Spyros Langkos_Athens Archeological Museum_individual report and reflective commentarry

M.Sc in Marketing Management

DELIVERING CUSTOMER

FOCUSED SERVICES

Individual Report

&

Reflective Commentary

SPYROS LANGKOS

ID: 100285557

Tutor: Mr. Roumeliotis George

Athens, May 2013

Academic Year 2012 – 2013

AMA - Individual report and Reflective commentary | 2

This report concentrates on presenting the

academic framework and resources that reffer to

our new service development for the museum,

in the case of facilitating innovation and embracing

the ongoing trend which is on the rise, the update

of the museum’s technological standards by

introducing services concerning web

interconnectivity and interaction of the museum

with it’s visitors.


1. TABLE OF CONTENTS

Pages

1. Contents ....................................................................................... 3

2. Acknowledgements .................................................................... 4

3. Introduction.............................................................................. 5

4. Features of New Service ............................................................. 6

5. New Service and the Theater Model ............................................ .8

6. New Service Marketing Mix ...................................................... .12

7. Managerial Skills and Knowledge .............................................. .14

8. Appendix ............................................................................... .15

9. Bibliography .......................................................................... .18


2. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The development and the implementation of this report is made possible

by the appreciation of my family and friends and also to the help of

Andrew, the library bookkeeper. I would like to thank, our module teacher

Mr. George Roumeliotis for his guidance so that we can bring closure to

our assignment work.

I will also like to thank my colleagues for their interesting exchange of

information and knowledge upon the subject. They gave me very clear

insights and views upon my stated arguments.


3. INTRODUCTION

The term “ Experience economy “ was first described in an article

published in1998 by Pine and Gilmore. The article argued that, service

companies would evolve from simply providing a service to creating

memorable events for their customers, with the memory of the experience

becoming the product. Rather than the service company charging for the

activities it performs, it would be charging for the feelings that the

customers derive from engaging with the service. In the forthcoming

years many organizations have focused on creating these experiences.

Definition of service (V. A Zeithaml, 2012)

“ all economic activities whose output is not a physical product or

construction, is generally consumed at the time it is produced, and

provides added value in firms (such as convenience, amusement,

timeliness, comfort, or health) that are essentially intangible

concerns of its first purchase “

The service concept

Organizational perspective concept is the way in which the organization

would like to have its services perceived by its customers, employees,

shareholders, and lenders.

Customer perspective, it’s the way in which the customer perceives the

organization’s service.

The service package

Supporting facilities (physical resources)

Facilitating goods (materials consumed or purchased)

Explicit services (readily observable benefits)

Implicit services (psychological benefits/extrinsic features)


4. FEATURES OF NEW SERVICE

Types of service innovation are tied to the offerings themselves,

suggesting that innovation occurs, when a service offering is altered or

expanded in some way – either radically on one extreme or stylistically at

the other extreme. It is also possible that service innovations may come

about when customer’s usage or co-creation role is redefined.

For example, assuming the customer plays the role of user, buyer, or

payer in a service context, new services result when the previous role is

redefined. Service firms are generally less likely to carry out a structured

development process (V. A. Zeithaml, 2012).

Intangibility

The most basic distinguishing characterizing of service. As services are

more of performances or actions rather than objects, cannot be seen, felt,

tasted or touched in the same way that a tangible product is sensed. This

gives the service the advantage of “not being easily copied”.

Perishability

It refers to the fact that the service cannot be stored, saved, resold or

returned. This implies a need for a strong recovery strategy in a case of

misfortune.

Variability

A major characteristic of services. Service variability may be defined as

the changes in the quality of the same service provided by different

vendors. The change varies because of the nature of the service, the

person who provides the time of the year when it is provided and the

method of delivery of the service. Their quality may vary greatly,

depending on who provides them and when, where, and how. Service

buyers are aware of this variability and often talk to others before

selecting a service provider.


Service variability exposes two distinct characteristics that impose certain

challenges in variability management. These characteristics are: i)

Different types of variability and their inter-relationships, ii) Dynamic and

recursive variability communication among different stakeholders.

Inseparability

The service is produced and consumed simultaneously as:

Customers participate and affect it

Affect each other

Employees act as intermediate of the quality outcome

Accessibility

Is the degree to which a service, or environment is available to as many

people as possible. Accessibility can be viewed as the "ability to access"

and benefit from some system or entity. The concept often focuses on

people with disabilities or special needs and their right of access, enabling

the use of assistive technology.

