Compared with tangible goods, retail services have the following four characteristics. [1]
（1） Intangibility
Service is invisible. Before purchasing services, they cannot see, taste, touch, hear or call. People who want to have a haircut cannot see the effect of haircut before consumption, and people who see doctors in hospitals cannot know the medical results in advance. The buyer must have sufficient trust in the service provider. For this feature, Service Provider Some efforts can be made to enhance customer confidence. First, they can make intangible services tangible as far as possible. The barber can show the pattern to the customer in advance to show the effect of the haircut. Second, the service provider can describe the effect of the service to the served object more than the content of the service. For example, patients prefer to know the expected treatment progress from doctors rather than professional medical knowledge. Third, service providers can establish a brand image for their service development to increase customers' trust, such as "Manjiekest" cleaning service, "United Airlines red carpet service", and "Super party sit in". Fourth, service providers can use celebrity effect to improve the trust of services. For example, an advertisement by Bush has played a huge role in turning the corner of the U.S. tourism industry. （2） Indivisibility
The production process and consumption process of services are synchronized, regardless of whether the service is provided by people or machines. However, tangible products exist regardless of whether their sources are present or not. For example, to attend a rock concert, the entertainment value consumers get is inseparable from the performers. Since the provision of service is inseparable from the consumption of customers, the service quality and customer satisfaction largely depend on the real moment, and the service level and work attitude of employees are closely related to the feelings of customers.
（3） Instability
Services are very unstable because they depend on who provides the service and the environment in which it is provided. The same dish is cooked by two different chefs, so its taste is naturally different. Service buyers realize that services are highly volatile, and they will choose Service Provider I often mentioned this problem to others before. Enterprises can take two measures to carry out quality control. The first measure is the selection and training of service providers. Airlines, banks and restaurants spend a lot of money to train their employees in providing quality services. People can see the same friendly and helpful service staff in every Mariwater Hotel. The second measure is to check whether customers are satisfied through the suggestion and appeal system, customer survey and purchase comparison, so as to find out the problems existing in the service and improve them. （4） Timeliness
The service cannot be stored. Why do many doctors accuse patients of missing the appointment time? This is because the value of the service just exists during the period when the patients are not present. When the demand is in a stable state, the timeliness of the service is not a problem, because the service personnel can be easily equipped before the service. When demand fluctuates, enterprises encounter difficulties. Public transport companies calculate that they should have more equipment according to the needs of peak hours than the average demand of the whole day.
（1） According to the shopping process of customers, retail services can be divided into pre-sales services, sales services and after-sales services [2]
1. Pre sales service
Pre sales service refers to the service provided by an enterprise to potential customers before customers purchase goods. Pre sales service is an advanced and active customer service activity. The key is to establish a good first impression. The purpose is to convey the store information to consumers as quickly, accurately and effectively as possible, communicate feelings between both parties, understand customers' potential and unmet needs, and try to meet such needs by adjusting business strategies within the enterprise's capabilities. The main ways of pre-sales service include: free training courses, product feature design, inviting customers to participate in design, shopping guide consultation, free trial, giving publicity materials, commodity display, commodity quality identification, investigation of customer needs and use conditions, etc.
2. On sale service
The service in sale refers to the service provided by an enterprise to customers who enter the sales site or have entered the purchase process. This kind of service is mainly to further enable customers to understand the characteristics and use methods of goods. The purpose is to show enthusiasm, respect, care, help, emotion and provide additional benefits to customers through service, so as to help customers make purchase decisions. The main forms of in sale services include: providing comfortable shopping sites (such as air conditioners, lounges, toilets, escalators, etc.), on-site shopping guides, on-site publicity, on-site demonstrations, on-site trials (such as fitting, tasting, viewing, listening, etc.), baby care, on-site training, polite hospitality, warm answers, assistance in selection, assistance in debugging and packaging, credit card payment, etc.
