Spyros Langkos_Athens Archeological Museum_individual report and reflective commentarry Master in Marketing Management - University of Derby Mediterranean College, Athens, Greece

1. M.Sc in Marketing Management
DELIVERING CUSTOMER
FOCUSED SERVICES
Individual Report
&
Reflective Commentary
SPYROS LANGKOS
ID: 100285557
Tutor: Mr. Roumeliotis George
Athens, May 2013
Academic Year 2012 – 2013

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This report concentrates on presenting the
academic framework and resources that reffer to
our new service development for the museum,
in the case of facilitating innovation and embracing
the ongoing trend which is on the rise, the update
of the museum’s technological standards by
introducing services concerning web
interconnectivity and interaction of the museum
with it’s visitors.

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1. TABLE OF CONTENTS
Pages
1. Contents....................................................................................... 3
2. Acknowledgements....................................................................4
3. Introduction..............................................................................5
4. Features of New Service.............................................................6
5. New Service and the Theater Model ............................................ .8
6. New Service Marketing Mix ...................................................... .12
7. Managerial Skills and Knowledge .............................................. .14
8. Appendix............................................................................... .15
9. Bibliography .......................................................................... .18

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2. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The development and the implementation of this report is made possible
by the appreciation of my family and friends and also to the help of
Andrew, the library bookkeeper. I would like to thank, our module teacher
Mr. George Roumeliotis for his guidance so that we can bring closure to
our assignment work.
I will also like to thank my colleagues for their interesting exchange of
information and knowledge upon the subject. They gave me very clear
insights and views upon my stated arguments.

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3. INTRODUCTION
The term “ Experience economy “ was first described in an article
published in1998 by Pine and Gilmore. The article argued that, service
companies would evolve from simply providing a service to creating
memorable events for their customers, with the memory of the experience
becoming the product. Rather than the service company charging for the
activities it performs, it would be charging for the feelings that the
customers derive from engaging with the service. In the forthcoming
years many organizations have focused on creating these experiences.
Definition of service (V. A Zeithaml, 2012)
“ all economic activities whose output is not a physical product or
construction, is generally consumed at the time it is produced, and
provides added value in firms (such as convenience, amusement,
timeliness, comfort, or health) that are essentially intangible
concerns of its first purchase “
The service concept
Organizational perspective concept is the way in which the organization
would like to have its services perceived by its customers, employees,
shareholders, and lenders.
Customer perspective, it’s the way in which the customer perceives the
organization’s service.
The service package
 Supporting facilities (physical resources)
 Facilitating goods (materials consumed or purchased)
 Explicit services (readily observable benefits)
 Implicit services (psychological benefits/extrinsic features)

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4. FEATURES OF NEW SERVICE
Types of service innovation are tied to the offerings themselves,
suggesting that innovation occurs, when a service offering is altered or
expanded in some way – either radically on one extreme or stylistically at
the other extreme. It is also possible that service innovations may come
about when customer’s usage or co-creation role is redefined.
For example, assuming the customer plays the role of user, buyer, or
payer in a service context, new services result when the previous role is
redefined. Service firms are generally less likely to carry out a structured
development process (V. A. Zeithaml, 2012).
Intangibility
The most basic distinguishing characterizing of service. As services are
more of performances or actions rather than objects, cannot be seen, felt,
tasted or touched in the same way that a tangible product is sensed. This
gives the service the advantage of “not being easily copied”.
Perishability
It refers to the fact that the service cannot be stored, saved, resold or
returned. This implies a need for a strong recovery strategy in a case of
misfortune.
Variability
A major characteristic of services. Service variability may be defined as
the changes in the quality of the same service provided by different
vendors. The change varies because of the nature of the service, the
person who provides the time of the year when it is provided and the
method of delivery of the service. Their quality may vary greatly,
depending on who provides them and when, where, and how. Service
buyers are aware of this variability and often talk to others before
selecting a service provider.

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Service variability exposes two distinct characteristics that impose certain
challenges in variability management. These characteristics are: i)
Different types of variability and their inter-relationships, ii) Dynamic and
recursive variability communication among different stakeholders.
Inseparability
The service is produced and consumed simultaneously as:
 Customers participate and affect it
 Affect each other
 Employees act as intermediate of the quality outcome
Accessibility
Is the degree to which a service, or environment is available to as many
people as possible. Accessibility can be viewed as the "ability to access"
and benefit from some system or entity. The concept often focuses on
people with disabilities or special needs and their right of access, enabling
the use of assistive technology.
Accessibility is not to be confused with usability, which is the extent a
service, or environment can be used by specified users to achieve
specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified
context of use. It is strongly related to universal design when the
approach involves "direct access." This is about making things accessible
to all people (whether they have a disability or not). An alternative is to
provide "indirect access" by having the entity support the use of a
person's assistive technology to achieve access (for example, computer
screen readers).

