The overall aims of Services Marketing are:
• To inform you about the best current thinking on services marketing and management, through contemporary readings, current case analysis, and lectures.
• To sensitize you to services operations, service quality, and other elements of services which customers and service providers experience
• To immerse you in the services issues facing a service firm, so that you can apply your knowledge & skills in analysis and problem-solving.
Service sector is growing very rapidly all over the world and gaining importance due to its huge Contribution to GDP of any country. However, the tools used to market goods may not be very useful in case of services due to their unique nature. They require more than traditional four Ps of Marketing which are generally considered enough in the case of goods/manufacturing products. Thus, it becomes critical for a business student to learn how to create and deliver services successfully in this time of fierce competition and make customers of his/her company delighted. In this perspective, the objective of this course is to acquaint the students with the core concepts and tools of marketing that are applicable in the context of services.
• Demonstrate and explain how the characteristics of service products differ from tangible goods, and how this impacts on design and execution of marketing strategies for services.
• Explain the overlap of marketing with operations management and human resource systems in the successful design and management of service organizations.
• Distinguish different service types and draw implications for marketing strategy development.
• Describe the problems faced by services marketing professionals as well as tools and models managers might employ to increase customers’ perceptions of satisfaction, service quality and value.
• Apply the 7 P’s of the services marketing mix to develop a positioning strategy for any service organization.
• Critically analyze services marketing problems and apply your knowledge to develop and communicate recommended solutions.
Essentials of Services Marketing, Global Edition by 
Services marketing by 
Services Marketing by 
Services marketing by 
Services marketing by Week 1: Introduction to Services Marketing
1. Why study services?
2. Powerful forces are transforming service markets
3. What are services?
4. Four broad categories of services
5. Challenges posed by services
6. The 7 Ps of services marketing
7. Framework for effective services marketing strategies
8. 7P’s of Islamic Marketing
Week 2: Consumer Behavior in a Service Context
Consumer Decision Making: The Three-Stage Model
1. Pre-purchase Stage
2. Service Encounter Stage
3. Post-purchase Stage
4. Examples from Uswa-e-Hasana Regarding Patience, Role Clarity and Honesty, Making the Encounter Pleasant
Week 3: Positioning Services in Competitive Markets
1. Customer-Driven Services Marketing Strategy
2. Segmenting Service Markets
3. Targeting Service Markets
4. Positioning Services
5. Using Positioning Maps to Analyze Competitive Strategy
Week 4: Developing Service Product: Core and Supplementary Elements
1. The Flower of Service
2. Facilitating Supplementary Services
3. Enhancing Supplementary Services
4. Branding Service Products and Experiences
5. New Service Development
Week 5: Distributing Services Though Physical and Electronic Channels
1. Distribution in a Services Context
2. Distribution Options for Serving Customers: Determining the Type of Contact
3. Place and Time Decisions
4. Delivering Services in Cyberspace
5. The Role of Intermediaries
6. Distributing Services Internationally
Week 6: Developing Service Product: Setting Prices and Implementing Revenue Management
1. Effective Pricing is Central to Financial Success
2. Pricing Strategy Stands on Three Legs
3. Revenue Management: What it is and how it Works
4. Ethical Concerns in Service Pricing
5. Putting Service Pricing into Practice
6. Islamic Rulings about Pricing and Profit
Week 7: Promoting Services and Educating Customers
1. Role of Marketing Communications
2. Challenges of Service Communications
3. Marketing Communications Planning
4. The Marketing Communications Mix
5. The Role of Corporate Design
6. Promotional Ethics in light of Islam
Week 8: Designing and Managing Service Processes
1. Flowcharting Service Delivery
2. Use Blueprinting to Document and Manage Service Processes
3. Service Process Redesign
4. The Customer as Co-Creators
5. Self-Service Technologies
Week 9: Balancing Demand against Productive Capacity
1. Fluctuations in Demand Threaten Service Productivity
2. Defining Productive Service Capacity
3. Managing Capacity
4. Understanding Patterns of Demand
5. Managing Demand
6. Inventory Demand through Waiting Lines and Queuing Systems
7. Customer Perceptions of Waiting Time
8. Inventory Demand through Reservation System
Week 10: Crafting the Service Environment
1. What is the Purpose of Service Environments?
2. The Theory behind Consumer Responses to Service Environments
3. Dimensions of the Service Environment
4. Putting It All Together
Week 11: Managing People for Service Advantage
1. Service Employees Are Extremely Important
2. Frontline Work Is Difficult and Stressful
3. Cycles of Failure, Mediocrity, and Success
4. Human Resources Management ― How To Get It Right?
5. Service Leadership and Culture
6. Examples from Islamic Perspective how should we act with employees and Ujrah Concept
7. Husn-e-Ikhlaq
Week 12: Managing Relationships and Building Loyalty
1. The Search for Customer Loyalty
2. The Wheel of Loyalty
3. Building a Foundation for Loyalty
4. Strategies for Developing Loyalty Bonds with Customers
5. Strategies for Reducing Customers Defections
6. CRM: Customer Relationship Management Systems
7. What a Comprehensive CRM Strategy Includes
Week 13: Complaint Handling and Service Recovery
1. Customer Complaining Behavior
2. Customer Responses to Effective Service Recovery
3. Principles of Effective Service Recovery Systems
4. Service Guarantees
5. Discouraging Abuse and Opportunistic Customer Behavior
Week 14: Improving Service Quality and Productivity
1. Integrating Service Quality and Productivity Strategies
2. What is Service Quality?
3. The GAP Model – A Conceptual Tool to Identify and Correct Service Quality Problems
4. Measuring and Improving Service Quality
5. Learning from Customer Feedback
6. Hard Measures of Service Quality
7. Tools to Analyze and Address Service Quality Problems
8. Return on Quality
9. Defining and Measuring Productivity
10. Improving Service Productivity
Week 15: Organizing for Service Leadership
1. The Service Profit Chain
2. Integrating Marketing, Operations and Human Resources
3. Creating a Leading Service Organization
4. Leadership, Organizational Culture, and Climate
5. Leadership in the Future