Service Marketing: Future Role, Trends and Emerging Issues

This report delves into the dynamic field of service marketing, exploring its current trajectory and future prospects. It analyzes key trends such as the adoption of social media, the rise of virtual firms, modularization of services, and automation of back-end processes. The report further predicts future trends, including increased complexity in consumer purchasing decisions, the prevalence of product design and communication personalization, the centrality of mobile communication, and the importance of transparency in customer-brand relationships. Emerging trends like the shift to mobile and computer-based marketing are also discussed. The report concludes by emphasizing the impact of social media and the challenges consumers face due to information overload. It provides a comprehensive overview of the evolving landscape of service marketing, offering insights into the forces shaping its future.

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SERVICE MARKETING
Introduction
Marketing and especially service marketing is taking a completely different trajectory in
contrast with traditional marketing. The future is always risky and is bound to experience a
lot of change. It is challenging to keep up with the changes in marketing landscape. The pace
of innovation in marketing channels is sifting through endless content flow. Companies need
to be competitive and better prepared for the future (Andaleeb, 2016).
Current trend in service marketing
The competitiveness in the service industry in general has led to a lot of innovation in
marketing channels. Some of these key market trends are discussed below;
1. Adoption of social media- the market has gone to engage with clients online. Social
media has seen an increase in people willing to use services that are offered online.
Social media has been used in engaging clients online, monitoring competitors,
marketing services and using professional services using social media. Enhanced
social media presence helps create a bigger brand, increase the base of clients, foster
better relations with customers and boost client satisfaction.
2. Increase in virtual firms in marketing professional’s industry- due to rapid change in
technology, increased use of smartphones and pressure for companies to reduce costs,
virtual firms concepts have emerged.
3. There is emergence of modularization in current trend in marketing services. Services
are now being split to individual components and the marketed to the client separately
rather than being bundled together. Clients alternatively may want a breakdown of the
projects into smaller components (Gummesson, 2017).

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4. There is automation of back end services where companies are eliminating paper
work or paper driven processes. Professional marketing services are now more
electronic than ever. Automation of the back end operation in the current trend is
helping to reduce the cost of operations.
5. Firms in this industry are increasingly communicating with their clients online
therefore cutting costs, changing the working model to value oriented revenue model
and growing the brand awareness.
Future trends
Nobody can predict the future. However, marketing services have been predicted to have the
following trends in the future;
1. There will be an increase in complexity in purchasing decisions by the consumer. It is
becoming highly complex to make decisions in shopping due to many marketing sites
in social media. From YouTube to Facebook, the consumer is bombarded with a lot of
information during marketing making it very hard for him to make a choice. Market
segmentation is becoming more and more complex as the consumer may buy a high
end product and a low end product at the same time.
2. Product design and communication personalization will become more prevalent. Big
data in social media has enabled companies to customize their services and product
designs (Lovelock, & Patterson, 2015). Personalization of products will become more
and more prevalent in the future as competition and marketing becomes more and
more intense.
3. Mobile communication has been fronted as the best avenue for marketing and is
becoming the center of marketing. Targeted ads have been the marketing tool in
facebook although this is seen as being intrusive.

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4. Transparency in the future will dictate the customer-brand relationship. Companies
such as Volkswagen and Wells fargo are a small list of disgraced companies due to
social media scrutiny. It is now apparent that business cannot escape the transparency
demanded by customers by social media (Payne, & Frow, 2017).
5. Personalized data driven marketing will be emphasized and will become more
friendly. Companies are getting personalized data due to big data to learn who you
are. They then target you on what you may want depending on different
demographics.
Emerging trends in service marketing
Due to technological advancement, marketing services has shifted to mobile bases and
computer based marketing. A few years back, a company would have a digital team and a
marketing team in different offices. Nowadays, the digital team is running everything.
Integration of many departments ran by the digital team has led to shrinking of companies
requiring more and more technological services and less personnel (Sheth, 2017). Companies
are no longer requiring a digital strategy, all they need is to plug in the marketing component
with the consumer needs.
Conclusion
Social media has been used in engaging clients online, monitoring competitors, marketing
services and using professional services using social media. Marketing and especially service
marketing is taking a completely different trajectory in contrast with traditional marketing.
From YouTube to Facebook, the consumer is bombarded with a lot of information during
marketing making it very hard for him to make a choice (Wirtz, & Lovelock, 2016).

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References
Andaleeb, S. S. (2016). Services Marketing. In Strategic Marketing Management in Asia:
Case Studies and Lessons across Industries (pp. 351-382). Emerald Group Publishing
Limited.
Gummesson, E. (2017). From relationship marketing to total relationship marketing and
beyond. Journal of Services Marketing, 31(1), 16-19.
Lovelock, C., & Patterson, P. (2015). Services marketing. Pearson Australia.
Payne, A., & Frow, P. (2017). Relationship marketing: looking backwards towards the
future. Journal of services marketing, 31(1), 11-15.
Sheth, J. (2017). Revitalizing relationship marketing. Journal of Services Marketing, 31(1),
6-10.
Wirtz, J., & Lovelock, C. (2016). Services Marketing: People, Technology. World Scientific
Publishing Company.

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