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Article 15

Services
communications: from
mindless tangibilization
to meaningful messages
Banwari Mittal
Professor of Marketing, Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights, Kentucky, USA

Abstract Service businesses face a unique challenge: how to effectively communicate the necessarily intangible benefits of their service offering. Their attempts to tangibilize the service are often ill-designed, making
service benefits more rather than less obscure. This article presents a scheme that identifies the communication task at various states of consumer decision making and then matches appropriate communication strategies. Rather than embracing misguided tangibilization, the recommended strategies handle the intangibility
challenge without necessarily using any tangible props.
Keywords Services marketing, Intangible assets, Marketing communications, Advertising, Consumer
behaviour

Introduction

erwise drab and complex technology. And it tangibilizes the intangible service. That much is good. But as readers, we still do
not know what our IT infrastructure actually does miss, and
how exactly Aprisma manages it.
This is a key problem with services advertising. Because services are intangible, it is a challenging task to effectively communicate about them (Berry, 1980; Lovelock, 1996; Zeithaml
and Bitner, 1996). A constant advice from services scholars has
been to tangibilize the service (e.g. Berry and Parasuraman,
1991; Day, 1992). However, while a thoughtful approach to tangibilizing the service works effectively (Berry and Clark, 1986;
Stafford, 1996), many approaches seen in practice (such as the
one adopted in the Aprisma ad) often fail to capture and communicate the core service benefit, or even make it worse. The
purpose of this paper is to examine the service communication

An advertisement from Aprisma, an IT infrastructure technology firm, shows a large photo shot of a ten-year old boy in
baseball gear sitting on the curbside of a now deserted baseball
field, waiting for his ride. The short copy at the bottom reads:
when everyone is counting on you, you need an IT infrastructure with intelligent technology that helps you to monitor and
manage the things that really matter And that is exactly what
Aprisma develops and deliverssolutions as reliable as you.
Imprinted on the picture shot is a bold headline: Whats your
technology missing? (Business Week, March 5, 2001, p. 25). A
reader can quickly interpret the photo: the boys parent is late,
and he or she also did not attend the gamemissing something
that ought to be important to every parent. It humanizes the oth1

Article 15. Services communications: from mindless tangibilization to meaningful messages


and performance episode) or from the customers standpoint,
featuring the benefit claim or service delivery as the customer
actually experiences it (consumption documentation and consumption episode). See Mittal (1999) for a fuller exposition. To
these five strategies construed specifically for services, we add
two basic strategies common to both products and services:

task and to identify communication strategies to circumvent or


manage intangibility throughout the consumer decision-making
process.

The intangibility problem


Websters New World Dictionary (1994) defines intangibility as
that which cannot be touched or grasped, is incorporeal, is impalpable. The essential meaning and nature of intangibility is
incorporeal existenceintangible entities do not have physical
bodies and do not exist in physical space; they cannot therefore,
be sensed by physical senses. Impalpability concerns understanding something in the mind (as different from physical
sensing), and is therefore not an inherent quality of intangibility, the Dictionary definition, notwithstanding. Often,
though, service advertisers communicate intangibles in such a
fashion as to make them mentally impalpable; and also more abstract rather than concrete (e.g., an insurance company promising peace of mind), more general rather than specific (e.g.
service is speedy rather than in less than 20 minutes), and
non-searchable (e.g., highly-skilled surgeons). These pitfall properties are not inevitable for intangibles (Mittal, 1999)
but absent a tangible product or tangible benefit to show, conveying the intangible service benefits and at the same time
avoiding these problem properties requires special communication savvy, the subject of this paper.

1. Direct benefit statementthe communication makes a direct


statement of the benefit, e.g. gives fresh breath or 4 percent interest rate; and
2. use of logos and icons, as symbols of the service, e.g. McDonalds golden arch.
These two latter approaches can be used within or without
the preceding, services-specific, approaches. A key question is
how to deploy this repertoire of approaches to address various
services communication tasks. As we shall see, some of the
above strategies are more appropriate for some communication
tasks and some less appropriate; moreover, the problem of intangibility is handled differently by different strategies.

