Services Marketing & Customer Strategy——Abercrombie & Fitch Case

Abstract

Services are becoming the dominant economic driver in the global economy and are critical for competitive advantage in companies, from all industrial sectors, all around the world. Even for companies not considered traditional service companies, services represent their primary growth and profitability strategies into the 21st century. For example, IBM and GE, two companies that gained prominence due to their product offerings, now generate approximately 40% of revenues and over 60% of current profits respectively from services. The purpose of this paper is to introduce you to services marketing as a separate and distinct area of marketing thought and practice and help you to understand its powerful influence in competitive markets. It is thus designed to supplement basic marketing and marketing strategy courses by focusing on problems and strategies specific to marketing of services. Specifically, we will focus our attention on understanding four main areas: the service experience and the special characteristics of services, the satisfaction of service customers, the need to integrate marketing, human resources and operations within the service system and the importance of customer management. Strategies used by successful service marketers will be discussed. The emphasis in the paper will be on service universals rather than on any particular industry. It is designed who want to pursue a career in services industries but also in goods industries with service components. It is intended to help you become proficient in analyzing and judging the merits of services marketing strategies and to assist you in making strategic decisions in both business and consumer services industries.