What are the key barriers for firms to break the Cycle of Failure and move into the Cycle of Success? How should an organization trapped in the Cycle of Mediocrity proceed?
> What can you learn from the Services Marketing Communications Funnel?
> What is the role of non-monetary costs in a business model, and how do they relate to the consumer’s value perceptions?
> What are the key factors driving the place and time decisions of service distribution?
> How is branding used in services marketing? What is the distinction between a corporate brand such as Marriott and the names of its various inn and hotel chains?
> What is the distinction between important and determinant attributes in consumer purchase decisions?
> What is meant by productive capacity in services?
> How can fail-safe methods be used to reduce service failures?
> In what ways do the objectives of services communications differ substantially from those of goods marketing? Describe four common educational and promotional objectives in service settings, and provide a specific example for each of the objectives you l
> How can a service firm compute its unit costs for pricing purposes? How does predicted and actual capacity utilization affect unit costs and profitability?
> How are the four levels of service performance defined? Based on your own service experiences, provide an example of a company for each category.
> What are the different options for service delivery? What factors do service firms need to take into account when using each of these options?
> What is the difference between enhancing and facilitating supplementary services? Give several examples of each type by referring to services you have used recently.
> Why are both soft and hard measures of service quality needed?
> Identify the gaps that can occur in service quality and the steps that service marketers can take to prevent them.
> Explain the relationships between service quality, productivity, and profitability.
> How can customer choice between services in their consideration set be modeled?
> How do concepts such as TQM, ISO 9000, Six Sigma and the Malcolm Baldrige and EFQM approaches relate to managing and improving service quality and productivity?
> How can you integrate all the tools in a nine-step approach to improve the quality and productivity of customer service processes?
> Why is productivity more difficult to measure in service than in manufacturing firms?
> What are the key customer feedback collection tools? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each of these tools?
> What are the main objectives of an effective customer feedback system?
> What are the main tools service firms can use to analyze and address service quality problems?
> In what ways can you, as a consumer, help to improve productivity for at least three service organizations that you patronize? Which distinctive characteristics of each service make some of these actions possible?
> How do customers typically respond to service failures?
> What are the different types of jay customers? How can a service firm deal with such customers?
> Under what conditions is it not suitable to introduce a service guarantee?
> Describe the building blocks for managing capacity and demand.
> How should service guarantees be designed? What are the benefits of service guarantees over and above a good complaint handling and service recovery system?
> How generous should compensations related to service recovery be?
> How can a firm make it easy for dissatisfied customers to complain?
> What is the service recovery paradox? Under what conditions is this paradox most likely to hold? Why is it best to deliver the service as planned, even if the paradox does hold in a specific context?
> Why would a firm prefer its unhappy customers to come forward and complain?
> Why don’t many more unhappy customers complain? What do customers expect the firm to do once they have filed a complaint?
> Why should a service recovery strategy be proactive, planned, trained, and empowered?
> How generous should compensation be? Review the following incident and comment. Then evaluate the available options, comment on each, select the one you recommend, and defend your decision. “The shrimp cocktail was half frozen. The waitress apologized a
> What would be an appropriate service recovery policy for a wrongly bounced check for (a) Your local savings bank, (b) A major national bank, and (c) A private bank for high net-worth individuals? Please explain your rationale and also compute the eco
> Why is targeting the ‘right customers’ so important for successful customer relationship management?
> What are the typical design elements of a service blueprint?
> Why is customer loyalty an important driver of profitability for service firms?
> Identify some key measures that can be used to create customer bonds and encourage long-term relationships with customers.
> What is tiering of services? Explain why it is used. What are its implications for firms and their customers?
> How can a firm build a foundation for loyalty?
> How do the various strategies described in the Wheel of Loyalty relate to one another?
> What is the role of churn management in an effective loyalty strategy, and what tools can be used to understand and reduce customer churn?
> Why benefits are related to the core service (e.g., customization, transaction convenience, and service priority) generally more effective in building loyalty than rewards that are unrelated to the core service (e.g., air miles)?
> What is the role of CRM in delivering a customer relationship strategy?
> Why are loyalty programs often important for a customer loyalty strategy?
> List five ways in which investment in hiring and selection, training, and ongoing motivation of employees will have a positive impact on customer satisfaction for organizations such as (a) A restaurant, (b) An airline, (c) A hospital, and (d) A consult
> What are the three broad target audiences of service communications?
> What is emotional labor? Explain the ways in which it may cause stress for employees in specific jobs. Illustrate with suitable examples.
> Why are service personnel so important for service firms?
> What is the relationship among organizational culture, climate for service, and leadership?
> How can a service firm build a strong service culture that emphasizes service excellence and productivity?
> Identify the factors needed to make service teams successful in (a) An airline, (b) A restaurant, and (c) A customer contact center. What are the factors that favor a strategy of employee empowerment?
> What can a service firm do to become a preferred employer and receive a large number of applications from the best potential candidates in the labor market?
> Describe the key components of the Service Talent Cycle.
