FINAL TERM

Chapter 05
Services Marketing Triangle
 Services Marketing Triangle
-M.J. Bitner (1995), “Building Service Relationships: It’s All About Promises”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science,
23(4), 246-251.

• The services triangle is a strategic framework which

visually reinforces the importance of people in the
ability of firm to keep their promises and succeed in
building customer relationships.
• The triangle shows the three interlinked groups (the
customers, the employees and the company) that
work together to develop, promote and deliver
services.
• Service marketing involves 3 types of marketing:
(1) Internal Marketing
(2) External Marketing
(3) Interactive Marketing
 …Services Marketing Triangle
Company
(Management)

Internal Marketing External Marketing

“Enabling promises” “Making promises”

Employees Customers
Interactive Marketing
“Keeping promises”
 Internal Marketing
 Internal marketing was first proposed as a solution to the
problem of delivering consistently high service quality by
L.L. Berry, J.S. Hensel and M.C. Burke (1976), “Improving
Retailer Capability for Effective Consumerism Response”,
Journal of Retailing, 52(3), 3-14.
 Internal marketing refers to identification of employees as
market and serving them as final customers. The concept
believes that satisfaction of internal customer is the
prerequisite for satisfying the external customers.
 Internal marketing can be defined as “viewing employees
as internal customers, viewing jobs as internal products
that satisfy the needs and wants of these internal
customers while addressing the objectives of the
organization”
 ...Internal Marketing
• Internal marketing is attracting,
developing, motivating and retaining
qualified employees through job products
that satisfy their needs.
• Internal marketing is the marketing
conducted by a service firm to train and
effectively motivate its customer contact
employees and all the supporting service
people to work as a team to provide
customer satisfaction.
 ...Internal Marketing
 Elements of Internal Marketing:
(1) Employee motivation and satisfaction
(2) Customer orientation and customer satisfaction
(3) Inter-functional coordination and integration
(4)Marketing-like approach to the above
(5) Implementation of Specific corporate or functional
strategies
 Objectives of internal marketing:
(1) To ensure that the employees are motivated for
customer-oriented and service-minded
performance
(2) To attract and retain good employees
 ...Internal Marketing
 Strategies for Internal Marketing:
(1) Staffing-manpower planning, recruitment and selection
(2) Training-technical skills, interactive skills and social skills
(3) Organizing-work assignment, empowerment, service
culture, teamwork
(4) Supporting-technical support, process support
(5) Motivating-promotions, treating employees as customers
(6) Evaluating-feedback to management, feedback to
employees, measuring performance
(7) Rewarding-payment for excellence, extended benefits,
competitive compensation
(8) Retaining-retaining the best employees, inclusion in the
company vision
 External Marketing
External marketing is the interaction of the
service company with the target market.
• External marketing includes all such
communication campaigns by the service
provider which inform, educate, persuade,
train and influence the customers to
purchase services.
• External marketing in services is popularly
known as “promotion” in traditional
marketing.
 Interactive Marketing
 Interactive marketing may be defined as the managerial process through which
a series of interactions between service provider and customer are organized to
facilitate efficient participation in service production and consumption and
creates positive customer perceived quality.
 Interactive marketing is the decisive moment of interaction between the front-line
employees and the customers, which can be termed as “Moment of Truth” or
“Service Encounter”.
 The interacting points from the viewpoint of a service customer are:
(i) Physical setting of the service outlet
(ii) Tangibles
(iii) Systems
(iv) Co-customers
(v) Contact employees
(vi) Other employees on the line of visibility
(vii) Signage and other communication material
(viii) Other facilities
THE END