MKTG208 - Services Marketing

Year

Credit points

Campus offering

Prerequisites

Teaching organisation

Unit rationale, description and aim

This unit highlights strategic and tactical marketing practice in a services context, ranging from education, health, finance, government, professions and business, transportation and utilities, wholesale and retail, to leisure and hospitality. This unit explores practical and theoretical issues in the marketing of services including the extent to which services differ from tangible goods and how these differences influence marketing strategies and tactics. It also explores the role consumers play in co-creating the service experience, and the extent to which marketers must be aware of the extended services marketing mix.

Learning outcomes

To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.

Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.

Explore the graduate capabilities.

On successful completion of this unit, students should be able to:

LO1 - Analyse and explain the particular context and nature of services marketing (GA2, GA4, GA5, GA8, GA9).

LO2 - Critically evaluate issues relevant to strategic services marketing management (GA4, GA5, GA8, GA9). 

LO3 - Critically assess and explain the relationships between customers, employees, and the organisation in the design and delivery of services (GA2, GA4, GA5, GA8, GA9).

LO4 - Critically evaluate theoretical perspectives in services marketing provided by the academic literature, to develop your own perspectives (GA4, GA5, GA8). 

LO5 - Analyse and explain issues in service delivery and evaluation of service quality (GA2, GA4, GA5, GA8, GA9). 

Graduate attributes

GA2 - recognise their responsibility to the common good, the environment and society 

GA4 - think critically and reflectively 

GA5 - demonstrate values, knowledge, skills and attitudes appropriate to the discipline and/or profession 

GA8 - locate, organise, analyse, synthesise and evaluate information 

GA9 - demonstrate effective communication in oral and written English language and visual media 

Content

Topics will include: 

• The nature and context of services marketing. 
• Theories and models relevant to services marketing. 
• The role of the service customer including; competition, expectations, perceptions, and co-creation of value. 
• Buyer behaviour in the services sector. 
• Service quality, satisfaction, and value. 
• Creating, communicating, and delivering services. 
• Managing service quality including; consumer expectations, service operations, and capacity management. 
• Building customer-focused service organisations. 
• Pricing and positioning strategies. 
• Communicating and promoting services. 
• Service recovery and complaint management. 
• International services. 

Learning and teaching strategy and rationale

High-engagement, collaborative, interactive pedagogies will be employed in order to develop students’ abilities to communicate and collaborate effectively. This unit will adopt an active learning approach whereby students will be expected to engage in activities such as reading, writing, discussions, or problem-solving, inside and outside the classroom, that promote analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of class content and your own extended studies. 

Cooperative learning, problem solving-based learning, and the use of case methods and simulations will be utilized, as these approaches promote active learning. This method of learning is commonly used in business schools because it allows the application of theoretical concepts to be demonstrated, thus bridging the gap between theory and practice and providing opportunities for the development of key skills such as communication and problem-solving abilities. 

Assessment strategy and rationale

The assessment tasks have been designed so that they use a variety of tasks to measure each different learning outcome of the unit. Therefore, a range of assessment procedures will be used to meet the unit learning outcomes and develop graduate attributes consistent with University assessment requirements. 

The first assessment task is for students to reflect upon their own service experiences; providing personal insight and reflection, in an academic framework, into the range of service provision that each service consumer naturally encounters (to achieve learning outcomes 1, 3, 4 & 5). 

Once the basic services marketing principles and concepts are well grounded in the first assessment, students will subsequently build on this platform in assignment 2, to develop and enhance their depth of knowledge by examining service standards, the management of customer expectations, and service retention strategies (to achieve learning outcomes 1, 2, 3, & 4). 

Finally, the third assessment examines students’ overall understanding of the fundamental concepts and theories which underpin this subject, to achieve graduate attributes 2, 8, & 9. 

In order to pass this unit, you are required to: complete and submit all assessment tasks and achieve at least 50% of the total assessment marks for the semester’s three pieces of assessments. 

The assessment tasks for this unit are designed for you to demonstrate your achievement of each learning outcome.  

Overview of assessments

Representative texts and references

Lovelock, C., Patterson, P., & Wirtz, J. 2015, Essentials of Services Marketing, 3rd Edition, Pearson Education, Australia 

Recommended references 

An extensive and growing number of quality articles of various aspects of services marketing and practical applications can be found in the ACU Library electronic databases, such as Proquest, EBSCO, Emerald etc. For practical examples, the Business media and periodicals are also helpful resources. It is essential to read widely to appreciate the trends and nature of services marketing.