978-0077729028 Chapter 13 Answers To End Of Chapter

Type

Quiz

Book Title

Marketing 5th Edition

ISBN 13

978-0077729028

April 8, 2019

Chapter 13 - Services: The Intangible Product Marketing 5th

Answers To End Of Chapter Learning Aids

Marketing Applications

1 Those companies from which you purchase products and services are not pure sellers

of services, nor are they pure sellers of products. What services does a pizza

restaurant provide? What goods does the post office provide?

The service–product continuum concept discussed in this chapter notes that a company

can be service dominant, product dominant, or somewhere in between. Most offerings lie

2 You have been sitting in the waiting room of your mechanic’s shop for more than an

hour. With the knowledge that products are different from services, develop a list of

the things the shop manager could do to improve the overall service delivery.

Consider how the shop might overcome problems associated with the tangibility,

separability, heterogeneity, and perishability of services.

Providing great service is not easy, so companies must make diligent efforts to analyze

their service process closely to ensure all aspects work together to provide a positive

customer experience.

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Chapter 13 - Services: The Intangible Product Marketing 5th

3 You have conducted a zone of tolerance analysis for a local dry cleaner. You find that

the length of the reliability and responsiveness boxes are much greater than those of

the other three service quality dimensions. You also find that the dry cleaner is

positioned above the zone box on reliability but below the box on responsiveness.

What should you tell the manager to do?

Determining customers’ perceptions of a service’s ability to meet or exceed their

expectations is difficult, but the zone of tolerance offers an effective method. For the dry

4 Assume you were hired by the local grocery store to help assess their service quality.

How would you go about undertaking this project?

Service quality is the customers’ perceptions of how well a service meets or exceeds their

expectations. It is often difficult for customers to evaluate service quality. There are five

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Chapter 13 - Services: The Intangible Product Marketing 5th

5 What should a restaurant server do who is faced with a customer who an irate

customer who has received undercooked food after a long wait? How can they avoid

a service failure by being empowered? What should they do?

Despite a firm’s best efforts, sometimes service providers don’t meet customer

expectations. When this happens, the firm must make amends with the customer and

6 What types of support and incentives could your university provide advisors to help

make them more attentive to students’ needs?

This question reminds students that universities provide services too and that advisors, as

service providers; often face the difficult task of dealing with unhappy students.

Therefore, they must empathize with advisors and consider what possible supports and

7 What mobile apps do you use that help facilitate your transactions with a specific

retailer or service provider? Would you rather use the technology or engage in a

face-to-face relationship with a person? How, if at all, would your parents’ answer to

these two questions be different?

Apps have become an increasingly important means of service delivery. Most students

probably rely more heavily on apps, whereas their parents might consider face-to-face

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Chapter 13 - Services: The Intangible Product Marketing 5th

8 A local health club is running a promotional campaign that promises you can lose an

inch a month off your waist if you join the club and follow its program. How might

this claim cause a communications gap? What should the club do to avoid a service

failure?

The communications gap refers to the difference between the actual service provided to

customers and the service that the firm’s promotion program promises. This claim might

cause a communications gap if every client expects to lose an inch off their waist in a

9 Suppose the health club didn’t listen to your advice and ran the promotional

campaign as is. A new member has come in to complain that not only did he not lose

inches off his waist, he actually gained weight. How should the health club manager

proceed?

In taking the perspective of the health club manager, students must consider two elements

of service recovery: how to placate the disgruntled customer and then how to avoid such

10 You are hired by a career consulting firm that promises to market new graduates to

high-paying employers. The firm provides potential clients with an impressive list of

employers. It charges the clients a fee, and then a separate finder’s fee if the client

gets a position. The firm aggressively markets its services and has a large client base.

You learn that the firm simply takes submitted résumés and posts them to a variety of

online job search engines. The firm never actually contacts any firms on its clients’

behalf. The CEO, himself a recent college grad, tells you that the firm never promises

to actually contact potential employers, only that they have access to employers and

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Chapter 13 - Services: The Intangible Product Marketing 5th

will distribute clients’ résumés. What do you think of the career consulting firm’s

practices?

