Service Marketing Mix Analysis
- Introduction
Howard Smith Wharves is a heritage located in the city of Brisbane, Australia. Initially built in the 1930s, it was used as air-raid shelters or a police station throughout World War II (Bollard, 2013). Over the years, it has been redeveloped to incorporate a variety of entertainment facilities and thereby significantly revolutionizing the city’s riverfront recreational industry. According to Lovelock’s service classification framework, Howard Smith Wharves offers people tangible actions, that is, people processing. In this, for services to be rendered, clients must be physically present on the premises as they are actively involved in the service operation. This service audit will uncover the extent of the company’s pre-eminence while identifying areas that need refinement. This will further help them to differentiate themselves and draft long-term survival techniques.
- Service Marketing Mix Analysis
2.1 Service Product and Positioning
Due to the riverfront location of the precinct, the cliffs, the breathtaking buildings, and the overwater landmark has attracted numerous customers from different countries. The core product that Howard Smith Wharves provides is entertainment and recreation, as it has incorporated a variety of leisure centres such as hotels, galleries, restaurants, outdoor recreation sites, retail, commercial, and tourism precinct (Our Story – Howard Smith Wharves, 2020). Additionally, the vicinity’s natural beauty makes it appealing to host events and festivals.
The company has integrated the use of the 3Cs analysis to give it a competitive positioning of services. The study involves customer, company, and competitor analysis. In customer analysis, the precinct hosts different amusement venues, which accounts for the different customer tastes and preferences while extensively taking advantage of its geographical location. The firm has been able to maximize its resources through company analysis. In competitor analysis, Howard Smith Wharves provides differential supplementary services such as hospitality, safekeeping of customer goods, online payment, and dissemination of information about the company through the provision of its website link.
The organization should implement the GAP model, which diagnoses service design and delivery hitches. The model assimilates six gaps: knowledge, policy, delivery, communications, perceptions, and service quality. While all the gaps are essential, service quality is more critical. In a bid to check on quality, the company should enact soft and hard measures. Soft measures involve gathering information from the employees and customers, whereas hard actions make use of service audits. These measures will, in turn, help the firm to enhance its positioning strategy and maintain long-term survival.
2.2 Pricing, Productive Capacity, and Demand
The pricing foundation that the organization implements is value-based pricing. In this, Howard Smith Wharves relates the price of a service to the value that a customer anticipates to receive. The company takes into account Zeithaml’s expressions of value in which we derive the pricing strategies that the company incorporates.
The first expression of Zeithaml states that value is a low price, which means that clients rate the value of service by the amount of money they have to give up (Zeithaml, Bitner & Gremier, 2017). From this expression, the business makes use of odd pricing and discounting; for instance, special discounted parking rates are offered. In the second expression, value is regarded as what a customer wants in a service; hence, the firm’s pricing strategy is price skimming. Value is a trade-off between the money a client pays and the quality of service provided. Zeithaml coins this as the third expression, which prompts the company to assimilate prestige pricing so that the price for service reflects on quality. Lastly, concerning the fourth expression, value is what I get for what I give, result-based pricing is used whereby, for example, more money will get one a more luxurious hotel room. The pricing strategies are used to manage capacity and demand in that people perceive quality differently; thus, customers will prefer separate options.
2.3 Physical and Electronic Distribution
For the organization to interact with its customers, the customers must physically go to the company. Therefore, the service delivery channels that Howard Smith Wharves integrates is interpersonal service and remote service. In interpersonal service, both the employees and customers are actively involved in the service delivery. This channel comes in when a client wants to book a hotel room virtually on the website, and the employee will reserve it for him or her.
Remote service is the primary channel used since the precinct houses numerous eat and drink restaurants. The company prohibits any outside catering of events such as concerts or weddings, further limiting a customer’s involvement—the company majors in this delivery channel as they deem it more convenient to the customers.
The distribution strategy that is currently in use in Howard Smith Wharves is intensive distribution. The company’s core service is provision of food and drinks due to the numerous restaurants within the company. Therefore, this service is intensely distributed, giving customers a variety of choices. For instance, a client may decide to dine and drink at Mr Percival’s, Yoko dining, Fish n Chippery, or Betty’s Burgers, among other food outlets.
2.4 Integrated Service Marketing Communication
Marketing communication mix refers to tools that an organization uses to promote its products or services. Some of these promotional tools that Howard Smith Wharves uses to address its customers include advertising, personal communications, particularly word of mouth, public relations, and instructional materials. HSW, having opened recently, (2018), advertising was inevitable through media coverage and social media platforms. The company displayed different recreational facilities and their services on television, newspapers, radio broadcasts, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
The level of satisfaction that customers of HSW get further prompts them to recommend the company to other individuals through word of mouth. This has proven to be remarkably rewarding for the company. HSW has hosted over two hundred events, and in some of these, public relations has been promoted through exhibitions, press releases, and media coverage. Lastly, the organization has been able to provide a link to its website to address potential customers through instructional materials.
The most recent problems with the organization were brought forward by concerned customers through emails to the Brisbane Times (Moore, 2020). The dissatisfied clients expressed that it was difficult to negotiate between the restaurants and bars and in front of the Hotel Fantauzzo. This predicament comes about because pedestrians are forced to step into a busy bike lane. HSW should, therefore, check on the communication gap in the GAP model. It should provide its email where individuals can address their complaints directly.
2.5 Service Process
HSW incorporates a variety of facilities in which most of them are restaurants. The production steps that lead to service delivery include arrival at the organization, parking of car if personal means have been used, check into the facility of choice, give an order for a preferred meal or drink, and lastly, exiting the facility. These processes are specifically designed to maximize the customer experience. From the steps, we can deduce that the client does not participate in service delivery.