Marketing and Supplementary Services
Inna bid to form a boding relationship with consumers and customers, many organizations through their marketing activities have engaged in giving supplementary services such as additional services to argument or facilitate the core service or core product sold by the organization, after sales services, continuous enlightenment and communication to consumers on how to effectively utilize their products or service, among others. The supplementary services provided by an organization in its marketing strategy this is a way of retaining the patronage of old customers and winning the trust of new ones.
As the strategy of retaining old customers is more cost effective than sourcing for new ones this supplementary services provision is a good way of increasing the bond between the organization and its customers. According to Stern (1997), “Bonding is an increasingly popular marketing strategy in which services marketers seek to establish personal long- term bonds with consumers so that current ones may be retained. Retention is now considered a more cost- effective strategy than continual prospecting for new customers, and this is made manifest by a firm’s commitment to the relationship as an enduring one”. Thus, enduring commitment to an organization’s relationship to its customers, it is adequately expressed via the level of supplementary services made available for them.
Thus, the role of supplementary services and goods provision by an organization to its customers would be looked upon.
Supplementary Services in Goods and Services Providing Organization
An organization provides core services and goods to its customers. This core services or products are the main organization’s operation which they render or sell to customers. According to Iacobucci (2001:323), “An organization that provides services, either as its central provision or in a value-added capacity in a bundle of attributes included in a customer’s purchase of some goods, may find it useful to distinguish those elements of the services purchase experience that are ‘core’ from the supplemental”. Therefore core services or core product of an organization is that function that forms the business identity.
For example, a car manufacturing company will have its core product as the finished cars sold to customers. On the other hand supplementary goods or services are those additional services that an organization gives to customers as a way to augment the core goods or services that was purchased or rendered by the organization. “The supplementary services are the components of the service delivery system that are intended to facilitate and enhance the customer’s experience” (ibid). using the car manufacturing organization again to illustrate, its supplementary services may be that it have a car servicing center, repairs to brakes, sells spare parts for its brand of cars, run a driver training school etc.
Looking at the core and supplementary service of an organization that is service base, for example, an airline organization will have as its core service the transportation of passengers from one city to another. Its supplementary services would include the provision of movies and meals for passengers on board, the operating of a frequent flyer accounts (E.g. Air China gives its frequent flyer a Mileage Awards and run a club for its frequent flyers), conveniently located hubs etc. Also, a business center for data processing and photocopy services as its core may have supplementary services as sending of fax messages, sending of overnight express packages etc.
The illustrated examples go to buttress the fact that supplementary services is applicable to both an organization that deals in goods and services.
The Role of Supplementary Services
Supplementary services plays a vital role in making customers satisfy with the core goods or services they derive from an organization. The supplementary goods facilitate and make the customer have a quick satisfying experience from the utilization of the core services or goods from an organization. According to Iacobucci (2001:321), “In an attempt to create distinct advantage managers often seek to provide added value to customers and enhance their corporate competitive advantage by offering better customer service”. Hence, the provision of supplementary services to customer is a way by which a firm can gain competitive advantage over its rivals.
The extra supplementary services goes a long way in putting the organization ahead over its rivals, that is as customers derives additional services they would be made satisfied and this is an advantage to the organization. Proctor (20000, argues that “marketing is about satisfying customers wants and needs and in the course of doing so facilitating the achievement of an organization’s objectives by paying attention to customers wants and needs organizations are likely to achieve their objectives in the marketplace…they have to compete with each other and also have to satisfy customers wants and needs at least as well their competitors.”
Supplementary services brings the customers into forming a bond with the organization and hence, creating continuous patronage from the customers. Patronage motives, according to Beckman & Davidson (1967:300), “stressed in industrial purchasing include accessibility to seller, rapidity of delivery, terms of sale and reliability of repair services, history of satisfactory business relationships, and other similar rational consideration”. Supplementary services helps in winning the continuous patronage of customers.
For example, when a customer who buys television sets for his retail sales from an organization that offers supplementary repairs services, the retailer would be rest assures that if there is problem with any of the set, he stays to get expert to repair them from the organization. Thus, his patronage of the organization product would continue, and that bond would be established between him and the organization.
Supplementary services also play the role of giving customers the ability to assess the level of satisfaction they get from the core services or utility derived in consuming an organization’s product. For example, patience in a hospital may base his satisfaction on what he derives while being admitted as an in-patient.
This could come in supplementary services as the meal served, how conducive the environment is in terms of facility provided, and a clean environment, question like was the television in the ward too loud or in a good state? All these supplementary services which are not the core service from the hospital would go a long way in making the patient form his judgment on how satisfied he is with the core service from the organization.
How to Relate Supplementary Services With an Organization’s Marketing Strategy
The supplementary services rendered by an organization should be established with a focus to helping the organization effectively market its core services or core products. Thus, it is germane that these supplementary services are a streamlined in the direction of how effectively the organization could attain its corporate objectives. According to Proctor (2000), “a strategy is a plan that integrates an organization’s major goals, policies, decisions and sequences of action into a cohesive whole”.
Thus, it is germane that the provision of supplementary services is targeted towards enhancing the organization’s core functions in order to make it effectively meet its goals and objectives. The need to make vital decision on what to bring up as supplementary service sis important in meeting the significant that goes along with the service creation. According to Lazar (1971), an organization can derive good intelligent decision through information gotten from assessing marketing alternatives and adjust to dynamic market conditions. Thus the provision of supplementary services should be done with the cognizance of change in the environment where the organization operates.
Conclusion
The provision of supplementary services is an effective way of satisfying the desires of customers. And this is applicable to organization operating in services provision and goods production. Continuous patronage and the formation of bond between customers and the organization is enhanced and facilitated through supplementary service provision. Hence, the establishment should align its supplementary services or goods to be intone with its core functions, so as to effectively meet the organization’s objectives and long term goals.
References
- Beckman, Theodore N & Davidson, William R. (1967), Marketing New York: Ronald Press Co.
- Iacobucci, Dawn (2001), “Services Marketing and Customers Service’ in Iacobucci, Dawn (ed.) Kellogg on Marketing. New York: Wiley
- Lazar, William (1971), Marketing management: A Systems Perspective. New York: John Wiley & Sons
- Proctor, Tony (2000), Strategic marketing: An Introduction. London: Routledge
- Stern, Barbara B. (1997), “Advertising Intimacy: relationship Marketing and the Service Consumer” in Journal of Advertising. Vol. 26, No. 4