Consumer decision stages and


communication tasks
A consumer moves through a sequence of stages comprising:

Service communication strategies


What is the repertoire of message content and creative approaches available to accomplish the service communication task? The academic services literature has identified
the following creative approaches: physical representation,
performance documentation, performance episode, service consumption documentation, and service consumption episode (see
George and Berry, 1981; Legg and Baker, 1987; Mittal, 1999).
Physical representation entails showing physical components of
the service delivery system to represent a service brand (e.g.
UPS vans delivering packages). Performance documentation
entails presenting objectively documented data on past performance (e.g. the punctuality record of an airline). In the performance episode strategy, the service firm depicts a typical
service delivery incidence (e.g. a Fedex employee going out of
his or her way to deliver a package to a hapless customer). Service consumption documentation requires featuring testimonials from customers about some aspect of service (e.g. show a
customer letter praising the service). Finally, service consumption episode strategy depicts a typical customer experiencing
the service (e.g. show a consumer witnessing the fast download
speed of some Web content and being thrilled with it).
Note that the last four strategies do not necessarily entail featuring any tangible components of the service delivery system.
They deploy, instead, either documentation (objectively documented benefits) or episodes (word and picture narratives of
service events). Each can be presented either from the service
companys perspective (namely, performance documentation

problem-recognition;
evoked and consideration set formation;
pre-purchase evaluation;
acquisition and use; and
post-use evaluation (Fisk, 1981).

The communication task is different at every stage, and accounting for these differences becomes particularly challenging
both because a service product is multi-faceted (Mittal and
Baker, 1998), and because many of these facets and outcomes
are intangible. Below we match the aforementioned communication strategies to different service communication tasks at
various consumer decision stages.
Problem recognition. At the problem recognition stage, the
consumer senses a problem in his/her life and looks for a solution. Advertising at this stage has to make a connection in the
consumer mind between the consumer problem and the service
category per se as its solution. For new services, problem recognition may simply entail making the consumer aware of what
the service does, and how this can be of use to the consumer, i.e.
by a direct benefit statement. Often the new service benefit,
even if it is intangible, is easily understood by consumers (e.g.
the benefits of home delivery of groceries or a high speed DSL
Internet connection). The task of problem recognition is, however, more demanding when the direct benefit of the new service is not immediately valued by target customers. These
customers need a demonstration of the second-order benefit of
the service. In the DSL example, where high speed by itself
does not draw a customer, the second-order benefit of, say,
faster online trade execution might be appealing; and this can be
2

ANNUAL EDITIONS
(which is a direct benefit strategy) should be phrased not
broadlywhich would make it general and abstractbut in a
concrete and meaningful way.

conveyed, for example, simply by a side-by-side comparison of


two customers trading online with a slow versus a fast connection, and the DSL customer delighted with the faster execution
and therefore a more favorable trade price (a consumption episode strategy). There is no need to mindlessly tangibilize the
benefit, for example, by showing, side-by-side, a cargo train
and a European bullet train, and labeling the two respectively as
your present connection and high speed Internet connectionsuch ill-advised concretization, makes the intangible
service benefit more, not less, obscure.

Pre-purchase evaluation. Basically, the issue at this stage is:


