Services Marketing

A service system (or customer service system, CSS) is a configuration of technology and organizational networks designed to deliver services that satisfy the needs, wants, or aspirations of customers.

Information scientists are often providing services (eg advice, or searches), rather than physically distinct products. marketing experts acknowledge that marketing a service is more difficult than marketing a tangible product. They identify the following as being characteristic of services:

• Intangibility the service cannot be touched or viewed, so it is difficult for clients to tell in advance what they will be getting;
• Inseparability of production and consumption the service is being produced at the same time that the client is receiving it (eg during an online search, or a legal consultation);
• Perishibility unused capacity cannot be stored for future use. For example, spare seats on one aeroplane cannot be transferred to the next flight, and query-free times at the reference desk cannot be saved up until there is a busy period.
• Heterogeneity (or variability): services involve people, and people are all different. There is a strong possibility that the same enquiry would be answered slightly differently by different people (or even by the same person at different times). It is important to minimise the differences in performance (through training, standard-setting and quality assurance).