This document defines and discusses service marketing. It begins by defining service according to the American Marketing Association as activities, benefits, or satisfactions offered for sale or in connection with goods. Service marketing focuses on selling non-physical products like services. There are two types: business-to-customer which provides services to individuals, and business-to-business which provides services between companies. Service marketing is beneficial as it can lead to recurrent sales from satisfied repeat customers, positive customer reviews that drive more business, and economic growth through increased employment, GDP, and exports.

1. Service Marketing- definition, types,
and benefits
Summary:
• According to the definition of the American Marketing Association,
service is defined as “activities, benefits and satisfactions which are
offered for sale or are provided in connection with the sale of goods”
(Kapoor, 2011). Service marketing is a broad class of marketing
strategies that particularly focus on selling anything, which is not a
physical product

2. • Service marketing is a broad class of marketing strategies that
particularly focus on selling anything, which is not a physical product.
This could be anything including personal services like spa treatments,
medical care, rental services for vehicles or spaces, concerts, signing
or dancing lessons etc.
• According to the definition of the American Marketing Association,
service is defined as “activities, benefits and satisfactions which are
offered for sale or are provided in connection with the sale of goods”
(Kapoor, 2011). The marketing can be conducted through any
method that can communicate appeal or benefits of a service to its
customers through valid approaches like informational content,
advertisements, promotional deals, and many other resources of
marketing materials.

4. • All organisations that provide services of any kinds utilize service marketing strategies. There are two categories of
service marketing:
• 1.Business-to-customer (B2C) - organisations provide services to individuals.
• 2.Business-to-business (B2B) - organisations provide services to other businesses.
• Organisations that provide services to individual customers commonly use service marketing. For this purpose, they
generally research consumer behaviours to generate appealing advertisements for certain demographics. This
helps them to narrow their marketing focus to a concentrated effort.
• On the other hand, organisations that use B2B servicing or provide services to other organisations apply their
marketing techniques to their industrial marketing efforts. For this purpose, they generally follow approaches,
which are more focused to person-to-person contact because sales executives from the service provider
organisations have to negotiate with representatives from the client businesses.
• Advantages of Service Marketing:
• As a result of growth in various service sectors and the benefits it provides to the growth of organisations, service
marketing is growing exceptionally well in the past decades. Here are some of the benefits of service marketing-

5. • 1.Recurrent sales: When service marketing fulfils the needs of customers perfectly, it leads to recurrent sales.
Satisfied customers come back to purchase the product again. For example, a customer, who is happy with various
banking services like online banking, phone banking etc. may go for a loan or other services. Thus, banks’ service
marketing efforts become fruitful in translating more sales.
• 2.Customer reviews: When a happy customer spreads his/her good experience about the products with a number
of other people, this leads to more marketing efforts. In our time of Internet and instant communication, customer
reviews play very crucial role to determine other customer’s purchasing decision. Organisations through applying
suitable servicing marketing strategies can ensure prevention of negative reviews. Extra efforts are taken make sure
that customers are adequately satisfied to spread good reviews about their good experience.
• 3.Contribution to economic growth: For developing countries, service marketing is particularly beneficial to make
contribution to the countries’ economy. Applying effective service marketing strategies, companies can gain trust
of consumers. This can lead to increase in the level of employment, foreign exchange reserves, Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) and exports.

6. Reference:
• Kapoor, R., Paul, J., and Halder, B. (2011). Service marketing: Concept
and practices. New Delhi: Tata McGraw Hill.
Published by Brainware University