MKTG208 Service Marketing: Customer Analysis Report

This report examines the critical role of customer perception in service marketing, arguing that customers are the best judges of service quality. It analyzes the service marketing strategies of Amazon, a leading e-commerce company, to illustrate this point. The report classifies Amazon's service process, explores how the company manages customer expectations and service standards, and details its customer retention strategies. It emphasizes the importance of understanding customer desires, providing customized services, and continuously communicating with customers to ensure satisfaction and adapt to evolving expectations. The report concludes by highlighting the significance of customer feedback and the need for service providers to proactively address customer needs for sustained success. The analysis covers various aspects of Amazon's operations, including its global reach, diverse service offerings, and focus on both high-touch and high-tech customer service approaches.

Running Head: SERVICE MARKETING
Service Marketing
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Executive Summary
The aim of the report is to Discuss the notion that customers are the best judges of the quality of
a service process. The present report proves the notion by primarily considering the fact that an
organization needs to know the desires and expectations of the customers to improve on the
services and products that they offer. Customers can only determine the success of the
organization because if the organization’s service is not liked or preferred by the customers, they
will face high customer-attrition. The report analyses the service marketing of Amazon company
and concludes by asserting that the customers should be continuously communicated by the
service providers to know how and where their service stands and what amendments do they
need to incorporate for better results.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Discussion........................................................................................................................................3
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
Reference.........................................................................................................................................9

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Topic: Discuss the notion that customers are the best judges of the quality of a service
process
Introduction
Service organizations must at first know and understand their customer expectations in
order to receive customer satisfaction as well as stellar customer service. According to
Sengupta, Balaji and Krishnan (2015) until or unless the company knows what their customer
want, what do they expect, a company cannot match up the expectations. The present report will
deal with the service marketing analysis of a selected company that is Amazon. The report will
proceed through various steps such as classifying the service process of the company, how does
the company manages customer expectations and service standard and retention strategies. The
report will finally conclude by giving an overview of the entire report and highlight on the key
issues.
Discussion
Amazon is an electronic commerce company originated in Washington in the year 1994
founded by Jeff Bezos. In terms of market capitalization, it is the biggest internet retailer and
revenue collector in this industry (Amazon.com 2018). The company actually began with selling
online books but later included software, electronics, video games, furniture, apparel, jewelry,
toys and food also. The company also serves by providing the largest cloud infrastructure
services.
Classifying the service process- In the beginning the company sold books only. Today it
has become a market titan of logistics services, e –commerce business, media and data storage.

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The company deals with many more industries. The shoppers and the merchants both prefer this
site because it is the largest medium for selling and buying of products(Amazon.com 2018).
Amazon has almost 85 million subscribers in the US, which is equivalent to the 2/3rd of the
American population. Therefore, it is not merely an e-commerce company it is a global platform
for business industries where customers can avail their desired products at reasonable price and
the merchants can also get their customers by just using the Amazon website(Amazon.com
2018). The service Amazon company provides do not involve simultaneous production and
consumption. The customer does not need to be present physically at the time of production as
suggested by Harmeling et al. (2015). The company takes care that they can deliver the product
without any damage that will satisfy the customers otherwise their confidence in the service will
be lost.
The goods that area sold via Amazon are tangible but the services process of Amazon are
non-tangible(Amazon.com 2018). The company serves globally and delivers products
throughout the world. The company is serves online to China, Japan, Australia, UK, India and
any other countries(Amazon.com 2018). The customized service type of the company attracts
more customers. The customized services are those services which are flexible, user friendly and
can change or modify according to the customer preferences. Amazon provides seasonal
discounts for the customers and also delivers the products on specific timings preferred by the
customers. The service process of Amazon is discrete because Amazon deals with the assembly
of products which is designed under the discrete system(Amazon.com 2018). In order to run the
operations, a company needs to choose a system. The continuous system is basically concerned
with the blending of formulas. The discrete on the other hand looks after the assembly of

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products. The major task that Amazon company does is it assembles the products in an order and
then delivers them to the customers.
The service process of Amazon company can be classified as possession processing
because the service requires minimum customer engagement. The only work that the customer
has to do is to choose the product from the website of the company and make the payments either
via online or via cash on delivery. The rest of the work is done by the company regarding from
where to pick the product and how to deliver the product to the customer. On the other hand,
people processing the customers are supposed to be present at the service factory to avail the
services.
Dong et al. (2015) introduces that those customer services that are conducted via personal
contact with the customers is called the high-touch customer service whereas if the customer
service is mostly done by automated phone systems or through online service portals to respond
to the queries of the customer, that is called the high-tech service. In this respect Amazon can be
considered as having the high-touch customer services. Although the company uses automated
phone systems for the purpose of making online payment, tracking the delivery, choosing the
time of delivery and online message dropping, the company representatives also talk to the
customers personally over the phone if the customer has any queries or issues related to any
purchase(Amazon.com 2018). The Amazon company customer service centers are spread all
around the world. The centers are in Africa (Cape Town), Europe (UK and Edinburg), Central
America (Costa Rica and San Jose) and in many countries.
Managing Customer Expectations - As suggested by Ascarza et al. (2018) the role of
critical incidents is significant because it provides information regarding how the service is
benefiting the customers, what are the strengths, what are the weaknesses, how they need to be

