Services marketing

Services marketing is a specialised branch of marketing. Services marketing emerged as a separate field of study in the early 1980s, following the recognition that the unique characteristics of services required different strategies compared with the marketing of physical goods.

Services marketing typically refers to both business to consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) services, and includes marketing of services such as telecommunications services, financial services, all types of hospitality, tourism leisure and entertainment services, car rental services, health care services and professional services and trade services. Service marketers often use an expanded marketing mix which consists of the seven Ps, namely; product, price, place, promotion, people, physical evidence and process. A contemporary approach, known as service-dominant logic argues that the demarcation between products and services that persisted throughout the 20th century, was artificial and has obscured the fact that everyone sells service. The S-D Logic approach is changing the way that marketers understand value-creation and is changing concepts of the consumer's role in service delivery processes.

The American Marketing Association defines services marketing as an organisational function and a set of processes for identifying or creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationship in a way that benefit the organisation and stake-holders. Services are (usually) intangible economic activities offered by one party to another. Often time-based, services performed bring about desired results to recipients, objects, or other assets for which purchasers have responsibility. In exchange for money, time, and effort, service customers expect value from access to goods, labor, professional skills, facilities, networks, and systems; but they do not normally take ownership of any of the physical elements involved.

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