Services Marketing Triangle

The Services Marketing Triangle is a strategic marketing model which provides a visual way of understanding of actors involved in the marketing of services and describes the key marketing activities that occur among those actors.  The model explains the fact that services are about promises. The company promises to customers through external marketing. The company organizes employees to keep those promises through internal marketing. Finally, the business delivers the promises to customers through interactive marketing.

Services Marketing Triangle

Each actor in a services marketing triangle has a vital role in developing, promoting, and delivering the company’s service. The lines between the points illustrate the different types of marketing that must occur:

External Marketing:

External Marketing is any communication from the company to customers that happens before service delivery starts. Forms of external marketing are advertising, personal selling, public relations (PR), and direct marketing. External marketing is used to achieve the following aims, such as creating awareness, setting price expectations, and setting service level expectations.

Internal Marketing:

Internal Marketing is the communication between the company and its employees aiming to motivate and satisfy employees so that they are willing to work in a team to provide better service to customers. Internal marketing components are training on company goals, and customer satisfaction techniques, motivating employees, providing good pay and working conditions, and applying efficient HRM practices.

Interactive Marketing

Interactive marketing is the communications between employees and customers where the promises made by the company during external marketing are presented by the employees to customers. The interaction between an employee and a customer is known as a service encounter. The quality of service encounters influences customers to make purchase decisions and the satisfaction level of the customer. Interactive marketing includes interacting with customers through various physical and virtual platforms, personal selling, and servicing the customer. 

References:

1. Hoffman, K. D., & Bateson, J. E. (2016). Services marketing: concepts, strategies, & cases. Cengage learning.

2. Lovelock, C., & Patterson, P. (2015). Services marketing. Pearson Australia.

3. Hamza, V. K., & Saidalavi, K. (2014). A study on online shopping experience and customer satisfaction. Advances In Management, 7(5), 38-44. 

4. k saidalavi, pt misab, & k rasheed. (2020). Effect of E-Servicescape Aesthetics on Pleasure, Arousal and Purchase Intentions; an Empirical Analysis. Journal of Critical Reviews, 7(16), 3606–3615. https://doi.org/10.31838/jcr.07.16.460