In today’s competitive world, service sectors are considered as a contributor to developing and developed countries’ economic progress and until achieving it. Each nation inevitably will experience a change from the agricultural industry to the manufacturing industry and then to the service industry as the backbone of the economy. Progress in the service sector results in having high competitiveness in today’s business environment among service provider companies that are trying to meet their customers’ needs and exceed their expectations. Before talking about the difference between service and goods and how service providers achieve and differentiate themselves from others, let’s look at the definition of the word “Service”. The word of service can come in different definitions in many dictionaries but at the root of these all definitions lies the same meaning which is “Activities, benefits, and satisfactions which are offered for sale or are provided in connection with the sale of goods.” Service has its characteristics which make itself different from goods but interconnect with goods. In terms of characteristics of a service, service is intangible and does not exist physically compared to goods that are tangible and can be touched, tasted, and smelt. And Services have variability which can not be repeated in an exact way, namely the taste of the food in the restaurant are almost the same but services to these two customers provided by restaurant’s staff are different. Secondly, imperishability of a service which mainly differentiates from goods. It means that services can not be stocked, kept in the store, resold, or returned once they have been consumed, unlike goods. Moreover, mostly the production and consumption processes of service happen at the same time in the same place. Services can be divided into types including core and supplementary services by being based on these characteristics. Growing the importance of the service sector and having emerged as a contributor to the economic progress resulted in increasing the role of new phenomenon Marketing of services and being looked at as a separate discipline. The focus of service providers turned to services marketing can be explained for a variety of reasons. For example, firstly, marketing of services is considered as a key differentiator from their competitors which offer the same products to the public. Pizza stores have the same offerings for their customers but they can be distinguished by their services provided. Furthermore, it can help to keep existing customers and use their service regularly. Regarding customer needs and expectations in service sectors, making customers satisfied with their needs and expectations is not sufficient to have a positive impression on the company but service providers need to focus on exceeding their customers’ expectations also. How they can exceed customers’ expectations?. Generating extra values for service users can exceed their expectations. For example, in my country, many service providers make and send wishes to their customers on their birthday. As we know, birthday is a special day for everybody and sending birthday wishes can make the company top of mind. This article also provided some tips on how service companies can maintain their quality. According to the article, service companies can have choices of two approaches such as proactive and reactive approaches. A proactive approach means that service quality can be sustained by asking users’ feedback and suggestions for improvement. Proactive approaches can be implemented by making surveys, gap analysis, and staff training. The reactive approach is more about taking into account customers’ complaints and fixing them.
It is true that in the past decades we have witnessed that the service industry has achieved high growth and had profound impacts on the GDP of the economy in advanced countries. These articles can give enough information on why service providers including Mcdonald’s, Southwest Airlines, or Walmart are chosen by many people and doing things differently from their rivals. Creating moments of magic that service provides in a manner that exceeds customer expectation represents an integral part of having a competitive advantage. And also the service industry should keep in mind the maintenance strategy of service quality which brings customer retention.
