Services and Relationship Marketing

This chapter tackles services and relationship marketing. It explains how the service sector represents a very large component of many countries' gross domestic product (GDP). Services are primarily characterized by their factors of intangibility, perishability, variability, inseparability, and a lack of ownership that influence how marketers design, deliver, and evaluate the marketing of services. Meanwhile, relationship marketing is based on the premise that retained customers are more profitable than customers based on transactional marketing. The chapter defines customer experiences as an emotional transition and response through interactions with an organization and its offerings. It then elaborates on the implementation of customer engagement strategies, referencing how engaged customers can recruit new customers by influencing their opinions.