such as insurance,
telephone, and the Internet.
A. Personal situational factors
B. Spontaneous negatives
C. Predictable nuisances
D. Uncontrollable situational factors
E. Temporary personal need hindrances
Offensive marketing effects involve market share, reputation and:
A. Word-of-mouth communication
B. Vertical integration
C. Price premiums
D. High purchase volumes
E. Geodemographic segmentation
Which of the following statements about how technology has positively influenced
service is true?
A. Technology provides approaches for delivering existing services in more accessible,
convenient, productive ways
B. Technology facilitates basic customer service functions
C. Technology facilitates transactions by offering a direct vehicle for making purchases
D. Technology provides an easy way for customers to learn and do research about
products and companies
E. All of the above statements about how technology has influenced service are true
The overall goal of a customer participation strategy is to:
A. Determine optimal production levels
B. Increase customer satisfaction and productivity
C. Eliminate uncertainty due to customer actions
D. Maximize word-of-mouth advertising
E. Act socially responsible
PIMS (profit impact of marketing strategy) research:
A. Is used for determining the short-term effect of service quality on company profits
B. Shows that companies offering superior service achieve the same market share
growth as those who offer average service
C. Demonstrates the advantages of offensive marketing
D. Relies on executives’ opinions to predict how services will affect profit
E. Is accurately described by all of the above
Pizza Hut, Uncle Sam’s, Domino’s and Papa John’s all deliver pizza in Cartersville,
Georgia, a town of about 30,000. As a result, one would expect all of the pizza delivery
services to use _____-based pricing.
A. Standardized
B. Simultaneous
C. Competition
D. Supply
E. Cost
What are poka-yokes?
A. Customers who have a propensity to complain
B. Automatic warnings or controls to ensure mistakes don’t happen
C. Service failures
D. Common sources of complaints
E. Methods for tracking complaints
In a service blueprint, the line of internal interaction separates:
A. Customer actions from onstage contact employee actions
B. Backstage contact employee actions from support processes
C. Onstage contact employee actions from backstage contact employee actions
D. Onstage contact employee actions from support processes
E. Customer actions from backstage contact employee actions
_____ service represents the minimum tolerable expectation, the bottom level of
performance acceptable to the customer
A. Desired
B. Adequate
C. Functional
D. Predictable
E. Augmented
Kate recently learned to play golf. Last week, she decided to try a new golf course. She
signed in to play and was given the keys to an electric golf cart without any instructions
on how to operate it. After she drove the cart into a lake, she swore never to play golf
again. According to Kate, “There are just too many things you have to know before you
can become a real golfer.” Two months later, the golf course manager called Kate and
asked why she had not returned to play another game. Which service recovery strategy
is being used in this example?
A. Make the service fail safe
B. Encourage and track complaints
C. Treat customers proactively
D. Use procedural fairness
E. Learn from lost customers
First National Bank of Chicago tracks 650 service quality measures relating to timely,
accurate and responsive service. The measures include speed of telephone answering,
number of abandoned calls, turnaround time on inquiries and the speed at which the
bank transfers securities. The measures used by First Bank of Chicago are _____
measurements.
A. Hard
B. Basic
C. Formal
D. Tangible
E. Informal
Which of the following is NOT a strategy for adjusting capacity to match demand?
A. Cross-training employees
B. Scheduling down time during periods of low demand
C. Renting additional facilities or equipment
D. Using part-time employees
E. Differentiating on price
Zoë was looking for a kennel to board her cocker spaniel for two weeks while she goes
on vacation. There are two kennels close to her home. One charges $50 per week and
the other charges $125 per week. Zoë chose the higher priced service because her dog is
like a member of the family and she wanted it to have the best possible care while she
was away. Zoë’s service expectation level was determined by a(n):
A. Explicit service promise
B. Perceived service alternative
C. Word-of-mouth communication
D. Implicit service promise
E. Marketing testimonial
Service companies can close provider gap 4 by doing all of the following EXCEPT:
A. Avoiding over-promising in advertising
B. Conducting market research
C. Adequately educating customers to use service appropriately
D. Viewing all of its external communications as interdependent
E. Including interactive marketing in communications plans
Clark participated in a research study conducted by Red Lobster restaurants in which he
was asked to provide a verbatim story about a satisfying and dissatisfying service
encounter he had at Red Lobster. Which of the following types of research studies did
Clark participate in?
A. Complaint solicitation
B. Critical incidents studies
C. Relationship surveys
D. Trailer calls
E. Customer panels
The ROSQ approach would be appropriate for a service provider:
A. That used service blueprints
B. That terminated relationships with its least profitable customers
C. Deciding to purchase employee dental insurance
D. That was thinking of developing a home delivery service in addition to offering
products at a central location
E. Deciding to increase prices for basic services by ten percent
A land surveyor will come out to your home, survey your property and draw you a plat
showing you the shape of your land and how it looks in relation to land around it. The
work is routine unless the deed for the property is over one hundred years old. One of
the ways a surveyor determines what land belongs to you is by using old deeds. This
becomes a complicated practice when the deed says “west from live oak tree” and
“northeast 30 feet from Gray family cemetery”. Often these landmarks, which were
there 100 years ago, are long gone and no one remembers where exactly they were.
Surveyors may differ by a couple of feet in their determination of where these
landmarks used to be. This is an example of the difficulty involved in:
A. Relying on the tangibles dimension of services
B. Integrating service functions
C. Standardizing services
D. Changing customers’ perceptions
E. Modifying customers’ expectations
One of the reasons used to explain why customers evaluate goods and services
differently is:
A. The greater degree of customer empowerment used to sell services
B. Services and goods influence opportunity costs differently
C. That customers often have limited reference prices for services
D. The increased customer autonomy in the pricing of goods
E. The cost of maintaining inventory
Which of the following is NOT an example of a commonly used service recovery
strategy?
