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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.
© 2015 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or distribution
in any manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part. 1
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
© 2015 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or distribution
in any manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part. 2
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
© 2015 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or distribution
in any manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part. 3
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
© 2015 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or distribution
in any manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part. 4
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
© 2015 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or distribution
in any manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part. 5
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.
© 2015 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or distribution
in any manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part. 6
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
© 2015 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or distribution
in any manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part. 7
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.
© 2015 by McGraw-Hill Education. This is proprietary material solely for authorized instructor use. Not authorized for sale or distribution
in any manner. This document may not be copied, scanned, duplicated, forwarded, distributed, or posted on a website, in whole or part. 8