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Customer satisfaction
The customer action area encompasses the steps, choices, activities and
interactions that the customer performs in the process of purchasing,
consuming and evaluating the service. In parallel to the customer actions
are two areas of contact employee actions. The steps and activities that
the contact employee performs that are visible to the customer are the
onstage contact employee actions (A. Wilson, 2012).
Unique museum service keeps the customer at the center. Museum
customer should be viewed as assets to be valued, developed and
retained.

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5. NEW SERVICE AND THE THEATER MODEL
Theater model framework (SaaT)
It is proven to be very useful for analyzing the performance of a service,
by basically aiming to create and keep a desirable impression in front of
an audience. This is regularly managed by carefully controlling the actors
and the physical setting of the audience’s behavior. The key points here
are: discipline, loyalty and circumspection, as a single person can ruin the
service anytime, by failing to perform his role properly, show ridiculous
behavior, or unfold misguided experiences.
The physical setting of the service can be seen as a theatrical production,
including scenery, props and physical clues to create the desired
impressions. The selection of personnel and design can be viewed as an
audition for actor or as setting the stage.
The importance of customers in successful service delivery is obvious if
service performances are looked as a form of drama.
The drama metaphor for services suggests the reciprocal and interactive
role of employees and customers in creating the service experience. The
service actors and audience are surrounded by the service setting. Often,
through service drama metaphor service performances are viewed as
tenuous, fragile processes that can be influenced by behavior of
customers as well as employees (A. Wilson,2012).
Potential problems
The difficulty with the museum embracing technological service-orientation is
the fact that due to country’s prolonged history, museums at first were
established as authoritative bureaucratic institutions which meant to act as a
public servant for national knowledge deposit (pretty much like the mentality
of the Vatican library)! So their mission was to preserve and maintain and not
to alter and evolve.
The modern conflict with museums of such kind, is finding a way to access
technology without losing sight in their mission. But the thing that should be
noted here is that the mission is a factorial value of their customer’s
perception and satisfactory elements, which going to lose anyway if not adapt.

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Service operation
The customer experience has become an important strategic asset in
many industries, especially those with commoditizing products or where
deregulation has led to fierce price wars and customer churn. Moreover,
advances in technology and the globalization of many industries have
heightened customer expectations. But too often, misconceptions about
what customers value lead to misguided “improvement” efforts that waste
valuable resources.
Although museum survives almost entirely on donations or earnings from
past donations - these are the offspring of wealthy individuals, companies,
or groups - most depend on a mix of fees for services and gifts. The mix
between the two determines the museum's culture, services, and working
conditions.
Walking into the museum and you can quickly determine where their
funding comes from. Museums that depend on visitors and members to
fund the organization are more entrepreneurial and focused on customer
service. They have flyers and brochures to take home, active programs,
and gift shops to capture more of your money.
It generates revenues from admissions, membership fees, educational
programs, gift shop and other sales. Museums that are working hard to
bring in visitors will draw around 20% of their catchment population
(defined by the reach of their newspapers, TV and radio stations).
Educational programs can bring in substantial net revenues, but most
museums either lose money on these or just break even.
Only in large and heavily trafficked museums do gift shops warrant a paid
staff. In the other museums, a volunteer or group of museum volunteers
operates the shop. Add up all these revenue streams and you get
somewhere between 40 and 70% of a museum's operating budget (not
counting museums that are fully funded like the Smithsonian). The rest
comes from endowment (old money generating a few percent income
each year), donations, and grants. The Development Director is charged
with recruiting new donors and keeping the existing ones happy and
usually has responsibility for the museum membership program.
To compete with all the entertainment available and other educational
programming in a community, museums rely heavily on public relations:
press releases, public service announcements, etc. Rarely can they afford
to pay for advertising. The local media in most communities gladly
support museums as they make good stories.

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Museums may have huge collections worth millions of dollars that give
them a huge asset base. These assets are not liquid. They can't sell part
of the collections to pay current expenses. The items in collections were
given to the museum to hold, conserve, and use in exhibitions or
programs for future generations.
People contribute money for museum endowments, often with the
provision that only a percentage of the income can be spent. The idea is
to create an ever-growing fund that can help pay museum expenses for
decades. So here again a museum may have large assets with no ability
to convert them into ready cash. Museums can borrow against these
assets, but since board members may be personally liable they don't let
the museum take loans. To raise money the museum has to increase its
earned income (admissions, membership fees, program registrations) or
ask for grants and donations. In the current economy, with people
spending less and donors giving less, museums are having difficult times
staying afloat.