A. Learn from recovery experience
B. Respond quickly
C. Encourage and track complaints
D. Implement the service paradox
E. Learn from lost customers
Steve, a baseball fan who regularly goes to games right after work, is thirsty and
hungry by the time he gets to the ballpark. He hopes and desires that the food and drink
vendors will visit his section of the stands frequently. Another fan, Bart, who regularly
has dinner elsewhere before he attends games, has a lower level of desired service from
the food and drink vendors at the ballpark. In this example, Steve and Bart have
different ____________ that shape their desired level of service.
A. Personal service philosophies
B. Personal needs
C. Predicted service levels
D. Derived service expectations
E. Adequate service expectations
The first time Alexis went to take golf lessons, she had a golf pro who was very patient
with her and who was able to pinpoint what she was doing wrong without making her
feel uncoordinated. Her second golf lesson was not nearly as helpful. The golf pro who
gave the lesson wanted Alexis to watch what he was doing and imitate his swing. He
was unable to verbalize his instructions. Alexis’s experience with the two golf
instructors illustrates the _____ of service.
A. Intangibility
B. Heterogeneity
C. Simultaneous production and consumption
D. Perishability
E. Divisibility
The _____ of a customer is a concept that looks at customers from the perspective of
their lifetime revenue or profit contributions to a company.
A. Relationship value
B. Attractiveness index
C. Profit performance quotient
D. Calculated risk
E. Loyalty factor
Cable TV companies that offer subscribers different programming packages are:
A. Outsourcing
B. Creating tiered-value service offerings
C. Communicating with customers
D. Managing horizontal communications
E. Exceeding customer expectations
A professional baseball team that has unsold tickets for a Friday night game cannot
resell those tickets for a game the following afternoon due to the _____ characteristic of
services.
A. Intangibility
B. Simultaneous production and consumption
C. Heterogeneity
D. Perishability
E. Divisibility
In _____ pricing, a service firm determines price by calculating component costs of the
service and adding a mark-up.
A. Contingency
B. Fee for service
C. Perceived value
D. Cost-plus
E. Going-rate
SwissAir made some unwise investments to pay for a planned expansion. As a result,
the company had to make some cost-cutting moves that alienated its customers.
Eventually the company declared bankruptcy, regrouped and found itself able to resume
business. Its board of directors announced the company would resume flying within the
next two years if it could prove the airline could regain at least 75 percent of its lost
customers. It decided to allot $50,000 to determine the probability that its former
customers would fly on the airline again and what methods requiring little or no money
could be used to increase that probability. Which of the following two methods are
low-cost research methods SwissAir could use to reach its research objectives?
A. Critical incident studies and lost customer research
B. Future expectations research and lost customer research
C. Complaint solicitation and service expectation meetings and reviews
D. Database marketing research and customer panels
E. Customer panels and complaint solicitation
Pierce loves his new job as a city bus driver but he hates his polyester uniform that he
believes makes him look like an overgrown Boy Scout. What kind of conflict is Pierce
experiencing?
What are the four risks incurred when services are described in words alone?
What do a vacation to Jamaica and a haircut have in common besides the fact that they
are both services?
What is the first step in the new-service development process?
What is the best way to conduct lost customer research?
Who would be the boundary-spanning employees at a restaurant like Longhorn
Steakhouse, Applebee’s, Red Lobster and Pizza Hut?
List the four stages in the evolution of customer relationships.
What type of service encounter occurs when Sam uses inbound telemarketing to order
greeting cards from the Current catalog?
Discuss the reasons why people may vary in their individual responses to a service
environment.
Celeste has a 4-year old daughter and often employs one of the many teenagers in her
neighborhood who regularly baby-sit. When one of the teens raised her price to $5.75
per hour, all of the other babysitters followed suite. Not surprisingly, when another teen
tried to increase his babysitting hours by lowering his rate to $5.25, all of the other
teens made the same reduction in their rates. What kind of a competition-based strategy
does this example depict?
Briefly define a “chase demand” strategy.
Drew had his house professionally sprayed for cockroaches last week. Yesterday he
found a roach in his kitchen sink. He has requested the company that did the initial
spraying to return to his house and spray again. Briefly describe Drew’s zone of
tolerance and his expectations for this second spraying.
In which of the step in the process for setting customer-defined standards would a
company use a simple perception-action correlation matrix?
What are the three types of benefits customers enjoy through relationship marketing?
Barry is the program director at the Lakeside Amphitheater. It is his job to bring in
entertainers to the venue. Because of other demands on the center, he can only bring in
one act this quarter. Members of the city commission have told him to bring in a
country-western act. The school board wants him to bring in an inner-city children’s
choir. Other groups have requested a gospel show and a one-man show on the life of
Harry Truman. Barry is experiencing what kind of conflict?
While finding someone who will count and wrap your coins has been an available
service for years, the recent invention of machines that, for a small fee, will perform the
same service is an example of what kind of innovation?
Virginia wanted to skydive from an airplane for her birthday. She paid $125 to attend a
30-minute ground school to learn the process and her role in the jump. She was then
taken up in an airplane, where she was strapped to a skydiving instructor and they did a
tandem dive. She enjoyed the view and the instructor pulled the cord to open the
parachute. Which customer roles did Virginia play in this service encounter?