1.Using a service company that you know very in Ghana explain the role played by supplementary services in differentiating service?
2.What marketing and management challenges are posed by the use of intermediaries in servicing setting?
There are two types of services which are offered by a service organization i.e. core services and supplementary services. Core service provides the outcomes which are expected by the customers justifying the related nominal charges. Apart from this, supplementary services are the additional services which facilitate the use of organization’s core service. Supplementary services play an important role in the organization to differentiate its core services from its competitors in the service industry. For this discussion, Ramada Resort, Accra is taken into consideration. Ramada Resort Accra is a beachside resort that is situated at Teshie-Nungua in a major city of Ghana-Accra. It is the perfect location that offers different types of hospitality services like holding meetings and conferences, social and business functions (Ramada Resort, Accra, 2018). After its establishment in the year 1999, the service organization has expanded its services and infrastructure to have 180 rooms and chalets, two restaurants, three conference rooms, a bar, a spa, a gym, swimming pool and salon. It has employed 91 employees who contribute to the peaceful aura of relaxation for its guests and visitors.
Currently, Ramada Resort, Accra is operating its business as a 3-star hotel and offering both core and supplementary services to its guests and clients. It is promoting its services by using a slogan “stay close to nature” that indicates its mission to provides the guests with a peaceful environment for relaxation and offer western services with the best of Ghanaian hospitality. Primarily, this service company seeks for attracting the incentives, meetings, events, conferences and targets the business travellers to stay at their rooms (Etzel, 2015). The core service at Ramada Resort is accommodation or stay in hotel rooms and space for business meetings and conferences. Under its core service, it offers different categories of rooms like single chalet, double chalet, executive chalet, single standard room, double standard room, twin room and family villas.
Apart from this, supplementary services of the resort include the below-given services:
At Ramada Hotel, supplementary services play an important role in differentiating the core services from its competitors. Inclusion of supplementary services facilitates and enhances the core services of this hotel. Thus, the service company has two types of supplementary services i.e. facilitating supplementary services and enhancing supplementary services (Ladhari and Michaud, 2015). Facilitating supplementary services are the services which are required for delivering the service to guests and they assist in using the core service. Enhancing supplementary services add additional value to the customers. At Ramada Resort, facilitating services are information, payment, billing and order taking whereas enhancing services include hospitality, consultation and safekeeping. By offering supplementary services, Ramada Resort is able to add more value to its core accommodation services (Xu, and Gursoy, 205).
Being a part of full service at Ramada, supplementary services play a beneficial role in developing interest and awareness among guests about its hospitality services. Through these services, the resort is able to attract more guests by offering different benefits and comforts. For instance, under information service people can get the service details, room category and prices of rooms, location and packages from its website https://www.ramadaresortaccra.com/rooms. The payment facilities are very easy and convenient at this resort as they offer various options to facilitate the customer bill payment like credit card, debit card, net banking and on-the counter (Cvelbar, Grün and Dolnicar, 2017). It attracts the customers towards its services as they feel very convenient and comfortable.
In addition to this, one of the primary supplementary services at Ramada is quality of its hospitality services that can enhance or decrease the guest satisfaction. The resort ensures that effective training is provided to its employees so that they can treat with their guests nicely. It provides quality food and room services to each and every guest. It assists the organization in affecting the guest perception positively and increasing their repeat intention to visit Ramada Hotels. These services enable the visitors and guests to use the core services more effectively. If there will be any deficiency in supplementary services then it may negatively affect the perception of guests towards service quality of Ramada Resorts. It enhances the accommodation services of Ramada Hotel. As mentioned above, this resort offers various additional amenities to its guests like TV, Wi-Fi, private balcony, working area. It enhances the guest experience during their stay at Ramada (Jang, et al, 2018). Guest satisfaction is one of the major objectives for any hotel. Supplementary services add more value to the core services at hotel and provide increased guest satisfaction. Eventually, it increases the guest base of the hotels. Through this, it is able to generate more revenues and profits in Ghana hospitality industry. To implement supplementary services, the managers at hotel need to make some difficult decisions as these additional services are offered to guests free of cost. It may increase the cost of services for organization but in turn it increases their profits. By differentiating its services, the service company is able to gain more competitive advantage over its competitors such as Next Door Beach Resort, Diplomat Beach Resort, African Royal Beach Hotel and Savannah Beach Guesthouse (Byrd et al, 2016).
Thus, it can be stated that supplementary services play an important role in the service delivery process at a hospitality organization. By developing its core and supplementary services, Ramada Hotel is able to enhance its brand image in African hospitality industry. Supplementary services at organizations assist in enhancing and facilitating its core services so that it can retain its existing guests and create new customers (Sichtmann, and Wilken, 2015). It can be noted that services organizations develop the necessary expertise in their services so that they can execute it to be the core and primary service. They can increase their profits and revenues by rendering their services to their targeted audiences. In this way, supplementary services add value to core services and provide differentiation and competitive edge to the chosen hotel.
