Page 346 - Foundations of Marketing

Developing and Managing Goods and Services | Chapter 11 313

less perishable than services. If a pair of jeans has been sitting on a department store shelf
for a week, someone still can buy them the next day. Goods marketers can handle the supply-
demand problem through production scheduling and inventory techniques. Service marketers
do not have the same advantage, and they face several hurdles in trying to balance supply
and demand. They can, however, plan for demand that fluctuates according to day of the week,
time of day, or season.

Heterogeneity

Services delivered by people are susceptible to heterogeneity , or variation in quality.
Quality of manufactured goods is easier to control with standardized procedures, and
mistakes are easier to isolate and correct. Because of the nature of human behavior, how-
ever, it is very difficult for service providers to maintain a consistent quality of service
delivery. This variation in quality can occur from one organization to another, from one
service person to another within the same service facility, and from one service facility to
another within the same organization. For example, the retail clerks in one bookstore may
be more knowledgeable and therefore more helpful than those in another bookstore owned
by the same chain. Heterogeneity usually increases as the degree of labor intensiveness
increases. Many services, such as auto repair, education, and hairstyling, rely heavily on
human labor. Other services, such as telecommunications, health clubs, and public trans-
portation, are more equipment intensive. People-based services are often prone to fluctua-
tions in quality from one time period to the next. For example, the fact that a hairstylist
gives a customer a good haircut today does not guarantee that customer a haircut of equal
quality from the same hairstylist at a later date. Equipment-based services, in contrast,
suffer from this problem to a lesser degree than people-based services. For instance, auto-
mated teller machines have reduced inconsistency in the quality of teller services at banks,
and bar-code scanning has improved the accuracy of service at the checkout counters in heterogeneity Variation in
grocery stores. quality

© iStockphoto.com/Anne-Louise Quarfoth Service Characteristic of
Heterogeneity
Do you like to go to the same
hair care professional most of
the time? If so, it is probably
because you want the same
quality of hair care, such as a
haircut that you have received
from this individual in the past.

Copyright 2014 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.