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6. NEW SERVICE MARKETING MIX
Product
The technological upgrade of hardware infrastructure, software
development, network interconnectivity, application enhancement and
personnel trainee material.
Price
Cost-Leadership price offering strategy (lowering price at 5 euro –built up
scaling price offers customized to every segment needs and income
power, by gradually forming new mobile offerings and sweepstakes per
period and special occasion events. Formulation of special online tour
offerings and hotel partner programmes to facilitate online ticketing or
library memberships by online credit systems
Place
By bringing digital media enchantments in the interior of the museum
placed in corners so that they add natural to the classical scenery and
avoid crowd sourcing, or just by giving personnel access to handle them
during their service performance.
Promotion
Mainly through social and other digital media. By engaging in online
communities with education-driven people and knowledge-sharing. Also
by building museum centered applications for online apps stores.
Additional by introducing banner campaigns across the web and accessing
Google adwords progamme, by promoting the museum’s relevant content
to their online niche.
People
All human actors who play a part in the service delivery and thus influence
the buyer’s perception: the personnel, the customer, other customers
around the service environment. By accessing a supportive and active
method of learning and experiencing knowledge. The adoption of lifelong
learning culture and procedures, will force the personnel to be inspired in
front of the customers eyes.
Process
The actual procedures, mechanisms and flow of activities by which the
service is delivered (service delivery/offerings/operating systems).
As the visitor enters either in the physical or the online part of the
museum, will have better visual representation of information and
guidance. At the start clear signaling and mapping process is in needed,
then systems of data collection will mediate, afterwards information
share-alike tools will take place and finally the personal contact/help/chat
will end-up the service by fulfilling a positive service encounter and
customer co-creation.

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Physical environment
The environment in which the service is delivered and were the
firm/organization and the customer interact alongside with any intangible
objects and components that facilitate the performance or communication
of the service.
The environmental clues of the museum provide an excellent opportunity
to send a consistent message regarding the purpose, the mission, the
nature and the intended focus of the market segments.
The environment will have to face a slight renovation process as it is the
intermediate in merging technology placement with archaeological
background. Every specimen room will have a theme approach of the era
that describes, matching it in color,light, space, personnel image, etc.

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7. MANAGERIAL SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE
Over time business people have realized that marketing and managing
services presents issues and challenges not faced in the marketing of
products. As service businesses begun to turn to marketing and decided
to employ marketing people, they naturally recruited from the best
industries in the world. People who moved from these industries found
that their skills and experiences were not directly transferable.
Frameworks, concepts and strategies were developed to address the fact
that service marketing is different. In this constantly evolving field, in the
21th century, new trends will shape the field and accelerate the need for
services marketing concepts and tools (A. Wilson, 2012).
In addition to providing opportunities for new service offerings, technology
is providing vehicles for delivering existing service in a more accessible,
convenient and prouctive way. Technological advancements, especially in
the field of information technology, facilitate basic customer service
functions (mobile screening, audiovisual representation, etc).
Technology infusions have resulted in the potential of reaching out to
customers around the globe in many way that were not possible in the
past. An interesting way to realize the influence of technology these days,
is to accept that the Internet as a whole is “one big service”. On the other
side of this point of view are the employees, who are reluctant to
technology and change, as they believe that by accepting technological
integration may cause the loss of they job.
If I were to be chosen for example, as the museum manager I would
expect myself, to be first of all fully aware of the differentiation offerings
that similar museums have across the globe, so that I can adapt them to
a more regional focus, in order to gain a further step concerning local
competition. I believe that an expertise in the field of service
operations/implementation and integrating marketing/branding
communications is perceived as a necessity in our times. Without these
two skills it would very difficult to maintain an entrepreneur mindscape in
the museum’s management. That is because these two approaches are
customer driven in perspective and implementation of service.
I would mostly choose to learn and maintain skills that are transferable to
others as well. As I think of it, Relationships and negotiation approach
would be the case to my above statement, as it attracts attention in field
like sales, finance, sponsorship, partnerships, etc. Because a museum has
also an institutional role in the society it is important to understand that
managers should balance all the counteracting parts, and what better skill
is there for producing results if not negotiations, at least if someone wants
to achieve a win-win situation and spirit.

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8. APPENDIX
A] Athens Archeological Museum Map

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B ] Extended Marketing Mix

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C ] Service Delivery Model

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9. BIBLIOGRAPHY
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