Accessibility is not to be confused with usability, which is the extent a

service, or environment can be used by specified users to achieve

specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified

context of use. It is strongly related to universal design when the

approach involves "direct access." This is about making things accessible

to all people (whether they have a disability or not). An alternative is to

provide "indirect access" by having the entity support the use of a

person's assistive technology to achieve access (for example, computer

screen readers).


Customer satisfaction

The customer action area encompasses the steps, choices, activities and

interactions that the customer performs in the process of purchasing,

consuming and evaluating the service. In parallel to the customer actions

are two areas of contact employee actions. The steps and activities that

the contact employee performs that are visible to the customer are the

onstage contact employee actions (A. Wilson, 2012).

Unique museum service keeps the customer at the center. Museum

customer should be viewed as assets to be valued, developed and

retained.


5. NEW SERVICE AND THE THEATER MODEL

Theater model framework (SaaT)

It is proven to be very useful for analyzing the performance of a service,

by basically aiming to create and keep a desirable impression in front of

an audience. This is regularly managed by carefully controlling the actors and the physical setting of the audience’s behavior. The key points here

are: discipline, loyalty and circumspection, as a single person can ruin the

service anytime, by failing to perform his role properly, show ridiculous behavior, or unfold misguided experiences.

The physical setting of the service can be seen as a theatrical production, including scenery, props and physical clues to create the desired

impressions. The selection of personnel and design can be viewed as an

audition for actor or as setting the stage. The importance of customers in successful service delivery is obvious if

service performances are looked as a form of drama.

The drama metaphor for services suggests the reciprocal and interactive

role of employees and customers in creating the service experience. The service actors and audience are surrounded by the service setting. Often,

through service drama metaphor service performances are viewed as

tenuous, fragile processes that can be influenced by behavior of customers as well as employees (A. Wilson,2012).

Potential problems The difficulty with the museum embracing technological service-orientation is the fact that due to country’s prolonged history, museums at first were established as authoritative bureaucratic institutions which meant to act as a public servant for national knowledge deposit (pretty much like the mentality of the Vatican library)! So their mission was to preserve and maintain and not to alter and evolve. The modern conflict with museums of such kind, is finding a way to access technology without losing sight in their mission. But the thing that should be noted here is that the mission is a factorial value of their customer’s perception and satisfactory elements, which going to lose anyway if not adapt.


Service operation

The customer experience has become an important strategic asset in

many industries, especially those with commoditizing products or where

deregulation has led to fierce price wars and customer churn. Moreover, advances in technology and the globalization of many industries have

heightened customer expectations. But too often, misconceptions about

what customers value lead to misguided “improvement” efforts that waste valuable resources.

Although museum survives almost entirely on donations or earnings from past donations - these are the offspring of wealthy individuals, companies,

or groups - most depend on a mix of fees for services and gifts. The mix between the two determines the museum's culture, services, and working

conditions.

Walking into the museum and you can quickly determine where their

funding comes from. Museums that depend on visitors and members to fund the organization are more entrepreneurial and focused on customer

service. They have flyers and brochures to take home, active programs,

and gift shops to capture more of your money.

It generates revenues from admissions, membership fees, educational

programs, gift shop and other sales. Museums that are working hard to bring in visitors will draw around 20% of their catchment population

(defined by the reach of their newspapers, TV and radio stations).

Educational programs can bring in substantial net revenues, but most

museums either lose money on these or just break even.

Only in large and heavily trafficked museums do gift shops warrant a paid

staff. In the other museums, a volunteer or group of museum volunteers

operates the shop. Add up all these revenue streams and you get

somewhere between 40 and 70% of a museum's operating budget (not counting museums that are fully funded like the Smithsonian). The rest

comes from endowment (old money generating a few percent income

each year), donations, and grants. The Development Director is charged with recruiting new donors and keeping the existing ones happy and

usually has responsibility for the museum membership program.

To compete with all the entertainment available and other educational

programming in a community, museums rely heavily on public relations: press releases, public service announcements, etc. Rarely can they afford

to pay for advertising. The local media in most communities gladly

support museums as they make good stories.


Museums may have huge collections worth millions of dollars that give

them a huge asset base. These assets are not liquid. They can't sell part of the collections to pay current expenses. The items in collections were

given to the museum to hold, conserve, and use in exhibitions or

programs for future generations.

People contribute money for museum endowments, often with the

provision that only a percentage of the income can be spent. The idea is to create an ever-growing fund that can help pay museum expenses for

decades. So here again a museum may have large assets with no ability

to convert them into ready cash. Museums can borrow against these assets, but since board members may be personally liable they don't let

the museum take loans. To raise money the museum has to increase its

earned income (admissions, membership fees, program registrations) or ask for grants and donations. In the current economy, with people

spending less and donors giving less, museums are having difficult times

staying afloat.


