DISTRIBUTION
The importance of ‘place’ or location and distribution as part of a marketing mix is due to the fact that it facilitates accessibility to the service offer. It is the most mysterious of all elements of the marketing mixes. While all other marketing mix variables (service product, price and promotion) create or enhance demand, place or distribution is the only one that satisfies demand.
The inseparability of services makes it imperative for both the service provider and the customer to meet to complete the service transactions and to create service benefits. In other words, service cannot be produced by one person in one place and be distributed by someone else in some other place. A service, by extension, cannot be produced in a place where the cost is lower and delivered to another place where the demand is higher. This is the fundamental difference .between goods and services that affect distribution strategies. All location strategies should be directed to make the encounter possible, place is especially important to the service marketer because the offer cannot be stored (intangibility and perishability) and the offer has to be produced and consumed at the same time in the service location, and outlets, The normal decisions of locations and channel are:
- How to deliver the service to the customer?
- Where and when should the delivery of service take place?
- What roles do intermediaries or middlemen have to play in the service delivery process?
- How can a marketer juggle the delivery of the tangible and intangible components of a service offer?
For the service consumer, the first two of the above-mentioned decisions themselves become the most important perceived benefits.
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