Adapting to the market place is a very strategic work. Are there differences in this regard between goods and services? Please elaborate.

Several definitions have been proposed for the term marketing. Each tends to emphasize different issues. Memorizing a definition is unlikely to be useful; ultimately, it makes more sense to thinking of ways to benefit from creating customer value in the most effective way, subject to ethical and other constraints that one may have.

• A main objective of marketing is to create customer value.
• Marketing usually involves an exchange between buyers and sellers or between other parties.
• Marketing has an impact on the firm, its suppliers, its customers, and others affected by the firm’s choices.
• Marketing frequently involves enduring relationships between buyers, sellers, and other parties.
• Processes involved include “creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings.

Marketing usually involves an exchange between buyers and sellers or ... the environment changes so that a firm can adapt its strategies appropriately. ... At the budget level, differentproducts or services provide very different .... More women work outside the home today, so thereis a greater demand for prepared foods.

Plans and planning. Plans are needed to clarify what kinds of strategic objectives an organization would like to achieve and how this is to be done. Such plans must consider the amount of resources available. One critical resource is capital. Microsoft keeps a great deal of cash on hand to be able to “jump” on opportunities that come about. Small startup software firms, on the other hand, may have limited cash on hand. This means that they may have to forego what would have been a good investment because they do not have the cash to invest and cannot find a way to raise the capital. Other resources that affect what a firm may be able to achieve include factors such as:

• Trademarks/brand names: It would be very difficult to compete against Coke and Pepsi in the cola market.
• Patents: It would be difficult to compete against Intel and AMD in the microprocessor market since both these firms have a number of patents that it is difficult to get around.
• People: Even with all of Microsoft’s money available, it could not immediately hire the people needed to manufacture computer chips.
• Distribution: Stores have space for only a fraction of the products they are offered, so they must turn many away. A firm that does not have an established relationship with stores will be at a disadvantage in trying to introduce a new product.

There are five essential differences between services and goods. The first is that a service is an intangible process that cannot be weighed or measured, whereas a good is a tangible output of a process that has physical dimensions. This distinction has important business implications since a service innovation, unlike a product innovation, cannot be patented. Thus, a company with a new concept must expand rapidly before competitors copy its procedures. Service intangibility also presents a problem for customers since, unlike with a physical product, they cannot try it out and test it before purchase.

The second is that a service requires some degree of interaction with the customer for it to be a service. The interaction may be brief, but it must exist for the service to be complete. Where face-to-face service is required, the service facility must be designed to handle the customer's presence. Goods, on the other hand, are generally produced in a facility separate from the customer. They can be made according to a production schedule that is efficient for the company.

The third is that services, with the big exception of hard technologies such as ATMs and information technologies such as answering machines and automated Internet exchanges, are inherently heterogeneous—they vary from day to day and even hour by hour as a function of the attitudes of the customer and the servers. Thus, even highly scripted work such as found in call centers can produce unpredictable outcomes. Goods, in contrast, can be produced to meet very tight specifications day-in and day-out with essentially zero variability. In those cases where a defective good is produced, it can be reworked or scrapped.

The fourth is that services as a process are perishable and time dependent, and unlike goods, they can't be stored. You cannot “come back last week” for an air flight or a day on campus.

And fifth, the specifications of a service are defined and evaluated as a package of features that affect the five senses. These features are

• Supporting facility (location, decoration, layout, architectural appropriateness, supporting equipment).

• Facilitating goods (variety, consistency, quantity of the physical goods that go with the service; for example, the food items that accompany a meal service).

• Explicit services (training of service personnel, consistency of service performance, availability and access to the service, and comprehensiveness of the service).

• Implicit services (attitude of the servers, atmosphere, waiting time, status, privacy and security, and convenience).

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