Services Marketing In UAE Research Paper Examples

The United Arabs Emirates has over the years positioned itself as a major business and transport hub in the world. There is a wide range of products and services on offer in the region. The business industry which is mainly inclined towards production and well defined service delivery can be categorized into tangible and intangibles with the businesses divided based on what they offer in the market. This includes pure goods, mainly goods, mainly service, hybrid as well as service with minor goods. The level of services and goods in the regions defines its success in the field of business and has resulted to the entry of major players in business that employs diverse promotional strategies. This paper is an analysis of the business field in United Arabs Emirate, the category of goods and services offered as well as the marketing strategies used and challenges encountered.
One of the major categories of business in UAE is those that offer pure goods. These are mainly companies that explore and process natural resources which is a major source of revenue in the region. The main players in the pure goods business are the petroleum companies such as the Emirates National Oil Company (ENOC), whose main focus is exploration, processing and marketing of crude oil and petroleum products. The mainly goods category includes companies that deals with production, assembling and marketing of electronics, furniture and other appliances. Such companies are important in the economy of the UAE as they have shaped it into a major source of such goods. One of the greatest players in the field is IKEA which specialize in the sale of furniture and other home based appliances.
The hybrid category of service which involves the incorporation of human service in the restaurants and food business is widely developed in the United Arabs Emirates region with major players in the service sector owning outlets. This sector caters for the business travelers who frequent the major cities in UAE for corporate meetings as well as those who use the airports in the region as a connecting point to other destinations in Europe, Africa and Asia. Some of the companies that have established outlets in the region include P F Chang who runs a chain of Chinese restaurants in major cities such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
With the growth of business in the United Arabs Emirates region, subsidiary service industries such as consultancy and insurance which offer support to the existing businesses have seen an upward trend. This type of business falls into the category of service only because the main product is the supporting services offered to other businesses. Consultancy firms encounter great challenges in terms of marketing because of the intangibility of their products. Sometimes it is difficult to promote such products because unlike the tangible goods where free samples are offered during inception, it is difficult to convince clients to pay for the services. The other category of service is the service only with minor goods. This is mainly in the transport industry such as the aviation sector. In such a service, the client pays for the service as the main product but as a result of diversification and differentiation, it comes with some additional goods. For instance, in the aviation sector, an airline passenger pays for a travel ticket as the main focus but in addition they are offered meals, drinks, magazines and newspapers among other minor additions. The major players in this field include fly emirates which dominates the air travel sector in the region and beyond.

Challenges of service marketing in UAE

Service marketing is a business process that is faced with numerous challenges as the level of tangible products involved is minimal. In addition, the existing characteristics of services including perish ability, intangibility and inseparability with the consumer are hard to incorporate in the marketing campaign. In addition, the existence of modern technology that makes a customer part of the service production are some of the factors that have made the process of marketing services a challenging issues. The existence of several challenges in service marketing has caused tremendous consumer implications in the United Arab Emirates, especially as a result of the distinct culture and people’s expectations. As such, companies are left with a challenge of coming up with the appropriate strategies to ensure an effective marketing plan is successfully implemented while ensuring maximum customer satisfaction.
One of the major challenges facing the process of service marketing includes the fact that most service products cannot be inventoried. Services are highly perishable and cannot be stored since they are consumed upon the process of production. This makes it hard to keep an inventory of the services produced and those that are waiting to be consumed in the future especially in mostly services categories. If the demand is lower than expected, the surplus services goes into waste since they cannot be stored on the other hand, in cases where demand exceeds supply of services that a company is able to provide, the subsequent effect is the disappointment of the consumers if they are turned away. As such, organizations have to come up with marketing strategies and production measures that ensure a constant balance of the demand and supply of services such as reservations, considerable pricing and adopting vibrant promotion measures to attract more customers to buy the services.
Another challenge involves the intangibility of services whereby the value creation is dominated by intangible elements. Customers cannot smell, touch, see, hear, or taste services before purchase. Lack of these options could make potential customers unable to make buying decisions. This is because are unable to differentiate services from those of the competitors or evaluate the perceived satisfaction. To handle this challenge, marketers should use creative marketing strategies such as the use of metaphors and physical clues that portrays a distinguish features of the organization’s services. In addition, appealing brand images and mission statements are some of the vital images that could make the organization’s services more ’tangible’.
A third aspect involves the fact that services are usually hard to visualize and understand. Customers usually have difficulties in visualizing the type of services they will receive prior to making the buying decision. This is because most of the services lack mental tangibility that could help a customer understand the type and quality of services they will be getting. In order to overcome this challenge, service marketers should use actual pictures to help the customer understand the type of services the organization provides. In addition, marketers should educate the customers, provide feedbacks from previous customers and experiences as well as offer reward programs and guarantees to the customers as a way of ensuring them quality service and expectations.
Another challenge exists where service customers could be involved in co-production. Delivering some services may involve an active participation of the customer such as in banking ATMs, hotels and self-service restaurants. The interaction in the process of providing such services could affect the selling process of a service as well as the level of customer satisfaction especially due to the impact of the behavior and attitude of the customer and the seller. In addition, lack of direct interaction between the customer and the seller in production processes such as ATMs makes it hard to understand customer needs and level of satisfaction. As such, marketers should provide adequate training on how to effectively make it through various service processes as well as use proactive measures of managing customer behaviors in various service production processes.
Time is another challenging factor that plays a vital role in making marketing decision. Most of the services such as those provided by restaurants, banks and airlines are provided while the customer is physically present. Customers expects a service to be readily available when they need it and as such convenience of time and place as well as the speed of service delivery plays a vital role in achieving high quality transactions. Delays in offering a particular service may scare off the customers and thus, organizations are faced with a challenge of coming up with measures of improving efficiency and speed in service delivery. As such, organizations should interact with the customers to understand their demands so as to strategize ways of offering timely deliveries. Other measures such as 24/7 services should be incorporated in service organizations such as petrol stations and banking ATM services to ensure that customers are able to access such services whenever they need them.

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