Once a suitable marketing mix is chosen, tools can then be used to outline the benefits and potential restrictions with a new service or product. The 7Ps are discussed using relevant business examples:
1. Product
RBS offer many products and services, including insurance, personal banking, and savings accounts. Along with these they also offer online banking, mobile banking and soon aim to roll-out AI Chatbots. This indicates a relation to their goal to be both customer focused and digitally enabled for their customers. This should create value for customers.
2. Price
Air Arabia is a budget airline that offers value for money; it cuts back on non-essential amenities and uses airports with cheaper landing fees. They then pass these savings onto their customers, this is known as customer-value-based pricing. Beneficial if targeted at customers who want low-cost flying options. Price can include other aspects other than just monetary value, such as time spent travelling to the product location, or the physical effort required to complete a purchase.
3. Place
Businesses need to decide where their products or services will be delivered, this can be through physical or electronic channels. Along with their physical branches, RBS have a strong online presence with their customers, they have over 5 million mobile application users, and 68% of their banking tasks are now possible through this application. They have also developed the first paperless mortgage. This indicates RBS are monitoring their target customers and how they bank and aiming more products towards these areas.
4. Promotion
Along with conventional forms of advertising, such as TV advertising and printed promotional information, RBS primarily promote their services internally through direct selling. It is therefore important to focus on the learning and development of their staff to ensure the right product is being aimed to the appropriate customers. Including incentives with products is also a useful tool, such as discounts to current customers.
5. Process
By adopting standardised procedures of service quality, businesses can limit mishaps in the process of delivering goods and services. The Marriot Hotel have dedicated staff who monitor their social media accounts, they seek out any complaints due to a failure in process, and attempt to rectify problems; this allows an opportunity for dissatisfied customers to re-evaluate their experience.
6. Physical Evidence/Environment
The building, interior furnishings, and employee uniforms are aspects that make up the physical environment. These can have an impact on the customer experience; negative aspects should be avoided, as this could affect the customers’ satisfaction levels, for example, entering a restaurant to find it unclean could prevent customers returning.
7. People
It is evident from the RBS Business Model and Strategy Report that people are key to their marketing success. They are aiming to have an employee engagement level in the upper quartile of the Global Financial Services norm by 2020. The Institute of Customer Service discusses how employee competence and behaviour effect the customer experience, linking employee engagement to customer satisfaction. With the development of their AI Chatbots, their employees will need to be skilled in the softer skills such as empathy.
If these elements are successfully addressed and designed to offer superior value, it should lead to strong customer relationships, delivering customer satisfaction and developing customer loyalty. This should create profits and customer equity.