This scenario forces student to question to what degree the career consulting firm’s

practices might violate their ethical standards. Using the ethical decision-making

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Chapter 13 - Services: The Intangible Product Marketing 5th

Net Savvy

1 What services does JetBlue (www.jetblue.com) offer? Go to JetBlue’s Web site, click

on “About JetBlue,” then “Why You’ll Like Us.” Compare the services of JetBlue and

Delta Airlines (www.delta.com). Which would you prefer to fly if the price of a

ticket was the same.

Jet Blue offers 36 channels of free television at every seat. They also offer free snacks,

11 Go to Zappos’ website, www.zappos.com, and examine its customer service offerings.

Next, go to Reseller Ratings, www.resellerratings.com, and look up Zappos. Based on

these reviews, does Zappos have a service gap? If so, how can they close it?

Chapter Case: Zipcar: Delivering Only as Much Driving as You Want

1 Using the building blocks (five dimensions) of service quality (see Exhibit 13.4),

evaluate Zipcar.

Reliability- Is the ability to perform the service dependably and accurately. For Zipcar,

reliability would involve having cars that are reliable and safe for the drivers to rent. In

order to do this, Zipcar should perform regular maintenance on its cars and keep an

updated fleet.

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Chapter 13 - Services: The Intangible Product Marketing 5th

12 Compare Zipcar’s service quality performance with that of the most recent car rental

service (e.g., Avis, Hertz) that you may have used.

This may apply only to students who have rented a car through both Zipcar and a

competing car rental service. Other car rentals like Avis and Hertz lack the convenience

13 How well has Zipcar handled service failure situations? What could it do to improve

recovery efforts?

The case provides an example of a customer who was trying to use Zipcar, but the car he

rented was not where it was supposed to be. Zipcar told the customer to take a cab and

Additional Teaching Tips

In this chapter, students learn the difference between marketing a product vs. marketing a

service. Students find that since a service can’t be “seen” or measured with a quantifiable

outcome, that the marketing strategy must be different in marketing services. The

building blocks of service quality is the foundation of the chapter which then dovetails

into how to improve customer service through the methods to reduce delivery gaps.

The Ritz Carlton case study is an excellent exercise for this chapter and is strongly

recommended to allow students to apply the five service quality areas. A good way to do

this is to divide the class into 4 or 5 groups and have them tackle the case. Then open

classroom discussion by dialogue in comparing/contrasting the responses from each of

the groups. Of course, a good understanding of the five service qualities is needed

before assigning the case. One good way to do this after discussion/lecture on the topic is

to divide the class into groups. Have each group develop a role play skit on (1) good

customer service incorporating the five service quality areas and also to prepare an

alternate skit on (2) bad customer service.

Students have fun with the skit exercise and it often brings out some humorous acting

moments. Instructors will want to assign different topics (popular food chain, hotel,

college book store, retail chain, etc.) to each group to get them focused on the skit and not

thinking up “what” to complete the skit on. Each group presents the “good” skit first in

which the audience (the rest of the class) takes notes and discussion takes place on how

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Chapter 13 - Services: The Intangible Product Marketing 5th

the five service qualities were present. The group then performs their “bad service skit”

in which discussion follows on how to incorporate good service techniques and improve

the service gaps.

On-line teaching tip: Instructors can have students complete this same exercise by

having students record individual skits/scenarios and uploading them to the online

platform. Other learners in the online environment can then either post their analysis on

the five service qualities and their suggestions on improving the delivery gaps or write a

paper outlining the same concepts (meanwhile the other learners are also preparing their

own skits). Instructors may want to pair students on the responses in the online forum.

For fun, instructors may want to have the class use online voting to vote on the best

“performance.”

Remember to review the Newsletter for Instructors and its accompanied PowerPoint

presentation, which integrates examples and discussion from the newsletter. Each

newsletter contains over ten article abstracts on hot topics, plus a selection of current

commercials and videos for you to use with your class. The newsletter also includes a

guide that explains where the articles, commercials, and videos best fit in your Marketing

course.

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