6. NEW SERVICE MARKETING MIX

Product The technological upgrade of hardware infrastructure, software

development, network interconnectivity, application enhancement and

personnel trainee material.

Price

Cost-Leadership price offering strategy (lowering price at 5 euro –built up

scaling price offers customized to every segment needs and income power, by gradually forming new mobile offerings and sweepstakes per

period and special occasion events. Formulation of special online tour

offerings and hotel partner programmes to facilitate online ticketing or library memberships by online credit systems

Place By bringing digital media enchantments in the interior of the museum

placed in corners so that they add natural to the classical scenery and

avoid crowd sourcing, or just by giving personnel access to handle them

during their service performance.

Promotion

Mainly through social and other digital media. By engaging in online communities with education-driven people and knowledge-sharing. Also

by building museum centered applications for online apps stores.

Additional by introducing banner campaigns across the web and accessing Google adwords progamme, by promoting the museum’s relevant content

to their online niche.

People All human actors who play a part in the service delivery and thus influence

the buyer’s perception: the personnel, the customer, other customers

around the service environment. By accessing a supportive and active method of learning and experiencing knowledge. The adoption of lifelong

learning culture and procedures, will force the personnel to be inspired in

front of the customers eyes.

Process

The actual procedures, mechanisms and flow of activities by which the

service is delivered (service delivery/offerings/operating systems). As the visitor enters either in the physical or the online part of the

museum, will have better visual representation of information and

guidance. At the start clear signaling and mapping process is in needed, then systems of data collection will mediate, afterwards information

share-alike tools will take place and finally the personal contact/help/chat

will end-up the service by fulfilling a positive service encounter and

customer co-creation.


Physical environment

The environment in which the service is delivered and were the

firm/organization and the customer interact alongside with any intangible

objects and components that facilitate the performance or communication

of the service.

The environmental clues of the museum provide an excellent opportunity

to send a consistent message regarding the purpose, the mission, the

nature and the intended focus of the market segments.

The environment will have to face a slight renovation process as it is the

intermediate in merging technology placement with archaeological

background. Every specimen room will have a theme approach of the era

that describes, matching it in color,light, space, personnel image, etc.


7. MANAGERIAL SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE

Over time business people have realized that marketing and managing

services presents issues and challenges not faced in the marketing of products. As service businesses begun to turn to marketing and decided

to employ marketing people, they naturally recruited from the best

industries in the world. People who moved from these industries found that their skills and experiences were not directly transferable.

Frameworks, concepts and strategies were developed to address the fact

that service marketing is different. In this constantly evolving field, in the 21th century, new trends will shape the field and accelerate the need for

services marketing concepts and tools (A. Wilson, 2012).

In addition to providing opportunities for new service offerings, technology

is providing vehicles for delivering existing service in a more accessible, convenient and prouctive way. Technological advancements, especially in

the field of information technology, facilitate basic customer service

functions (mobile screening, audiovisual representation, etc).

Technology infusions have resulted in the potential of reaching out to

customers around the globe in many way that were not possible in the

past. An interesting way to realize the influence of technology these days, is to accept that the Internet as a whole is “one big service”. On the other

side of this point of view are the employees, who are reluctant to

technology and change, as they believe that by accepting technological integration may cause the loss of they job.

If I were to be chosen for example, as the museum manager I would

expect myself, to be first of all fully aware of the differentiation offerings that similar museums have across the globe, so that I can adapt them to

a more regional focus, in order to gain a further step concerning local

competition. I believe that an expertise in the field of service operations/implementation and integrating marketing/branding

communications is perceived as a necessity in our times. Without these

two skills it would very difficult to maintain an entrepreneur mindscape in

the museum’s management. That is because these two approaches are customer driven in perspective and implementation of service.

I would mostly choose to learn and maintain skills that are transferable to others as well. As I think of it, Relationships and negotiation approach

would be the case to my above statement, as it attracts attention in field

like sales, finance, sponsorship, partnerships, etc. Because a museum has also an institutional role in the society it is important to understand that

managers should balance all the counteracting parts, and what better skill

is there for producing results if not negotiations, at least if someone wants

to achieve a win-win situation and spirit.