Intermediaries are the people who place the buyers and sellers together without taking ownership of any product or service. They are the most important part of distribution channel of an organization. Company pays them a specific percentage of total transaction amounts. Unless the customers are purchasing the products and services directly from the organization that offers it, sales are facilitated by using one or more marketing intermediaries. These intermediaries are known as middlemen for that particular product or service. These intermediaries do many things than simply take an amount with each transaction. For different organizations, there may be different types of intermediaries but there are four traditional intermediaries that include wholesalers, agents, retailers, distributors and brokers. Nowadays, service sector organizations are also using intermediaries in order to provide its services to final customers. In today’s competitive business environment, there are various service sector organizations which are using intermediaries so that it can approach a large group of customers. They can assist the organization in delivering services effectively and increase their customer base. In this process, the customers do not need to contact the service organization directly. They can avail the services through these intermediaries (Nolden, Sorrell and Polzin, 2016). The example of a hospitality organization can be taken into consideration to understand the marketing and management challenges of using intermediaries. In its service setting, the hospitality organizations can use different intermediaries like tour operators, travel agencies, business and corporate travel agents, meeting planner, internet sources, search engines and tourist boards. Travel agents and meeting planners can become more important distribution channel and intermediary for the hotels. It offers various benefits to the organizations. They not only give the customers easy access to the services but also streamline the service delivery process of a hotel.
Apart from these benefits, the service setting may face various management and marketing challenges by using the intermediaries (Young, 2015). It can have an adverse impact on the marketing and management of an organization. Each and every organization needs to consider and focus on these challenges. These challenges of intermediaries to service setting are stated below:
In this way, sometimes the use of intermediaries can be very challenging for a service organization. When there are various distributors of core services, the marketers think that distribution is intense. So the marketers and management should think strategically about this intensity which is appropriate for its services. In the success of any service sector business, there is a significant role of knowledge, cooperation and attention of its intermediaries. If they lose interest in particular services, that service is doomed. To overcome these challenges, the management of an organization should implement some strategies to manage its all the intermediaries (Lovelock and Patterson 2015). It should use more than one intermediary so it can avoid the situation of service ignorance from intermediaries. The service companies can rely on the internet sources more than physical intermediaries as they are not as expensive as other intermediaries.
References
Byrd, E.T., Canziani, B., Hsieh, Y.C.J., Debbage, K. and Sonmez, S., 2016. Wine tourism: Motivating visitors through core and supplementary services. Tourism Management, 52, pp.19-29.
Cvelbar, L.K., Grün, B. and Dolnicar, S., 2017. Which hotel guest segments reuse towels? Selling sustainable tourism services through target marketing. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 25(7), pp.921.
Dombrowski, L., Hayes, G.R., Mazmanian, M. and Voida, A., 2014. E-government intermediaries and the challenges of access and trust. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), 21(2), p.13.
Etzel, M.J., 2015. The Life Cycle of Supplementary Services in Retailing: Implications for Management. In Marketing Horizons: A 1980’s Perspective (pp. 85-88). Springer, Cham.
Jang, S., Liu, T., Kang, J.H. and Yang, H., 2018. Understanding important hotel attributes from the consumer perspective over time. Australasian Marketing Journal (AMJ).
Ladhari, R. and Michaud, M., 2015. eWOM effects on hotel booking intentions, attitudes, trust, and website perceptions. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 46, pp.36-45.
Lovelock, C. and Patterson, P., 2015. Services marketing. Pearson Australia.
Mishra, P.P., 2016. How green are our hotels? Evidence from Thailand. Environment and Urbanization ASIA, 7(1), pp.132-148.
Nolden, C., Sorrell, S. and Polzin, F., 2016. Catalysing the energy service market: The role of intermediaries. Energy Policy, 98, pp.420-430.
Pinto, M.D.R., Saur-Amaral, I. and Brito, C., 2015. Innovation in services: exploring the role of innovation intermediaries. Revista Portuguesa de Marketing, 38(34), p.53.
Ramada Resort, Accra, 2018, Welcome to Ramada Resort, Accra, Available from https://www.ramadaresortaccra.com/.
Rust, R.T. and Huang, M.H. eds., 2014. Handbook of service marketing research. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Schramm-Klein, H., Morschett, D. and Swoboda, B., 2015. Retailer corporate social responsibility: Shedding light on CSR’s impact on profit of intermediaries in marketing channels. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 43(4/5), pp.403-431.
Sichtmann, C. and Wilken, R., 2015. Customer-Oriented Selection and Pricing of Supplementary Services in Business Markets. In Revolution in Marketing: Market Driving Changes(pp. 92-96). Springer, Cham.
Xu, X. and Gursoy, D., 2015. A conceptual framework of sustainable hospitality supply chain management. Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, 24(3), pp.229-259.
Young, O.R., 2015. The intermediaries: Third parties in international crises. Princeton University Press.
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