Chapter 3 Characteristics of Services

1. Chapter 3Characteristics of Services TIP Pharmacists provide services - not drugs. Chapter 3 slides for Marketing for Pharmacists, 2nd Edition Chapter 3 slides for Marketingfor Pharmacists, 2nd Edition

2. Learning Objectives • Define the following terms: services, value-added services, pure services. • Identify four characteristics of services that differentiate them from products. • Discuss how the characteristics of services make them difficult to market. • Describe service categorization methods that can be used to develop strategic insights into the provision of pharmaceutical services. • Apply marketing strategies for dealing with the unique characteristics of services.

3. Defining Services • Services are performances or processes that benefit others. • They can accompany tangible product or be of value by themselves. • Services that accompany a tangible product often called value-added services. • Pure services do not accompany a tangible product. • Pharmacy is a service profession. • Services often revolve around the provision of a tangible product.

4. Pharmacist services • Pharmacist value-added services enhance value of tangible products. • The level of service or product orientation of a pharmacy depends on the intangibility of the offering.

5. Characteristics Unique to Services • Intangible • Actions or events • Can’t be seen, held, or touched • Heterogeneous • No two service experiences alike • Service quality depends on uncontrollable factors • Actual service often not what was planned

6. Characteristics Unique to Services • Production and consumption inseparable • Services can’t be saved, returned, or resold • Once services are delivered, they are lost • Difficult to synchronize supply and demand • Customers participate and influence service • Customers influence each other’s experiences

7. Challenges in Marketing Services • It is difficult to promote their value • Challenging to get customers to notice and desire a product when it cannot be seen or touched • Customers have difficulty evaluating services • Intangibility and variability makes them difficult to assess • Often invisible • Difficult to synchronize supply and demand

8. Classifying Pharmacist Services TIP To market services, we must understand them. Classifying helps identify new strategies for serving patients and competing. Avoids inbreeding.

9. FIGURE 3-1Pharmacist services on a continuum of product to service orientation

13. Professional or nonprofessional • Professionals • Considered to have unique skills, expertise, and training • Have distinct group identity and are largely self-regulatory • Are experts in specialized fields and use their expertise to advise and assist customers • Are less subject to price sensitivity and promoted more through word of mouth

14. Strategies for Marketing Services • Use tangible clues to the quality of your services • Lighting, cleanliness, neatness • Dress, appearance, and body language of the pharmacist • Organization of merchandise on shelves • Provide something tangible with your services

15. Strategies for Marketing Services • Take advantage of word-of-mouth promotional communications. • Ask customers to recommend the pharmacy to others. • Identify and cultivate opinion leaders. • Emphasize the professional nature of pharmacist services. • Use good judgment and show professionalism. • Emphasize expertise, competence, and training.

16. Marketing insurance http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5675094 Can marketing work with pharmacist services?

17. Strategies for Marketing Services • Establish and maintain a strong image in the mind of customers • Through all elements of marketing mix. • Practice relationship marketing. • Develop formal and informal relationships. • Take a long-term view of transactions.

18. Strategies for Marketing Services • Expand services to more than one site. • Store services if possible. • Manage supply and demand.

19. ATM-style dispensing machines • In physicians’ offices • In pharmacies • For refills or new prescriptions

20. Self-diagnostic tests • Pharmacists conduct diagnostic testing and provide information and assistance on OTC diagnostic products: • Pregnancy • Cholesterol • Blood glucose • Blood pressure • AIDS • Narcotics use

21. Point-of-purchase • Touchscreen information • Self checkout and payment

22. Conclusion • The pharmacy profession needs to look beyond current ways of practice and explore how other businesses serve customers. • Pharmacists can learn by emulating the best practices of businesses outside pharmacy • e.g., hospitality, retailing, and food service industries.