> What are the key types of training service firms should conduct?
> How can a firm select the best suited candidates from a large number of applicants?
> How can the pricing tripod approach to service pricing be useful in setting a good pricing point for a particular service?
> Why is role modeling a desirable quality in service leaders?
> How can front-line employees be effectively motivated to deliver service excellence?
> Identify the factors needed to make service teams successful in (a) An airline, (b) A restaurant, and (c) A customer contact center.
> Which issues do you see as most likely to create boundary-spanning problems for employees in a customer-contact center at a major internet service provider? Select four issues and indicate how you would mediate between operations and marketing to create
> An airline runs a recruiting advertisement for cabin crew that shows a picture of a small boy sitting in an airline seat and clutching a teddy bear. The headline reads: “His mom told him not to talk to strangers. So what’s he having for lunch?” Describe
> What is the relationship or link between Russell’s Model of Affect and the services cape model?
> Describe how the Mehrabian-Russell Stimulus- Response Model and Russell’s Model of Affect explain consumer responses to a service environment.
> What are the four main purposes service environments fulfill?
> What tools are available for aiding our understanding of customer responses and for guiding the design and improvement of service environments?
> What are the implications of the fact that service environments are perceived holistically?
> Why is it important to consider the distribution of core and supplementary services both separately and jointly?
> What are the roles of signs, symbols, and artifacts?
> Explain the dimensions of ambient conditions and the ways in which each can influence customer responses to the service environment.
> Why do different customers and service staff respond very differently to the same service environment?
> Select a bad and a good waiting experience, and contrast the two situations with respect to the service environment and the other people waiting.
> Visit a self-service environment and analyze how the design dimensions guide you through the service process. Which elements do you find most effective, and which seem least effective? How can the environment be improved to make the “way-finding”
> Visit a service environment, and have a detailed look around. Experience the environment, and try to understand how the various design elements shape what you feel and how you behave in that setting.
> Explain how flexible capacity can be created in each of the following situations: (a) A local library, (b) An office-cleaning service, (c) A technical support help desk, (d) An Interflora franchise.
> Identify one website that is exceptionally user friendly and another that is not. What are the factors that make for a satisfying user experience in the first instance and a frustrating one in the second? Specify recommendations for improvements in the s
> Discuss the significance of search, experience, and credence attributes for the communications strategy of a service provider. Assume that the objective of the communications strategy is to attract new customers.
> Explain the Flower of Service concept and identify each of its petals. What insights does this concept provide for service marketers?
> Which elements of the Services Marketing Communications Mix would you use for each of the following scenarios? Explain your answers. 1. A newly established hair salon in a suburban shopping center 2. An established restaurant facing declining patronage
> Register at Amazon.com and Hallmark.com and analyze their permission-based communications strategy. What are their marketing objectives? Evaluate their permission-based marketing for a specific customer segment of your choice. Mention what is excellent,
> What tangible cues could a diving school or a dentistry clinic use to position itself as appealing to upscale customers?
> If you were exploring your current university or researching the degree program you are now in, what could you learn from blogs and any other online word of mouth you can find? How would that information influence the decision of a prospective applicant
> How might revenue management be applied to (a) A professional service firm (e.g., a law firm), (b) A restaurant, and (c) A golf course? What rate fences would you use and why?
> An entrepreneur is thinking of setting up a new service business (you can choose any specific business). What advice would you offer regarding the distribution strategy for this business? Address the What? How? Where? When? Of service distribution.
> Which strategy for entering a new international market should (a) An architectural design firm (b) An online discount broker (c) A satellite TV channel consider, and why?
> What advice would you give to (a) A weight reduction clinic, (b) A pest control company, and (c) A university offering undergraduate courses about going international?
> Think of three services you buy or use either mostly or exclusively via the internet. What is the value proposition of this channel over alternative channels (e.g., phone, mail, or branch network)?
> Provide two examples of service firms that use service levels (other than airlines, hotels, and car rentals) to differentiate their products. Explain the determinant attributes and service levels used to differentiate the positioning of one service from
> What are the most common bases used in segmentation? Provide examples for each of these bases.
> Is there evidence that improving customer satisfaction leads to improved financial returns for shareholders?
> Refer to questions 6 and 7 and answer the following questions: In Questions 6 and 7 Tri-Cities Bank has a single drive-in teller window. On Friday mornings, customers arrive at the drive-in window randomly, following a Poisson distribution at an average
> Describe an example in which business or political organizations may use framing effects to influence decision making.
> Describe an example in which business or political organizations may use anchoring effects to influence decision making.
> Identify one or more mental models you have used. Can any of them be expressed mathematically? If so, identify the dependent and independent variables in your model.
> In what ways are descriptive models different from predictive models?
> Refer to question 6. Suppose that service at the drive-in window is provided at a rate of 40 customers per hour and follows an exponential distribution. In Question 6 Tri-Cities Bank has a single drive-in teller window. On Friday mornings, customers arr
> In what ways are prescriptive models different from predictive models?
> Can a decision problem have more than one dependent variable?
