Guest Column

The selling point

What do you understand by selling and marketing? How did the concept of 'Only quality of Product' change to 'Quality with Service Aptitude'?

Selling is a process to just sell the product and earn a profit. Selling is not a time-consuming process; it's a simple process in which a product is being sold to people who demand them. Earlier, people weren't aware of their rights and responsibilities. Thus they just concentrated on the product's quality, leading to a kind of monopoly where sellers started selling on their own terms and prices. They would intentionally create a situation of inflation, which would not only result in a rise in price but deterioration in quality as well.

Marketing is the analysis, planning, implementation and control of carefully formulated programmes, designed to bring about voluntary exchanges of values with target markets for the purpose of achieving organisational goals and customer satisfaction. In simpler term, marketing is a continuous, sequential process through which various management plans, research, implements and controls evaluate activities designed to satisfy both customer needs and wants and their own organisational objectives.

Selling versus marketing

The term selling and marketing have similar meaning for a common man, but it is not so. They are two different terms with different meanings. Selling concentrates on the selling of the product produced by the seller and customer needs are not important. On the other hand, customers are a priority in marketing, so their needs are analysed much before the product is manufactured. Marketing focuses constantly on the buyer's need whereas selling is preoccupied with the needs of the seller. Marketing also views the consumer as the basic purpose of the business and sees the business from the point of view of the consumer. On the contrary, selling views the consumer as the last link in the business.

With the passage of time, the needs of people gradually increased and quality was emphasised on. With the advancement of technology, aspects like hygiene, customer value, ambience, privacy and after-sales service have gained equal importance. The above mentioned aspects are categorised under the concept of service. What does a layman know about service? Service is an intangible and perishable product which has an essential aspect of human presence in it. Service, which in common terms is an accompaniment with the product, now holds equal importance with the product itself. An individual requires qualities of service to provide skilled and satisfactory service. What is understood by SERVICE qualities?

S - Smart
E - Energetic
R -Responsible/Reliable
V - Versatile
I - Initiative
C - Caring
E - Extrovert

As the awareness, technology and standard of living reached newer heights, the quality of products as well as services became a priority for customers, and so did the need for service aptitude and customer satisfaction.

Due to a rise in the standard of living, improvements in education and awareness among the mass, the manufacturers began to understand the needs and demands of services from the customer's perspective. This compelled them to evaluate customer satisfaction in order to gain an edge over the competitors. Our institute also took an initiative to know about the requirements and tools needed to evaluate customer satisfaction. A questionnaire was prepared in which opinions on aspects of service and evaluating customer satisfaction were taken from managers and customers of various companies. The survey proved the inseparability of service from the product. The statistical conclusion of the survey emphasises on the aspects of service like hygiene, customer value, ambience, privacy and after-sales service to be as important as the quality of the product:

The study has lead to the discovery of various innovative tools that a few selective hotels and restaurants use:

Moving screens to convey visual description of the food product for better understanding of guest (Sankalp Restaurants)

Rectification methods to improve the quality of food. To retain valued customers and to evaluate their satisfaction, various privilege programmes are used by most of the standardised hotels (Taj, Inner Circle, Hyatt Golden Passport, etc)

This revolutionary change in people's mindsets has made consumers aware of their needs and demands, which have led to the evolution of a consumer-oriented market resulting in the need for evaluation of customer satisfaction.

Complied by Dr Sanjeev Saxena (lecturer at IHN), Vaibhav Shan, Nikhil Sethi, Bhagyashree Yewle, Institute of Hotel Management Government Polytechnic, Jodhpur