Ownership in service marketing

Ownership is never transferred in the case of services.

In products, the product is produced first and than it is sold. However in services, the product is bought first and than produced and consumed. In this case the ownership is not transferred.

Lets take an example. You go to an electronics shop and buy a sony walkman. The product now belongs to you. However, you next go to the restaurant and order a dish. Does the food in the restaurant belong to you? No. In the case of the electronics shop too, the product – Walkman might belong to you, but the ownership of the service has not been transferred. In an IT company, you might get an order for an IT software but do you own the software? Not until it becomes a independent product for the IT company.

In short, ownership is trasnferred in case of products but not in case of services.

Marketing implications of Ownership

A lot of the implications of ownership depend on how your people perform while delivering the service. The ownership criteria comes after the service product has been delivered to the customer and not before.

Example, A customer might not like the service in a shop, a restaurant or an airline. However he would have already paid for the usage of the service product. Thus in such a case he can positively or negatively impact the service product. Hence measures should be taken in the complete marketing mix to not dissapoint the customer post the service sale.