3. After sales service
After sales service refers to the services provided by enterprises to consumers who have purchased goods. It is an extension of the quality of goods and the feelings of consumers. The purpose of this service is to increase the added value of the commodity entity, solve all problems and troubles caused by customers' use of the enterprise's commodities, make customers easy to use and use with confidence, reduce the cost and risk of use, thus increasing customers' satisfaction after purchase or reducing customers' dissatisfaction after purchase, so as to maintain and develop the store's target market, Make regular customers "repeat customers", or be willing to recommend our products to others. The key to after-sales service is persistence, trustworthiness and practicality. The main ways of after-sales service include: free delivery, installation and commissioning, guaranteed return and replacement, old for new, users' free hotline, technical training, product assurance, supply of spare parts and accessories, on-site maintenance, patrol inspection, special services, organizing users' on-site communication, customer complaint handling, customer fellowship activities, giving users free publications and small gifts, etc.
（2） According to the resources invested, retail services can be divided into hard services and soft services
1. Hard service
Hard service means that retail stores serve customers by providing certain material equipment and facilities. For example, stores provide customers with lounges, elevators, parking lots, checkrooms, shopping carts, fitting rooms, air-conditioned environments, etc., making the shopping process convenient for customers. 2. Soft services
Soft service refers to the service provided by store staff to customers. This is the face-to-face contact between store staff and customers. Their image and service level have the most direct impact on the image of the store, and it is also an important aspect for customers to evaluate the service quality of the store. Due to the changeable characteristics of soft services, it is more difficult to manage them.
1、 Modern retailers should provide comprehensive services
Modern retail is not only limited to the sale of goods, but also should provide comprehensive services. [3]
(1) Provide customer perception. More and more consumers pay attention to the first impression and comprehensive feeling when evaluating and purchasing goods. The emotions and attitudes generated by this perception determine consumers' purchase decisions.
(2) Pay attention to emotional service and realize customer delivered value 。 When the customer feels that the total value he gets is greater than the total cost, he will give a higher evaluation of the purchase. Here, special attention should be paid to the significance of customer psychology, or that some of the total value received by customers is immeasurable, which is people's psychological feelings or abstract emotions. This requires retailers to comprehensively use emotional services to affect customers' psychological perception. (3) Pay attention to the competition of additional services other than commodities. Consumers not only require to obtain the use value of goods through purchasing goods, but also pay more attention to the brand, packaging, style, characteristics, and additional services of goods. Retailers should compete for additional services other than goods, including pre-sales, sales, after-sales services, technical and knowledge services and other advanced services, and highlight the cultural atmosphere of enterprises to create and adapt to consumers' cultural tastes and personalized needs.
(4) Exceed 4Ps and provided all-round overall services. In the process of delivering products, retailers provide services, which include both hardware facilities and software services. The difference between service marketing mix and general commodity marketing mix is that the scope of service marketing is larger than that of general commodities, that is, it extends to 4Cs.
(5) Carry out full process service. Modern retail is full member sales. All employees of the enterprise who contact with customers are salesmen, including shop assistants, cleaners, cashiers, depositors, and shopping guides. People have been regarded as a part of commodities by consumers. Their service level, appearance, skills and service attitude directly reflect the service quality of retail enterprises.
2、 Specific items of modern retailer services
1. Marketing related
It refers to the service items related to marketing carried out at the same time or after the sale of goods. For example, after sales art gift packaging, pants cutting, purchasing cloth cutting, etc. At present, most large department stores have such services.
2. Auxiliary promotions
In order to promote the sale of goods and increase consumers' desire to buy, free or a small amount of preferential service activities can be set up. For example, service items such as door-to-door delivery of large commodities in large retail malls, rapid development and expansion of films, telephone ordering, and mailing of commodities.
