Undergraduate students learn to manage service production processes by scenarios

TEACHING UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS TO MANAGE SERVICE PRODUCTION PROCESSES BY

SCENARIOS (Servuctions with scenarios)

Explicit vs. implicit teaching

Vanya Slantcheva-Baneva, PhD

the issue

students claim:

“doing Marketing of a service is to manage, more or less, its communication mix for the sake of targets; and in reverse.”

&

“doing Marketing Management of a service means developing marketing strategies for namely running that service.”

ICAICTSEE 2014 Conference

in other expressions:


when are novice, students perceive that marketing a service means promoting it:

product price

placement promotion

process physical

environment and evidence

people


on and on, students learn that …


marketing of a service deals with 7Ps’ frame:

product price

placement promotion

process physical

environment and evidence

people


managing marketing of a service is designing that service from marketing perspective


then

service is determined by inseparability and simultaneity

of its blended production and consumption processes.

but


or

Servuction (service production

process)

Consumption

Gronroos, C. (2000) Service Management and Marketing. 2nd ed., John Wiley and Sons, Chichester.


so

managing marketing of a service is:

overseeing service synchronization (by time and mode) between the consumer and the service provider

and

steering service feasibility (by encounter, or interaction)

considering its design,

(N.B.) recalling its conceptual 7P framework.


an issue in teaching then is:

students know about managing the Marketing of a service, but they need to understand it as such:

• likewise product offer, service is to be an operationalized offer, but

• contrariwise, service itself is a service- or product-dominated, or hybridized band of

components that determines it as a servuction-consumption offer.


challenge for the students:

to create the best service offer by generating servuction-consumption pitches.


to overcome the challenge:

a simulation tool is used to manage servuction-consumption components of a service –

an exercise driven in scenario-thinking line when service is needed to be marketed.


AN ONLINE-BASED SIMULATION: SERVICE MANAGEMENT OF A “BENIHANA” RESTAURANT

the tool chosen


running your “benihana” restaurant by a simulation-oriented settlement


challenge 1: batching dining room customers


challenge 2: designing bar seats vs. restaurant tables


challenge 3: change dinging time before, during and after peaks


challenge 4: boost demand with ad-campaigns and special programs


challenge 5: matching batching types at different times


challenge 6: designing scenario-driven servuction-consumption strategy


or building up scenario-driven strategies by making possible go-to-market decisions:

as an interrelation of:

• batching decisions

• bar decisions

• dining time

• advertising decisions


towards best rehearsed scenario-driven

strategy



CHALLENGE

1 2 3 4 5

Bat

chin

g d

inin

g ro

om

cu

sto

mer

s

Design the bar

Change dining time (minutes)

Boost demand with advertising and special programs

Use different types of batching at different

times

bat

chin

g

Bar

sea

ts/

Res

tau

ran

t ta

ble

s

Pre

-pea

k

pea

k

Po

st-p

eak

Ad

bu

dge

t

Ad

cam

pai

gn

Op

enin

g ti

me

Pre

-pea

k

pea

k

Post

-pea

k

no no

15/19 45 45 45 none awareness 5 pm no

55/14 60 60 60 1-2x discounts 6 pm tables of 4 to8

yes

yes

87/10 75 75 75 2-3x

happy hour 7 pm

tables of 8

4 share a table 3-4x

customers in dining room vs. bar


total dinners vs. total drinks


and the outcomes of “max profit performance” strategy per night are:

• customers in dining room – 88

• customers in bar – 70

• total dinners served – 432

• total drinks served – 445

• max customer lost – 10

• average profit – $622

• max profit – $1,003


picking up some insights • going through challenges from 1 to 6, students can learn to

manipulate variety of strategies by making bulk of possible decisions driven by hypothetical operations scenarios.

• students agree that any servuction process (or scenario) is to be built on key internal drivers (decisions) that need to be selected by managing marketing issues of the service under consideration.

• students favor “the highest profit per night” strategy as a pattern for the best servuction scenario.

• but students do not propone the best scenario-driven strategy as “the highest profit per night” one;

• they consider “the highest profit per night” strategy as “the best turnover’s” servuction process, which certainly does not correspond to the best service quality provision and consumption be means of higher CPV. According to students the best servuction scenario is a servucion-

consumption process driven by scenarios that aim to… ICAICTSEE 2014 Conference

to design the feasible service consumption is to perish the imperishable service

production


Education

Undergraduate students learn to manage service production processes by scenarios