MS-65 Sample Paper - Marketing of Services

MBA - Master of Business Administration

Note: This paper consists of two sections A and B. Attempt any three questions from Section A. Section B is compulsory. All questions carry equal marks.

1. (a) In what ways is distribution of services different from goods? Identify a few services which can be distributed electronically and discuss the challenges involved in it.
(b) Differentiate between core, facilitating, and supporting services, giving suitable examples.

2. (a) What are the benefits derived by a service firm in offering a service firm in offering a service guarantee?

(b) Discuss the characteristics of a good service guarantee. Evaluate the following service guarantee offered by a restaurant for its home delivery services, on the basis of the characteristics discussed by you.

"30 MINUTES GUARANTEE.
10% DISCOUNT ON DELAYED DELIVERY ORDERS*
*Discounts not applicable for orders over Rs.500"

3. (a) How important is it for a hotel located at a hill station to use promotions during off-season? Also identify the possible sales promotion schemes it can offer.

(b) Discuss the importance of word of mouth communication for health care services.

4. Write short notes on any three of the following:

(a) Role of service sector in Indian economy
(b) Gronroos Model of Service Quality
(c) Pricing of educational services
(d) Yield Management
(e) Role of Physical evidence

SECTION B

Study the case given below and answer the questions given at the end.

Marketing of Health Services

Pulin Kayastha was simply amazed. He had seen all forms of hostility and marketing warfare in the consumer goods industry, but to see similar warfare in the health industry fascinated him. Clearly, he told himself, doctors had found consumers in their patients. At least, that's what the concept note sent by Dr. AJit Varman, country manager of Recovery Clinics & Hospitals, seemed to indicate. Varman and seven other senior doctors had left Karuna Nursing Home and Hospital to set up Recovery, which, as the note said, ".... would be entirely devoted and dedicated to customer responsiveness."

Pulin was a management consultant and was recommended to Recovery by the marketing director of Regrow Pharma, a large pharmaceuticals company in Mumbai. In fact, the suggestion to set up Recovery came from a non-resident patient, Dinesh Shah, who was undergoing treatment at Karuna's large speciality hospital in Central India. It was in the course of his interaction with the doctors that Shah sensed their unhappiness with the system. This prompted him to suggest the idea of Recovery. Varman had joined Karuna 10 years ago, assured of a challenging career in a hospital that was promising to be different. But over time, disillusionment set in as Karuna's image and response to the environment diluted its equity.

"Now that we have decided to do this, we do not want to repeat old mistakes," Varman had told Pulin during their first meeting. "Having worked at Karuna, we can see its weaknesses and why it's losing saliency. Ten years ago, when it was established, we believed ii was going to add value to our careers, We became a part of it because we were told that we are specialists who would bring exclusivity to the hospital. But soon, the focus shifted to fetching business and revenues. The management started hiring specialists and private practitioners, offering them cabins and consultancy arrangements at Karuna. The strategy was that these doctors would bring in their patients and use the infrastructure so that the hospital would start earning money."

The Karuna management wanted to derive short-tem benefits, than gradually build up clientele. But the strategy, it appeared, did not pay off. As Varman said: "Because there were many doctors and the business was not large enough in the first few months. Consequently, competition for business became cutthroat between doctors.

Despite modem amenities, state-of-art systems and numerous doctors, the image of the hospital was that of being too commercial - a fallout of the stigma of being a private hospital. It was common among doctors to slot every hospital under either category - a place where you get neglected to death or a place where you get researched to death. Karuna earned a new label - a place where you got cross-referred to death, {or doctors at Karuna slowly took to enhancing each others earnings as they sent patients back and forth to doctors and specialists. At the end of his diagnoses, the patient ended up paying a huge amount of money for this treatment.

According to Varman, the high-cost, high-expectation syndrome hit the hospital. The initial promise of exclusivity and quality was lost. Karuna had the best doctors, but after-care was abysmal. With a view to keeping costs low, nurses, housekeeping staff and even the front office staff were hired cheap, training was virtually absent, and no attention was paid to end user needs.

Kayastha could see Recovery trying to b€ all that Karuna was not and desiring not to be all that Karuna was. If Kayastha thought Varman was hiring him for routine systems design and a patient management manual, he was mistaken. For Varman said r "We want to get Recovery's positioning platform right and work on a sound marketing plan. What we want you to do is to help us build this brand, help ordinary doctors like us understand what brand-building entails and how it is managed in a service industry."

Questions

(a) Suggest a positioning strategy for Recovery Clinics and Hospitals.
(b) Explain why it would be necessary for doctors as well as nursing staff to be marketing oriented.
(c) ldentify and discuss the service quality dimensions which Recovery Clinics and Hospitals can use for measuring its service quality.