3. Convenience
It refers to the service items that help consumers to purchase and use conveniently through the service activities of commercial enterprises. Such as shopping carts, childcare stations, customer clothing storage, smoking rooms, automatic storage boxes, customer lounges, public telephone rooms, stamps, envelopes, stationery vending machines, copy rooms, bank agencies, etc.
4. Maintenance
That is, the service items that the shop helps to check and repair when quality problems and failures occur after the sale of goods, which is an important part of after-sales service. Such as repair of household appliances, cleaning and cleaning of personal treasures, cleaning and keeping of leather clothes, etc. These maintenance services can bring more repeat customers and relieve consumers' worries.
5. Cultural emotion
Marketing services are provided through corporate culture and public relations, with business and service feelings as the main line and cultural and business services as the main line. Such as live promotion performance, celebrity signing, culture and art festival, consumer tasting, etc.
6. Training
In the marketing process, hold consumer training courses for products or related things within the business scope to help consumers master their use and storage knowledge. Various skills learning activities are held, such as personal computer operation training, sports skills lectures, seal cutting knowledge teaching, pottery firing lectures, calligraphy and painting skills lectures, home layout lectures, hair beauty lectures, photography creation lectures, etc.
7. Indirect auxiliary
That is, it has no direct connection with commodity marketing, but can provide services for consumers indirectly, becoming an indirect auxiliary service project. These are relatively popular abroad. For example, large department stores in the United States, Germany and Britain have blood tests, dental services, car driving learning, traffic violation seminars and other services.
8. Quality assurance
Providing consumers with services such as commodity quality assurance and property insurance can improve the reputation of enterprises and establish their image. Such as gold and silver jewelry inspection, watch sensitivity inspection, commodity property insurance, and three days of bicycle riding.
3、 Retailers' humanistic service
Humanistic service is the deep management of modern retailers, which has great force and covers a wide range of areas. Abraham Maslom's hierarchy theory of human needs basically describes the content and scope of humanistic services. According to the humanistic idea that all members of society can develop healthily and release their potential in an appropriate environment, it can be concluded that modern retailers will provide consumers with positive conditions for value performance and potential development as long as they provide thoughtful and good services. The humanistic services provided by retailers are mainly reflected in the following aspects:
1. Environment friendly shopping malls and green marketing
The people-oriented service requires that shopping malls not only operate goods with reliable quality, but also provide a shopping environment conducive to consumers' physical and mental health.
2. Recreation and cultivation of sentiment
The modern shopping mall is not only a place to display goods and attract consumers to shop, but also an environment full of cultural atmosphere and providing consumers with spiritual pleasure. Based on this feature, the mall should lose no time in launching multi-functional services accompanied by spiritual enjoyment while accurately positioning the featured operation.
3. Reasonable combination of self selection and shopping guide
Self selection business meets the requirements of modern consumers' self selection. In retail malls, some goods are selected by consumers at will, so that consumers can truly experience value and dignity, and enjoy shopping while fully demonstrating their independent decision-making ability. On the other hand, some commodities with complex technology, high price and more knowledge are difficult to achieve the purpose of shopping enjoyment only depending on consumers' own knowledge and ability. At this time, providing shopping guide or shopping escort services is a positive form to assist consumers to achieve their optional requirements. Therefore, providing consulting or advisory sales services based on people, things and time is conducive to increasing consumers' enjoyment of value.
4. Concept marketing and consumption education
That is to publicize the benefits and knowledge brought to consumers by a new consumption concept and lifestyle, guide consumers to purchase and use corresponding products with marketing strategies, and enhance consumer preferences in use. For example, services such as hiring experts, setting up customer schools, setting up consulting service hotlines, developing commodity knowledge columns, and conducting on-site award-winning questions and answers can trigger customers' desire for knowledge from different angles, update their ideas, and accelerate the acceptance of new products.
5. Customer organization and consumer participation
One of the purposes of strengthening humanistic service is to cultivate more repeat customers. Customer organization is a good way to attract and maintain repeat customers. The establishment of membership system or customer club in the shopping mall has provided preferential conditions for regular customers, catered to customers' belonging psychology, and improved the recognition of the organization.
