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Services Marketing Essay

Services There are four broad categories of services. These are people processing, possession processing, information processing and mental processing. These four categories represent the process view of services, which is based on the idea that services are essentially transformative in nature. Something is transformed as part of the service, and services can therefore be categorized in terms of what is being processed.

The first is people processing, which is a focus on the customer as the person to whom something is done. A haircut is a good example, but another good one would be a hotel room. The service is provided in terms of the provision of rest and a personal space. There is a physical component, but they call it the hospitality industry because the key deliverable is the hospitality and the physical component is just a manifestation of that.

The second is possession processing. This is similar to people processing, except...

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A cobbler performs a possession processing service, for example. Something like that would probably be viewed as having a human component, but ultimately the cobbler is performing the service on the shoe -- whether there are pleasantries exchanged as part of the service is not likely going to be a more important determinant of return business compared to the quality of work on the shoe.
Information processing is focused on information as the item upon which the service is performed. Information processing could be something like a management consulting service, where the company gathers information, analyzes it, and then creates a report for management about what should be done. The key thing upon which the service is based is the information, and without it there would be no service.

Finally, there is mental processing. This is a service, for example, that is largely experiential. The…

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Lovelock et al. (2012), Essentials of Services Marketing (2nd ed.), Pearson
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