Question

Review Exercise 3: Characteristics of Services

WestJet was founded in 1996 as a low cost Canadian airline. Today, WestJet welcomes 20 million travelers annually. Use your own knowledge of WestJet and the company website at www.westjet.com to answer the following.

1. Explain how the four characteristics of services affect WestJet.

2. What marketing initiatives could WestJet employ to try to mitigate the negative effects of these characteristics as much as possible?

Answer 1

1. The four characteristics of services affects WestJet in following ways:

A. Intangibility: Miscommunication or lack of communication of services offered by WestJet to its customers affects the organization since it hurts the revenue of the organisation.

B. Inseparability: Next issue that the organization faces is the lack of provision of customer satisfaction which leads to the customers going for other airlines which provide them better services.

C. Perishability: The third factor which affects the organisation is that the supply and demand is not properly managed and the organization needs to ensure that adequate staff is maintained to cater to the demand and lean period must be catered by reducing the supply of staff.

D. Variability: Last factor affecting the organization is giving variable services to the cistocustan not establishing standard operating procedures to cater to customer demand.

2. Below marketing initiatives could be employed by WestJet to mitigate the negative effects of these characteristics:

A. Communication: Communication to the customers is the best way to ensure that the negative effects are mitigated and effective information is provided to the customers.

B. Well designed website: A properly designed website helps a customer to navigate and see all the services that would be provided to them, hence they will be able to choose best service for them.

C. Customer service initiatives: Proper customer services must be provided at the right time in order to increase customer satisfaction and improve the overall reliability of services provided.

D. Promotions: Promotions of services have to be done on a regular basis in order to ensure that customers are attracted to the services and features are provided to them in order to increase organization revenue.

E. Pricing strategies: Pricing strategies of different services must be catered by pricing the services in accordance with their level of importance and keeping the price in accordance with the income level of customers availing those services.