Marketing-based tangibilisation for services

Abstract

This study attempts to explore how to decrease the intangibility of services by marketing-based activities, rather than the conventional perspective based on operational activities. Based on the literature, this study builds a four-element model to circumscribe and define the managerial problems caused by the intangibility of services. Moreover, this study proposes four strategies to raise consumers' sense of tangibility toward services, namely Quantitation/Ranking, Factualisation/Substantialisation, Word-of-Mouth Effect, and Information Frequency. Following this, three services, i.e., cafeteria, extension education, and ophthalmology services, are selected as scenarios to conduct the experiments. The results indicate that the four strategies can improve the tangibility of services sufficiently, especially Quantitation/Ranking. This study also builds a three-construct, nine-item Services Tangibility Scale to measure consumers' perceptions of tangibility toward a particular service. Statistical evidence confirms the reliability, and discriminate and convergent validity of the scale.