The industrialization of services business model [1] [2] is a business model used in strategic management and services marketing that treats service provision as an industrial process, subject to industrial optimization procedures. It originated in the early 1970s, at a time when various quality control techniques were being successfully implemented on production assembly lines.
Theodore Levitt (1972) argued that the reason the service sector suffered from inefficiency and wide variations in quality were that it was based on the craft model. Each service encounter was treated as an isolated event. He felt that service encounters could be systematized through planning, optimal processes, consistency, and capital intensive investments. This model was the foundation of the success of McDonald's and many other mass service providers in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
Unfortunately, the application of assembly line techniques to service provision had several undesirable consequences. Employees found working under these conditions disempowering, resulting in low morale, high staff turnover, and reduced service quality. One of the most difficult aspects of this model for employees to deal with was the "smile incentives". Employees were instructed to put a smile on their face during the service encounter. This manufacturing and commercialization of apparent happiness has been criticised by many commentators, particularly Mundie (1987). Also many customers prefer the "personal touch".
By the early 1990s, most service providers turned their attention back to the human element and personalized their services. Employees were empowered to customize the service encounter to the individual characteristics of customers.
Subsequently, scholars developed the service-profit-chain concept to understand how employees and customers interact to create value. [3]
The tertiary sector of the economy, generally known as the service sector, is the third of the three economic sectors in the three-sector model. The others are the primary sector and the secondary sector (manufacturing).
In commerce, supply chain management (SCM) is the management of the flow of goods and services includes all processes that transform raw materials into final products between businesses and locations. This can include the movement and storage of raw materials, work-in-process inventory, finished goods, and end to end order fulfilment from the point of origin to the point of consumption. Interconnected, interrelated or interlinked networks, channels and node businesses combine in the provision of products and services required by end customers in a supply chain.
Sales are activities related to selling or the number of goods sold in a given targeted time period. The delivery of a service for a cost is also considered a sale.
A service is an "(intangible) act or use for which a consumer, firm, or government is willing to pay." Examples include work done by barbers, doctors, lawyers, mechanics, banks, insurance companies, and so on. Public services are those that society as a whole pays for. Using resources, skill, ingenuity, and experience, service providers benefit service consumers. Services may be defined as intangible acts or performances whereby the service provider provides value to the customer.
In sales, commerce, and economics, a customer is the recipient of a good, service, product or an idea - obtained from a seller, vendor, or supplier via a financial transaction or exchange for money or some other valuable consideration.
In the field of management, strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by an organization's managers on behalf of stakeholders, based on consideration of resources and an assessment of the internal and external environments in which the organization operates. Strategic management provides overall direction to an enterprise and involves specifying the organization's objectives, developing policies and plans to achieve those objectives, and then allocating resources to implement the plans. Academics and practicing managers have developed numerous models and frameworks to assist in strategic decision-making in the context of complex environments and competitive dynamics. Strategic management is not static in nature; the models can include a feedback loop to monitor execution and to inform the next round of planning.
Services marketing is a specialized branch of marketing which emerged as a separate field of study in the early 1980s, following the recognition that the unique characteristics of services required different strategies compared with the marketing of physical goods.
Service economy can refer to one or both of two recent economic developments:
Relationship marketing is a form of marketing developed from direct response marketing campaigns that emphasizes customer retention and satisfaction rather than sales transactions. It differentiates from other forms of marketing in that it recognises the long-term value of customer relationships and extends communication beyond intrusive advertising and sales promotional messages. With the growth of the Internet and mobile platforms, relationship marketing has continued to evolve as technology opens more collaborative and social communication channels such as tools for managing relationships with customers that go beyond demographics and customer service data collection. Relationship marketing extends to include inbound marketing, a combination of search optimization and strategic content, public relations, social media and application development.
The Profit Impact of Market Strategy (PIMS) Program is a project that uses empirical data to determine which business strategies make the difference between success and failure. It is used to develop strategies for resource allocation and marketing. Some of the most important strategic metrics are market share, product quality, investment intensity and service quality. One of the most surprising findings is that the same factors work identically across different industries. PIMS "yields solid evidence in support of both common sense and counter-intuitive principles for gaining and sustaining competitive advantage" Tom Peters and Nancy Austin.
The loyalty business model is a business model used in strategic management in which company resources are employed so as to increase the loyalty of customers and other stakeholders in the expectation that corporate objectives will be met or surpassed. A typical example of this type of model is: quality of product or service leads to customer satisfaction, which leads to customer loyalty, which leads to profitability.
Operations management is an area of management concerned with designing and controlling the process of production and redesigning business operations in the production of goods or services. It involves the responsibility of ensuring that business operations are efficient in terms of using as few resources as needed and effective in meeting customer requirements.
Mystery shopping is a method used by marketing research companies and organizations that wish to measure quality of sales and service, job performance, regulatory compliance, or to gather specific information about a market or competitors, including products and services.
Advanced product quality planning (APQP) is a framework of procedures and techniques used to develop products in industry, particularly in the automotive industry. It differs from Design For Six Sigma in that the goal of DFSS is to reduce variation.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to management:
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to marketing:
Customer retention refers to the ability of a company or product to retain its customers over some specified period. High customer retention means customers of the product or business tend to return to, continue to buy or in some other way not defect to another product or business, or to non-use entirely. Selling organizations generally attempt to reduce customer defections. Customer retention starts with the first contact an organization has with a customer and continues throughout the entire lifetime of a relationship and successful retention efforts take this entire lifecycle into account. A company's ability to attract and retain new customers is related not only to its product or services, but also to the way it services its existing customers, the value the customers actually perceive as a result of utilizing the solutions, and the reputation it creates within and across the marketplace.
Sustainability marketing myopia is a term used in sustainability marketing referring to a distortion stemming from the overlooking of socio-environmental attributes of a sustainable product or service at the expenses of customer benefits and values. Sustainability marketing is oriented towards the whole community, its social goals and the protection of the environment. It requires the engagement of national and local governments, organisations and population as well as the necessary capital. The idea of sustainability marketing myopia is rooted into conventional marketing myopia theory, as well as green marketing myopia.
Third-party logistics in logistics and supply chain management is an organization's use of third-party businesses to outsource elements of its distribution, warehousing, and fulfillment services.
Operations management for services has the functional responsibility for producing the services of an organization and providing them directly to its customers. It specifically deals with decisions required by operations managers for simultaneous production and consumption of an intangible product. These decisions concern the process, people, information and the system that produces and delivers the service. It differs from operations management in general, since the processes of service organizations differ from those of manufacturing organizations.