Impact of Technology on Service Marketing

The 7-Ps of Service Marketing

In other to present a clear view of how technology has inpacted service marketing and other marketing strategies globaly, we will look into the 7-Ps of Servce Marketing. The traditional marketing mix originated from the idea that goods are developed for consumer markets and consists of the 4Ps - Price, Promortion, Place and Product. The People element was added to the 4Ps by Judd in 1997, and Booms and Bitner completed the 7Ps by inclduing Participants, Physical evidence and Process to the allready existing elements.

The product element deals with the goods or services being offered, the prices is the value of the goods on offer, the place is where the goods or servce is being sold (e.g market), promotion is the process through which marketers uses to create product and service awareness for their potential customers. The other elements comprices of people, which represents customers in this case, process which analysis the steps undertaken in prducing any given product or servce and the physical evidence which includes any means or process used to build customer loyalty and trust such as Office location or warranty.

The Impact of Technology on Service Marketing with Reference to the 7Ps

The above diagram shows how technology has change the conventional/traditional service marketing principles by imcorporating a better means to serve both the customers and services inductries.

Zeithmal et all suggested in 1990, that improved service is critical in gaining competitive edge, and this imprved service can be achieved by improved technologies. In the marketing sector, it has been highly believed by marketing researchers that information technology has a positive impact on firm's performance, but some researchers such as Urgo (1996) has stressed their believe that technology will not completely replace all conventional business practices and this has been the case up till today. Our interest on the impact of technology on service marketing follows that of Jackson (1990), who argued that services can be changed effectively by the use of information technology. Such benefits has been believed to include, but not limite to minimized bargaining power between customers and marketers, developed barriers of entry and new innovative products and market development. Thus, based on the following arguments, the impact of technology on service marketing will be analyzed further below:

Product

Tehcnology has increased the production of E-products such as Ebay, Google and FaceBook. This e-products allows us to keep in touch with friend, go for shoping, make only purchases as well as banking and promote our services withou having to handle the conventional bustles normaly associated with such products and services.

Price

Technology has also changed product pricing, becuase companies can no longer use price differentiation as a means of targeting their customers. This is becuase, customer can compare prices of the products of services they want to buy by just a click of da button from websites that offer price comparison services. E.g,

Promotion

Another impact Technology has had on Service marketing is the way it has changed the promotion strategies from news paper adverts into satelite Tv and Cable adverts, pop-in and pop-out, drope down menu banner adds, search engine optimization and other forms of online advertisiments.

Place

Location of goods and services is one of the most influenced elements of service marketing. Technology has change the way market systems are operated by placing online marketing which offers more reliability and convenience to customer. Individuals from around the world can order any product or service of their choice by just clicking da button and have their order delivered to their door steps..

Besides the poristive impacts of technology on services marketing, they have also been some negative impacts which includes online frauds, fake websites offering fake or immitational products, increase in illegal trading, virus atack on cmputers, loss of information, piracy and other forms of online crime.

Thus, it is arguable to conclude, that technology might not be able to replace all business conventional system, or if it does it should not be in a near date. But, we all can agree that technology has had many impact on service marketing and the marketing concept in general.

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