what criteria do target customers use in pre-purchase evaluation? A services end product is typically intangible, but many
components of its service delivery system are tangible. The
choice of a tangible or an intangible feature in advertising
should depend on which attributes are determinantthose
which the customer employs in evaluating an option, and on
which the brand is not at parity. Communicating an intangible
feature is more challenging, but that is no excuse for diverting
advertising to a tangible feature, if the determinant attribute in
a particular case is an intangible one (e.g. better cabin service
rather than more comfortable seats for an airline).
Now, an attribute (whether tangible or intangible) can be
communicated by linking it to relevant tangible elements of the
service delivery system; or alternatively, by linking it to even
more intangible outcomes. To illustrate, for wireless services,
freedom from dropped calls (a pervasive annoyance to customers, and consequently a key determinant attribute) can be
communicated as a tangible simply by citing the objective and
documented call drop rates (performance documentation
strategy) or by consumers testimonials of few if any calls
dropped (consumption documentation strategy). Alternatively,
the dropped calls feature can also be communicated by
linking it to a more intangible benefit, such as in you will never
annoy a sales prospect due to a dropped call. This can be communicated by showing, for example, a salesperson able to get to
speak, after months of networking, to a high level executive in
the customer firm, and then losing him in the middle of the conversation, never again to get him back (i.e. consumption episode
strategy). Likewise, although not applicable to the dropped
calls case, an intangible execution of other determinant attributes can also be communicated by a performance episode
where a service firm is shown meticulously delivering that attribute, e.g. a Fedex employee making a difficult delivery to a
hapless customer.
At least for some target audiences, such intangible executions may be more appealing than corresponding tangible execution. In and of itself, the latter strategy (of making an
intangible even more so) is not less effective. What makes an ad
ineffective is failing to diligently avoid the pitfall properties of
intangibility. Make vague claims of reliability of wireless connection (e.g. Our name stands for reliability and service), and
the intangible appeal becomes inflicted with generality and also
non-searchability. But document call-drop rate history (performance documentation strategy), or present customer testimonials of uninterrupted calls (consumption documentation
strategy) and the intangible attribute becomes specific and
searchable. Resort to a mere direct statement about never
lose out on that important sales pitch again and the bland intangible has none of the impact of a tangible benefit, and no persuasive power. Capture it, instead, in a vivid narrative of the
emotional experience of uninterrupted and successfully concluded conversation with a significant other (a consumption ep-

Evoked and consideration set placement. Once the problem is


recognized, the next task is to place the brand into the consumers evoked and consideration sets. In the case of the DSL
service, for instance, someone viewing an ad could buy into the
basic idea but then patronize a competing DSL service provider.
Advertising helps create brand awareness and brand evocation,
but this is made difficult if the brand does not have a clear identity. Brand identity is created by associating a brands name
with some sensory image, i.e. a symbol, logo, graphics, or other
visual form. For physical products, the form of the product itself, along with the associated visual forms, easily and usually
does the job. For services, symbols alone have to carry the entire burden. These symbols must at the minimum be unique in
visual form, but many services fail even on this minimum requirement (e.g. Embassy Suites stylized E is unique but
Radissons font style is not).
Uniqueness will however enable, at best, a brand identity but
not placement into consideration set. The latter would require
service differentiation which in turn requires that symbols be
connotative as well (i.e. they capture the core meaning of the
service). Merrill Lynchs bull or Travelers umbrella are often
cited as exemplary, and indeed they are both tangible and connotative. So is the equally effective (but still intangible) unique
and connotative Delta symbol for its namesake airline, or the
dab of the red paint ring for Lucent Technologies signifying energy and innovation.
Physical representation also serves brand identity but only if
the service system has unique visual form (e.g. brown vans of
UPS as opposed to indistinct service vans of most local utility
companies). In addition, if the physical system components
have connotative overtones, the brand evocation is also served
well (e.g. the networked globe icon on UPS vehicles). Absent
any uniqueness (let alone any connotativeness), physical representation (while delivering tangibilization) does nothing for
brand identity and evocation (e.g. hey, that ad which showed
black jack tables, which casino was that ad for?).
An even more potent tool for consideration set placement is
a core value proposition statement that differentiates the service
brand. For services, often the core value is intangible; its communication however, need not suffer from the intangibilitys
pitfall properties of generality or abstractness. Dreams made
realthe tagline in Agilent Technologies ads, when viewed
without the accompanying stories, suffers from generality; in
contrast, we are custodians of your financial dreams (a
Charles Schwab value proposition) is intangible but still free
from generality or abstractness. The core value proposition
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Article 15. Services communications: from mindless tangibilization to meaningful messages

Table I. Services communication tasks and recommended strategies


Consumer decision stage

Communication task

Communication strategy

Example

Problem recognition

Establish service as solution

Evoked and consideration


set placement

Service brand identity


Service evocation/differentiation

Pre-purchase evaluation

Determinant service attributes


(technical rather than functional;
reliability and assurance rather
than empathy and
responsiveness)
Performance appreciation

