1. Amity Business School
Amity Business School
MBA Class of 2010, Semester III
Positioning
Prof. P K Bansal

2. SERVICE Amity Business School
POSITIONING
• Service offering's position is the way it is
perceived by consumers particularly in relation
to competing offerings.
• The service position is what is in the customer’s
mind, whether or not it is the image planned or
desired by the organisation.

3. Amity Business School
• Service positioning is useful in establishing a
new service image, as well as for
maintaining and repositioning existing
image.
• It may not necessarily be communicated
through advertising only, but can and should
be established through all elements of
services marketing mix.

4. POSITIONING Amity Business School
DIMENSIONS
Services can be positioned on variety of
dimensions:
SERVICE QUALITY
– Reliability
– Responsiveness means responding to
customers' desire for prompt, "Willing to help"
service.

5. Amity Business School
– Assurance is used where trust and confidence in
the service provider are particularly critical.
Industries like, insurance, health care.
– Empathy is customer's desire for caring,
individualised attention.
– Tangibles may also be the focus of a positioning
strategy. It can be on product quality, price etc. It is,
associated with a service organisation are highly
visible to customers. because tangibles, particularly
the physical environment

6. Amity Business School
EVIDENCE OF SERVICE
– People:
– It refers to the contact employees and customers who
may be in the service facility.
– How these people will look, act, and influence the
service position in the customer’s mind?
– Disney Corporation works hard to hire and train
contact employees to convey a consistent image and
reinforce the position of the Disney theme parks as
places for fun.

7. Amity Business School
– It includes dress codes and uniform, the package of
the service provider, is the physical representation of
the service leading to the mental image and
positioning in customer’s mind. Uniform like doctor’s
white coat can suggest consistency of service by
reinforcing a message of standardisation or the
lawyer’s black coat, the police uniform the power of
law.
– Standardised uniform may work at cross-purpose if
desired image is one of flexibility.

8. Amity Business School
PHYSICAL EVIDENCE
– It includes tangible communication, price, physical
environment, and guarantees etc.
– They may not be rated high by consumers in terms of
their influence on quality but they are critical for
positioning and solidifying an image.
The tangible evidence used for a high-end executive
education experience for example, would be different
from the evidence used to position a daylong seminar
aimed at mass audience.

9. Amity Business School
PROCESS
– It includes the Flow of activities, Steps in the
process, and Flexibility of process.
– The work on service blueprinting has forged a
connection between service processes as structural
elements that can be engineered for strategic
service positioning purposes.
– Service process can be defined in terms of two
variables:

10. Amity Business School
The two variables are:
– Complexity (number of steps involved in delivery of
service)
– Divergence (execution latitude, or variability of the
steps)

11. Process Matrix Amity Business School
Low Divergence High
Forensic Hospital
Testing Lab Services
Complexity
Outpatient
Poly Clinic
Clinic
Low

12. Amity Business School
Low Divergence
• Uniform Treatment, Reduced Costs,
Improved Productivity, Easy Distribution,
Volume-oriented Positioning, Increased
Reliability.
High Divergence
• Customization, Flexibility, Low Volumes
Higher Price, Difficult Control and
Distribution, Niche Positioning.

13. Amity Business School
Low Complexity
• Focused Resources on a Narrower
Service Offerings, Easy Distribution.
High Complexity
• Greater Penetration in market by addition
of More Services, Increased Revenue from
each Customer.