8. APPENDIX

A] Athens Archeological Museum Map


B ] Extended Marketing Mix


C ] Service Delivery Model


9. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Academic Journals

1. Ozge Ozgen, S.D Kurt (2012). Pre-recovery and post-recovery emotions in the service context: a preliminary study. Managing

Service Quality Review. Vol. 22, No. 6, pp. 592-605

2. D. Battaglia et al (2012). Service Recovery: a method for assessing performance. Business Process Management Journal. Vol. 18,

No.6, pp. 949-963

3. E.Thwaites, C. Williams (2006). Service Recovery: a naturalistic

decision-making approach. Managing Service Quality Review.

Vol.16, No.6, pp.641-653

4. A.Gilmore, R. Rentschler (2002). Changes in museum management.

A custodial or marketing emphasis ?. Journal of management

development. Vol. 21, No. 10, pp. 745-760

5. C. Vandi, E. Djebbari (2011). How to create new services between

library resources, museum exhibitions and virtual collections. Library High Tech news. Number 2, pp.15-18

6. L.A. Wilson, E. Boyle (2004). The role of partnerships in the delivery of local government museum services: A case study from Northern

Ireland. The International Journal of Public Sector

Management. Vol.17, No.6, pp. 513-533

7. C. Goulding (2000). The museum environment and the visitor

experience. European Journal of Marketing. Vol. 34, No ¾, pp. 261-278

8. D. Kelly, C. Storey (2000). New Service Development: initiation strategies. International Journal of Service Industry

Management. Vol. 11, No.1, pp. 45-62

9. C. Boshoff (1996). An experimental study of service recovery

options. International Journal of Service Industry Management.

Vol. 8, No.2, pp. 110-130

10. A. Johne, C. Storey (1998). New Service Development: a review of

the literature and annotated bibliography. European Journal of Marketing. Vol.32, No.3/4, pp. 184-251


11. A. B. Jones, R. Silvestro (2010). Measuring internal service quality:

comparing the gap-based and perceptions-only approaches. International Journal of Operations & Production

Management. Vol.30, No.12, pp. 1291-1318

12. R. Sousa, A. Yeung, T.C.E Cheng (2008). Customer heterogeneity in operational design e-service design attributes: an empirical

investigation of service quality. International Journal of

Operations & Production Management. Vol. 28, No. 7, pp. 592-614

13. C. P. Bebko (2001). Service encounters problems: which service providers are more likely to be blamed ?. Journal of Service

Marketing. Vol. 15, No. 6, pp. 480-495

14. J. J. Cronin, S.A. Taylor (1994). SERVPER vs. SERVQUAL: reconciling performance-based and perception-minus-expectations measurement

of service quality. Journal of Marketing. Vol. 58, pp 125-131

Academic Books

1. A. Wilson et al (2012). Services Marketing. Integrating

Customer Focus Across the Firm. McGraw Hill. 2nd European

Edition.

2. Fisk R, J. Johne, Grove.S (2008). Interactive Marketing Services. Boston. 3rd Edition. Houghton Miffliin.

Internet

1.

http://www.google.gr/books?hl=el&lr=&id=CgX51i_6zMcC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=ser

vice+operations+in+museums&ots=N2MskDZH0M&sig=QLGDZ_iu5N623LhXQaRcyxt

mjak&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=service%20operations%20in%20museums&f=fals

e [Accessed 23/4/2013]

2.

http://books.google.gr/books?id=TOV7W1MH9fsC&pg=PA52&lpg=PA52&dq=service

+operations+in+museums&source=bl&ots=0k348Za9im&sig=37AvF_8PjDlMac-

7I2AB7Vy1f98&hl=el&sa=X&ei=dMSeUfn2M9KGhQe474DQAw&ved=0CGkQ6AEwB

w#v=onepage&q=service%20operations%20in%20museums&f=false

[Accessed 23/4/2013]

http://www.google.gr/books?hl=el&lr=&id=CgX51i_6zMcC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=service+operations+in+museums&ots=N2MskDZH0M&sig=QLGDZ_iu5N623LhXQaRcyxtmjak&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=service%20operations%20in%20museums&f=false




http://books.google.gr/books?id=TOV7W1MH9fsC&pg=PA52&lpg=PA52&dq=service+operations+in+museums&source=bl&ots=0k348Za9im&sig=37AvF_8PjDlMac-7I2AB7Vy1f98&hl=el&sa=X&ei=dMSeUfn2M9KGhQe474DQAw&ved=0CGkQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=service%20operations%20in%20museums&f=false




Spyros Langkos_Athens Archeological Museum_individual report and reflective commentarry

Business

Transcript of Spyros Langkos_Athens Archeological Museum_individual report and reflective commentarry