Question

Jenny’s Styling Shop offers hair care services for both men and women. The shop is open six days a week for 8-10 hours a day. The shop has a staff of 22 full- and part-time hair stylists. For each of the following characteristics of service products, describe (1) how that characteristic would occur in Jenny’s business, (2) an important difficulty or problem that may be caused by that characteristic, and (3) how Jenny could reduce the negative effects of the problem caused by that characteristic. (a) Intangibility. (b) Heterogeneity. (c) Inseparability. (d) Perishability.

Answer 1

Intangibility.=Intangibility lies in the very nature of the service offered by jenny’s shop as the service offered there is intangible that is it cannot be touched or seen, it can only be experienced. The main difficulty resulting from this trait is that the customers can not feel or touch the service and they will only experience it. It will have the problem of expressing the service quality to the customers. In order to deal with the problem of intangibility, he can use the pictures of the customers having god hairstyles, the other infrastructure such as good sitting arrangement, nice inside ambiance, professional look of all the service providers will help in providing a virtual tangible feel of the service.

Heterogeneity= This is resulting as the time takes by each service will depend on many factors and there can be also the variation in the type of service provided to the customers. The biggest issue with this trait will be that there will not be a set standard or parameter that can be used to judge the service quality. In order to overcome this issue, Jenny can have the standard time for each service offered, and also she can provide the proper training to the service providers in order to reduce the variation.

Inseparability= The problem is mainly resulted as in order to provide the service, both the customer and the service provider has to be present at the same time. This will cause the problem when the customer is not present or the service provider is not present at a given time. This issue can be resolved by motivating the customers to visit the shop and ensuring that the service providers are present and free when the customer turns up.

Perishability= This causes the problem in the form that the services cannot be stored So if the service providers are free and do not have any customer then they will not be able to use that time for the storing of the service and use it when there is higher demand as in it is done in case of product. The main issue in this will be resulting in the form of loss of sale or idle time of the service provider. In order to overcome this issue, Jenny can provide discounts to the customers when they use the service during non-peak time. While in order to manage the service during peak time, Jenny can hire the part-time service providers.