Marketing Services and Experiences - Management Assignment Help

Assignment Task:

Task:

Write a service experience diary report highlighting encounters with a service experience.

OVERVIEW

Students are to act as a “mystery shopper” and document the service experience with an organisation (e.g., small business such as hairdresser, manicurist, dog groomer) or event (e.g., local festival, concert, theater).  The service experience diary is designed to help students understand customer expectations and why consumers are sometimes satisfied or dissatisfied with the service experience.

By recording and analysing a student’s own experiences, particularly in reference to the theories, tools and techniques of services marketing, they should begin to discover what is truly needed to satisfy a customer. The approximate length of the report is 2000 words. No more than 1/4 is to be the diary component.

The Diary section may be written in first person. The analysis should be written in third person and Harvard referencing should be used, as appropriate.

DUE DATE 

Session 9

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Visit or experience a service organisation or event. For example, going to a concert, undertaking a training session at a gymnasium, receiving a service at University such as using the library, or receiving a haircut at a hairdressing salon.

2. The report will be easier to do if students select a service that is heavily intangible dominant. Refer to the figure from the set text (following).

The report consists of two parts: Diary and Analysis.

Diary

1. Briefly (a couple of sentences) provide some relevant background on the author (e.g., demographics, psychographics such as strong interest in health and sport if the service is using a gym or attending a sport event) and any situational influences that may be relevant to this service experience and state why it is relevant.

2. Document the pre-purchase stage. This may include the process undertaken to find information on the organisation, how the customer (the student) planned to get there, their expectations of the visit (what the student expected to see, time taken, cost, etc.), and any perceived risks.

3. Document the actual visit/experience, (the consumption stage). Indicate the day and time of the visit and the weather conditions (if relevant) on the day and the effect on the experience. Indicate the composition of the group (if applicable). Express what happened during the visit and the customer’s feelings about the service (express emotions). Refer to ‘emotions in service encounters’ chapter/information from the text. Include interactions with personnel and the inanimate environment as relevant.

4. Conclude this section by providing a satisfaction rating, and a value for money rating and whether the service would be recommended to a close friend or family member and why it would be appropriate for them. It is strongly recommended that students read and refer to the chapter in the required text book relating to customer satisfaction and service quality. Students will find it helpful if they look at the entire chapter including the appendix, that has a great deal of information about satisfaction ratings and use the criteria the authors discuss. It is not enough to simply state that the service was liked or disliked. It must have a formal rating scale based on recognised service quality models.

5. Start to refer to theory in this section and then discuss it more fully in the analysis section of the report. This is not a ‘mind dump’; the content must be orderly and as an author, the student must proof read their work.

Analysis

1. Consider a more fitting title of this section tailored to the topic, for example if appropriate, consider the title: ‘Analysis and recommendations for hairdressing businesses.

2. Analyse the overall judgement and feelings about the service providing organisation in terms of services theories and concepts. This may be based on theories such as ‘expectations’, ‘satisfaction’, and ‘service quality’ or the 7Ps.

3. The writing must shift styles from first person singular (I, me) in the Diary section to third person (the organisation etc.) in the analysis part of the report. To help students with this a guide has been uploaded to VU Collaborate.

4. The academic articles provided by the lecturer or tutor may be used but students must use a minimum of 4 academic peer reviewed journal articles that they have sourced as well. There are several reasons for this but the main one is that if students only use material given to them it does not show that they have researched the area for themselves. Do not use lecture notes or tutorial notes (Monash University - Citing and Referencing http://guides.lib.monash.edu/c.php?g=219786&p=1454238).  If the idea is in the notes then it is highly likely it is also contained within the text used to create the notes. Go to the original source (usually the required reading text) and locate the idea from there.

5. The analysis phase should take up the remaining 3/4 of the word limit. Use 1.5 spacing and write in the 3rd person (i.e., the organisation, the customers etc.). There is information on VU Collaborate regarding how to write in the third person. English usage as well as spelling, punctuation and grammar, will be considered when marking as too will the correct conventions in report writing such as numbering and naming tables and figures and other report writing conventions such as page numbering.

6. Students must use business report format (i.e., headings and sub-headings), including a table of contents, executive summary (this comes before the table of contents and is not included in the word count), recommendations, conclusion and list of references.

7. Wherever possible make reference to the theories, tools and techniques of services marketing to achieve a decent grade. All published materials utilised should be listed in the reference list and cited throughout the body of the report using the Harvard system of referencing. Use a minimum of 4 academic peer reviewed journal articles (in addition to those supplied by the lecturer and tutor).

8. Prepare and submit the report in Dropbox on VU Collaborate. The report should consist of a cover page with the title of the assignment, the student’s first and second name, student identification number.

Assessment Criteria and Submission 

The rubric used to mark this assignment can be viewed in VUC 

• Purpose of the study

• Links between theory and organisation

• Delivery, engagement with audience, and time management

• Design of slides

• Team work

• Quality of the presentation

This Management Assignment has been solved by our Management Experts at onlineassignmentbank. Our Assignment Writing Experts are efficient to provide a fresh solution to this question. We are serving more than 10000+Students in Australia, UK & US by helping them to score HD in their academics. Our Experts are well trained to follow all marking rubrics & referencing style.

Be it a used or new solution, the quality of the work submitted by our assignment Experts remains unhampered. You may continue to expect the same or even better quality with the used and new assignment solution files respectively. There’s one thing to be noticed that you could choose one between the two and acquire an HD either way. You could choose a new assignment solution file to get yourself an exclusive, plagiarism (with free Turnitin file), expert quality assignment or order an old solution file that was considered worthy of the highest distinction.