Programme

PGP

Term

IV

Academic Year

2021-22

Course title

Marketing Services

Area

Marketing

Credits

0.75

Instructor(s)

Prof. Naveen Amblee

Course Description & Objectives

Introduction: In both developing and developed countries alike, the service sector is usually the largest contributor to GDP. In India, the service sector accounts for 55% of GDP, while in developed countries, it is even higher, accounting for 80% of GDP in the US and UK (Zeithaml et al. 2018). Therefore, perhaps unsurprisingly, the service sector tends to be primarily responsible for the growth in jobs. Technological advances in recent years, notably related to computerization, have had a massive impact on the delivery of new and existing services. Yet, despite this, the marketing of services is generally given lesser importance than the marketing of goods. Even within goods-based industries, the provision of related and supporting services can be of vital importance to its success. In addition, the marketing of services is significantly different from the marketing of goods, and consequently, a different framework is needed to effective market this type of offering (Zeithaml et al. 2018). Objectives: Course participants will be introduced to the concept of services and the key differences between goods and services such as intangibility, heterogeneity, and perishability. Participants will then be introduced to the Gaps Model of Service Quality developed by Zeithaml, Parasuraman and Berry (1990). The Gaps Model provides a framework to close the Customer Gap, which is caused by differences between customer pre-service expectations and their post-service evaluations. The Customer Gap is in turn linked to four Service Provider Gaps, related to a lack of understanding of customer expectations, poor service design, poor delivery of the designed service, and differences between the promised and actual service provided (Zeithaml et al. 2018). This course aims to enable participants to use of the Gaps Model to identity and attempt to close the customer and provider gaps in order to provide quality service, which in turn affects profitability. Participants will integrate their learning from the course into a group project which is due at the end of the term.

Pedagogy

The pedagogy will involve a mix of lectures (discussion-oriented), cases, real-world examples from India, and a team project.