4、 E-commerce services
In modern e-commerce retail, service is equally important. E-commerce based on computer technology has opened up a new business form of online shopping. This new business form does not reduce the importance of service because sales personnel and customers do not meet each other. On the contrary, this modern business form puts forward higher requirements for service. First of all, in pre-sales service, it is much more difficult for enterprises to introduce goods through the network than face-to-face introduction, which requires enterprises to fully consider customer needs, combine the characteristics of goods, and provide active, image, and detailed product information. Secondly, the service in sales requires enterprises to quickly and accurately deliver goods to customers and accurately settle accounts. Finally, after-sales service requires enterprises to provide a strong maintenance guarantee system to relieve customers' worries, which requires enterprises to provide better services. In e-commerce activities, the importance of service has not been reduced, and it is still the core of retail enterprise marketing.
1. Accessibility. The availability of goods reflects a series of management decisions, first of all the selection of product types, inventory locations and the availability of this category of goods to consumers, all of which reflect the actual availability of goods. [4]
2. Convenience. In terms of time input in the purchase process, convenience reduces the time consumption of consumers, and convenience is closely related to many other factors, some of which, such as the location of the store, will not be improved in the short term. Other factors, such as business hours, the location of goods in the mall, the number of checkout counters and the way of payment, and the payment of goods, are easier to improve. Retailers can bring convenience to customers by providing information about the supply and shortage of goods. Retailers can also provide information about other outlets in the store.
3. Support system. To some extent, it refers to the willingness of retailers to be responsible for the goods that constitute the store's commodity portfolio. The common support system consists of return policy, installation, debugging and repair, and information provision.
4. Information system. It not only links various service components together, but also directly provides customer service, and can prevent or reduce the adverse effects caused by the failure of commodity acquisition. Timely information about changes in commodity demand can help retailers to prevent out of stock by predicting when they need to adjust their ordering policies. Retailers increase the convenience of customers by predicting what goods are available or not, when they are available, and where they can find them.
1. Retail service is the basic function of retail business activities [5]
Customers choose a retail store in order to buy satisfactory goods and enjoy the beautiful and comfortable environment and considerate service of the store. It is true that commodities are the basis of store management. Even if a store has a comfortable environment and good service, it is useless to have no marketable and genuine commodities. However, it is very difficult for enterprises to maintain a significant advantage of commodity differentiation when they operate similar commodities. Only on the basis of competitive commodities and perfect and thoughtful services to meet the needs of customers can they form their own competitive advantage.
2. Retail services have a positive impact on the profitability of enterprises
Good service has a positive impact on the profitability of enterprises. The survey results of the U.S. Consumer Affairs Bureau show that in many industries, such as banking, utilities, automation services, electrical appliances, and retail, enterprises' ROI The retail industry in China is the highest, reaching 400%. Of course, handling complaints is only one aspect of services, but the importance of services to the retail industry can be seen from this. Good service can help enterprises win a positive reputation, and win a higher market share through reputation, thus being able to ask for higher service prices than competitors.
3. Retail services can play a defensive marketing role
Good service can play a defensive marketing role (retaining existing customers) and cultivate customer loyalty. Customer deviation or customer vacillation is very common in the retail industry (American Gosom Consulting Company found in the survey that customers move from one store to another to make regular purchases, and 7 out of 10 people are due to service problems). In this way, retail stores must develop new customers to replace the lost customers. This replacement requires a high cost. In addition to the start-up operating expenses, there are also advertising, promotion and sales costs. According to Peters, the author of The Pursuit of Excellence, an old customer of a retail store in the United States will buy an average of 50000 yuan of goods in 10 years. Loyal customers provide three times of return to retail stores. They will take the initiative to buy again, so that the cost of marketing and sales invested in them is much lower than the cost of attracting new customers.