Direct benefit statement


Second-order benefit depiction via
consumption episode
Unique and connotative brand icons
Physical representation if unique
Value proposition: concrete and
meaningful phrasing
Performance documentation
Consumption documentation
Consumption episode featuring
determinant attributes
Performance episode
Service process visibility
Customer education via: POP
literature; Personal selling
Consumption documentation
Consumption episode

DSL: high-speed connection


DSL: Better trade price due to high-speed
order transmission
Delta symbol for Delta Airlines
UPS brown vans
Charles Schwab: Custodian of your financial
dreams
Wireless: dropped calls record
Wireless: customer testimonials
A wireless customer successfully concluding
calls
Fedex: difficult package delivery instance
Car-repair: visible service bays
Car repair: what and how charts displayed
Car mechanics debriefing the customer
Customers raving about the quality of the
service they received from a firm
A CIO enjoying a weekend worry-free since
he/she installed the advertised brand of
process monitoring IT infrastructure

Acquisition and
consumption
Post-purchase evaluation

Total experience

fore the purchase. They might well be, but they all need not be.
Logically, pre-purchase evaluation criteria come predominantly
from ones purchase goals, i.e. the benefits the consumer seeks
from a purchase. From a hair salon, for example, he/she wants
a good hairstyle. Typically, he or she does not go to a hair salon
to socialize with a smiling and courteous hair stylist, or even to
receive a memorable experience. But once he/she has chosen
a salon, and after he/she has been there, the quality of the haircut
plus the courtesy of the stylist and everything else the customer
experienced while at the salon become an input in service
quality evaluation. That is, the post-purchase evaluation takes
into account the totality of the service experience. In contrast, at
the pre-purchase evaluation stage, the consumer focuses on a
limited set of determinant service attributes.
Accordingly, pre-purchase communications should not unnecessarily burden consumers with claims of all dimensions of
service quality or depictions of a total experience, but focus
merely on determinant service attributes. Advertising should
depict a total experience (use of consumption episode strategy)
only if such an experience itself is the principal purchase goal
(e.g. as in a leisure cruise). In other situations, when purchase
goals are more limited and not experiential, pre-purchase advertising should feature only the purchase goals, which would typically entail only technical (rather than functional) quality, and
only reliability and assurance rather than empathy (or even responsiveness). In sharp contrast, post-purchase communication,
directed at retention of current customers (via such channels as
direct mail, Web site visits by registered customers, and more
directed advertising) should feature functional qualities and
total experience. Two communication strategies are especially suited for this task:

isode strategy), and the intangible becomes more powerful than


even a tangible.
Service acquisition and consumption. It is during the service
consumption stage that the customer assesses service performance. Perceived performance depends on actual performance,
but the latter is not always obvious to the service recipient.
Therefore, perception shaping is an important communication
task at this stage. One strategy, suggested in prior literature, is
to bring service work from below to above the line visibility
(Legg and Baker, 1987). For example, when car repair customers can watch the arduous work of balancing and mounting
a tire, they appreciate why they have to pay five (or eight) extra
dollars. When bringing such transparency to service work by
physical relocation is not feasible, the task is then to educate the
customer by communications. Such communications can take
the form of point-of-purchase (POP) information displays (e.g.
detailed process charts placed in customer waiting rooms of
care repair services), or personal, educational selling, (e.g. the
car mechanic debriefing the customer, reviewing the details of
the service performed). Giving the service process transparency
via physical location restructuring, POP materials, or personal
debriefingthese exemplify use of channels other than mass
media advertising. In other words, integrated marketing communications (IMC), rather than just advertising, is required for
performance appreciation.
Post-purchase evaluation. Post-purchase evaluation differs
from pre-purchase evaluation in one key respect. In the services
marketing literature, researchers have identified several dimensions of perceived service quality, such as reliability, assurance,
empathy, responsiveness, etc. (e.g. Parasuraman et al., 1988).
This literature does not imply (nor should we assume) that all of
these will be the dimensions of service quality evaluations be-

