marketing concepts and principles

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1. Discuss the importance and effectiveness of differentiating based on service?
2. What key marketing concepts and principles can someone employ to achieve good results?
3. What key lessons can someone learn by incorporating this strategy
Differentiation based on service has become most important in marketing in mature markets. While the economy is beginning to show signs of recovery, companies continue to face a brutal business environment. Competitors are cutting prices, simultaneously introducing new products and adding features to their existing product portfolio. What can you do in this highly competitive environment?
Essentially, you are faced with one of two fundamental strategies: become the low-price provider in your category or industry, which requires a cost structure lower than your competitors, or substantively differentiate your products from your competitors'. Let us consider the service sector.
· Differentiation is the primary basis for establishing a competitive advantage for professional service firms.
· This competitive advantage can be enhanced by a process-driven and market-focused infrastructure.
· Professional service firms can benefit significantly from observing the marketing and management practices of other professional sectors.
Companies are now in a race to bring a stream of incremental changes to service faster than before and this is becoming the real differentiator:
What key marketing concepts and principles can one apply?
There are two dimensions to this answer. The first is what can be termed "techno-economic logic", the second "emotional logic". What is clear, however, is that these two logics have one thing in common - they are defined by the customer, not by the supplier. Understanding the relative significance of service and communicating this to a consumer faced with increasingly wide choice are the essential requirements in achieving differentiation. Since this is getting more difficult to achieve in the first place and to sustain over time for the reasons, we need to understand two broader concepts of business. These emerging determinants of value, and the potential source of renewable differentiation, are twofold: (a) the service and (b) the product experience. Marketers believe that these two concepts are beginning to move our focus away from the three traditional elements of product, brand and service. ...