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resolved. It helps to see the service from the viewpoint of the customers and gives space for
improvement. The company can advance the customer services to reduce customer
dissatisfaction. During any critical incident the Amazon company follows the required methods
to deal with the situation. The company tries its best to restore and repair the damage, responding
to the customer queries as quick as possible. They know that during such situations they are not
likely to deny or blame anyone rather maintain their honesty and transparency with the
customers(Amazon.com 2018). The role and script theory is important in determining the
customer behaviors and experience during the service encounter supports Jaakkola and
Alexander (2014).
The moments of truth metaphor along with the role and script theory helps to effectively
communicate and create an environment desired by the customers. However according to Pérez
and Rodriguez del Bosque (2015) moments of truth are those points in a relationship between the
company and the customers where the company has the opportunity to earn loyalty of the
customers by engaging with them as much as possible. The company can know those point by
focusing on the customer expectation. The company is supposed to play their roles after
recognizing that moment of truth. The role theory is that set of behaviors learned by
communication and experience. On the other hand, script theory is the sequence of action that
are to be performed to meet the customer expectations. The Amazon company set a customer
journey map to know the journey of each of their customer in their company which helps them to
understand what is the ‘moment of truth’ with of their customers and how they are supposed to
play their role in that case(Amazon.com 2018).
The service quality declines when the customer do not get what has been promised by the
company. The worst mistake conducted by a company is to over –promise and under-deliver. N.

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Bolton et al. (2014) on the other hand supports the view that it is better to promise nothing than
to elevate the hopes of the customer and never fulfil that. It may either create frustration among
the customers or drive them towards the market competitors. The Amazon company is much
concerned with this issue and only promises the customers what is realistic. They coordinate
external communication, offer service guarantee and ensure that the delivery meets or exceeds
the expectations(Amazon.com 2018).
Service Standards & Retention Strategies- The customer service standards are a set of
expectations or policies a company has adopted. These standards help to decide while deals how
the customer wants to be treated or what are their standards of services against which they would
judge the company services. In this respect Blut et al. (2014) is of the opinion that most of the
times the customers buy products and get inspired for future purchase based on their emotions
rather than reason. The Amazon company never stays back in this matter. The members of the
company adopt the specific behaviors and actions to meet the customer standards. The company
representatives at first becomes aware of the problem or need. In the next step they search for the
best possible ways of resolving the problem keeping in terms of the customer standards and
lastly decide to adopt the best measure to the issue(Amazon.com 2018).
As far as customer retention strategies are concerned Amazon company holds some
extraordinary qualities. Their main focus is on customer centricity. They never fail to attend their
customer queries. They try their best not to lose their customers at any cost. In every way they
show by their actions that they really care for their customers by delivering the exact product at
exact place and exact time. Shopping via Amazon has become easy for the website is easy to
handle, the customers avail attractive Amazon discounts and best quality product as compared to
the market(Amazon.com 2018). The excellent and fast customer service and problem solving

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nature of the company ties the customers and stops them from going for other options. They
adopt the customer standards and serve accordingly. The company binds the customers with their
loyalty, honesty, quality and commitment to them. The customers feel free to invest and deal
with this e-commerce goliath who have been continuing to serve the best since the year
1994(Amazon.com 2018).
Conclusion
Therefore, from the above discussion it can be concluded that knowing customer
expectations are extremely important for the service organizations to mold their service strategies
according to them and customize their product and services keeping in terms of the customer
desires. The above report provided an analytical description on what are the grounds based on
which companies can know and evaluate the customer expectations and play strategically to get
the competitive edge over their competitors. The Amazon company is an ideal example of how
companies should keep the practice of asking their customers about their preferences and
expectations, whether they have been able to meet their expectations by their services and
products. The service organizations must be aware that the customer expectations are increasing
fast and if they stay back from meeting their expectations, they will inevitably face customer
attrition.

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Reference
Amazon.com 2018. Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books,
DVDs & more. [online] Amazon.com. Available at: https://www.amazon.com/ [Accessed 19
Sep. 2018].
Ascarza, E., Neslin, S.A., Netzer, O., Anderson, Z., Fader, P.S., Gupta, S., Hardie, B.G.,
Lemmens, A., Libai, B., Neal, D. and Provost, F., 2018. In Pursuit of Enhanced Customer
Retention Management: Review, Key Issues, and Future Directions. Customer Needs and
Solutions, 5(1-2), pp.65-81.
Blut, M., Beatty, S.E., Evanschitzky, H. and Brock, C., 2014. The impact of service
characteristics on the switching costs–customer loyalty link. Journal of Retailing, 90(2), pp.275-
290.
Dong, Y., Liao, H., Chuang, A., Zhou, J. and Campbell, E.M., 2015. Fostering employee service
creativity: Joint effects of customer empowering behaviors and supervisory empowering
leadership. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(5), p.1364.
Harmeling, C.M., Palmatier, R.W., Houston, M.B., Arnold, M.J. and Samaha, S.A., 2015.
Transformational relationship events. Journal of Marketing, 79(5), pp.39-62.
Jaakkola, E. and Alexander, M., 2014. The role of customer engagement behavior in value co-
creation: a service system perspective. Journal of service research, 17(3), pp.247-261.
N. Bolton, R., Gustafsson, A., McColl-Kennedy, J., J. Sirianni, N. and K. Tse, D., 2014. Small
details that make big differences: a radical approach to consumption experience as a firm's
differentiating strategy. Journal of Service Management, 25(2), pp.253-274.

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Pérez, A. and Rodriguez del Bosque, I., 2015. Corporate social responsibility and customer
loyalty: exploring the role of identification, satisfaction and type of company. Journal of
Services Marketing, 29(1), pp.15-25.
Sengupta, A.S., Balaji, M.S. and Krishnan, B.C., 2015. How customers cope with service
failure? A study of brand reputation and customer satisfaction. Journal of Business
Research, 68(3), pp.665-674.