Product marketing mix is concerned mainly with 4 p’s
1. Product
2. Price
3. Place
4. Promotions
Nowadays, a 5th P which is commonly included in products also is
PEOPLE.
Service marketing mix has the same 4 P’s as above, but it has 3 extra
P’s which have to be included in the service marketing mix.
1. People
2. Physical evidence
3. Process
To understand the difference between product marketing mix and service
marketing mix, we need to first understand the different between products. There are different types of products. A
product is basically a stand alone thing, which when sold to a customer, passes
the ownership to the customer. A service is unlike a product, where the
ownership remains with the company itself.
Also note – price, place, products and promotions can be quite same for
products as well as services. So we will differentiate on the basis of the 3
main P’s where people get confused.
Let us look into the 3 main P’s which differentiate product marketing
mix from service marketing mix.
People – In the case of products, when you have a product like Adidas,
then you will always plot 4 P’s for it – product, price, place and promotions.
You can have a 5th P of people which can include your employee base your
distribution channel and other channel networks. In the case of services, the
people part is very important.
Services are generally made by people themselves. For example – Samsung
is a product, but the customer care of Samsung is a service. If you have the
right people in customer service, the brand will benefit, but wrong people over
there can destroy the brand.
Similarly, modern retail, e-commerce, travels and tourism are all
services (and not products). Therefore in service marketing mix, people play a
major role. In travels and tourism, your guide plays a major role. In modern
retail, the floor manager and executive plays a major role in your
decision-making. In E-commerce, the customer service after purchase of product
plays a major role (though E-commerce is trying to simply outdo manual
services).
Physical evidence – One of the main differences between product
marketing mix and service marketing mix is physical evidence. Physical evidence
is the ambiance and the looks which you give to a service to make the customer
“feel better” or “feel positive” for the service. It refers to how a Samsung
service center looks when the customer enters. It refers to the colors and user
experience which an E-commerce portal provides. It refers to the lighting and
ambiance and plush seats in a premium restaurant vs a cheap restaurant. There
is nothing in products which can be categorised as physical evidence. We can
use packaging, but packaging itself becomes a form of promotions and hence it
is a completely different P altogether. Physical evidence is used to describe
the marketing mix of services only.
Process – Just like physical evidence and packaging, process too can be
accommodated for services by outlining the way a product moves from factory to
end point. But it is practically the same for each and every product. And hence
product too is not a common distinguishing point for a difference between
product marketing mix and service marketing mix.
On the other hand, look at the process of 3 different fast food chains
– McDonald’s,Subway, Pizza hut. All of them provide fast food, but the process
of provision is very different. If we were to draw a service blue print, we
will find that making a Subway sandwich is much simpler, then serving customers
in McDonald’s. Comparatively, serving a pizza and delivering pizzas is simply
the toughest due to the number of ingredients involved, and due to the fact
that the customers expect a kind of fine dine in Pizza hut, being the premium
brand that it is.
Each and every service you go to, will have a separate process. Walmart
will have a different layouts as compared to other hyper stores. The process of
registering insurance might be different between LIC and Aegon religare.