1. consumption documentationsince satisfied customers talk


about their experiences, customers live testimonials (a cus4

ANNUAL EDITIONS
nicate the intangible benefits of service just as well by steering
clear of the pitfall properties of intangibles. Making the service
benefit understood should be the goal of service communications managers, not mindless tangibilization. Mindless tangibilization draws attention away from the core benefits of the
service. Sensible tangibilization seeks to make intangibles understood by staying close to the domain of service benefits itself, and by portraying the role of the service in that domain
compellingly, by documentation and episode strategies as
argued in this paper.

tomer actually narrating on-camera) about their service experience can make an effective communication; and
2. consumption episodewhere current and recent customers
are shown experiencing the delight of the service.
These strategies were of course included also at the pre-purchase evaluation stage; the difference is that at the post-purchase evaluation stage, these approaches have to feature total
consumption experiences, centered around the functional and
empathy and responsiveness dimensions of service quality.
Table 1 summarizes these communication tasks and corresponding recommended communication strategies.

References
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tangible, Business, Vol. 36, OctoberDecember, pp. 534.
Berry, L. L. and Parasuraman, A. (1991), Marketing Services: Competing Through Quality, Free Press, New York, NY.
Day, E. (1992), Conveying service quality through advertising,
Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 6, Fall, pp. 5361.
Fisk, R. P. (1981), Toward a consumption/evaluation process model
for services, in Donnelly, J. H. and George, W. R. (Eds), Marketing of Services, American Marketing Association, Chicago, IL, pp.
1915.
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of services, Business Horizons, Vol. 24, JulyAugust, pp. 526.
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Saddle River, NJ.
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of intangibility, Journal of Service Research, Vol. 2 No. 1, pp. 98
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Summary and conclusion


If, by tangibilization, one means using a physical/material prop,
then such tangibilization can hinder rather than aid services
communication. Except physical representation (which helps
brand identity and evocation but only if unique and connotative), all other aforementioned communication strategies rely
largely on intangible, i.e. non-physical executions. Intangible
service benefits can be effectively communicated as intangibles
(i.e. without physical props), by strategies that avoid the probable but not inherent pitfall properties of intangibility, as do the
aforementioned strategies. They do it by documentation
which delivers specificity and searchability, or by narrative episodeswhich overcome abstractness and mental impalpability, as the consumer understands them well intuitively by
drawing on his/her repertoire of similar life-experiences.
The Aprisma ad is indeed a consumption episode execution; unfortunately, that consumption is drawn from a domain
entirely unrelated to the service benefit. Be depicting a ten yearold child waiting for a ride from a parent who was unable to
keep his/her priorities in personal life straight, the ad draws
attention away from the task priorities in business processes
that the prospective customers IT infrastructure might be
missing. Consequently, the ad makes the intangible Aprisma
service more, not less, obscure and mentally impalpable. The
consumption episode needed to be drawn from the relevant
slice-of-life of its customers (i.e. chief information or technology officers), experiencing the breakdown-free technology
infrastructure. Of course, a consumption episode strategy itself may not be called for, since the communication task for this
new company at this stage is perhaps problem recognition
and evoked and consideration set placement, not post-purchase positive evaluation. For these communication goals,
physical representation and performance documentation or
even performance episode strategies might be more suitable.
Aprisma and other services advertisers need to diligently delineate the exact communication task facing them, and then adopt
a matching communication strategy as described in this paper.
These strategies may or may not entail physical representation,
and they may or may not use a physical prop, but they commu-

I benefited greatly from comments from Marla R. Stafford, the


guest editor, on an earlier version of the paper.

Ban Mittal is a Professor of Marketing at Northern Kentucky University,


visiting professor at University of New South Wales, Australia, and author of Valuespace: Winning the Battle for Market Leadership (McGraw
Hill, 2001). The present paper is part of his long-standing interest in
bringing consumer understanding to improving marketing communications. He can be reached via his web site www.myvaluespace.com.

From The Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 16, No. 5, 2002, pp. 424-431. 2002 by Bamwari-Mittal. Reprinted by permission of EMERALD
Partnerships, West Yorkshire, UK.

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