4.4 The buying of services
Although there have been arguments that models of buying behaviour for goods do not apply adequately to the buying of services, no definitive models for the latter have arisen. Until they do, we need to adapt the existing goods-based models, bearing in mind the differences between goods and services, which we learnt about in Chapter 1. Remember that services sometimes compete with products in meeting the buyer's needs, for example, using a trucking firm as opposed to buying one's own truck.
Buyers of services tend to enter into long-term relationships, formal or informal, rather than make one-off or periodic purchases as they do with physical products. The advantage of this is that the marketer can develop a valuable database on the client's usage of the service. We will come back to this issue later in the unit.
It is quite apparent that services are more easily customised to the buyer's needs than goods are. Attractive though it may seem, customisation is also expensive. Standardisation is cheaper through economies of scale. Furthermore, buyers do value the consistency and speed that standardisation makes possible. The ideal is, of course, to have all the benefits of standardisation with the attractiveness of having some customisation.
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