8. Explain the distinction between core, facilitating, and enhancing services. Give several examples of each relative to services that you have used recently.

For decision making purpose it is essential to recognize the basic educational package as consisting of three elements. There are:

The Core Service

The Facilitating Service

The supporting Service

The core service is the reason for being in the market. An institution exists because it equips people with skills and abilities in shaping their careers. Faculty expertise and the accumulated experience at the institution represent the core resource for supplying this benefit.

However, in order to make it possible for students to avail these services, additional services are required. A registration and admission service, class schedules, counseling service enabling the students make relevant specialization programmes offered, and library facility are required so that the students are facilitated in deriving the benefits of the core service ie: The Learning. These services are called the facilitating services. It is important for the planners to realize that if the facilitating services are not adequately provided, the core benefit cannot be consumed in full.

Sometimes tangible goods are also required to avail the benefit of the core service. Course material, in the form of books and prepared course notes, instruction manuals, computers, class rooms class equipments and infrastructure are the examples of facilitating goods that help access the core service benefit.

The third element of service that goes to make the basic service package is the supporting services. Like facilitating services, these are also auxiliary to the core benefit but their objectives does not lie in facilitating the use of core service rather they are used to enhance the value of the core service benefit and to differentiate the service offer from other comparable offers by others institutions.

9. How can positioning maps help managers better understand and respond to competitive dynamics?

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10. Why does consumer perception of risk constitute an important aspect in selecting, purchasing, and using services? How can firms reduce consumer risk perceptions?

Consumers are known to rely on risk-reduction strategies to reduce perceived risks when the purchase decision is very important but the information available to them is incomplete. Roselius (1971) describes a risk-reduction strategy as a tool used by a seller or a consumer to reduce the consumer’s perceived risk. He identifies 11 such strategies: endorsements, brand loyalty, brand image, private testing, store image, free samples, money-back guarantees, government testing, shopping, expensive models, and word-of-mouth communications. Other studies also indicate such strategies as extensive search for more information (Akaah and Korgaonkar 1988), endorsement (Schiffman and Kanuk 1998), purchase of a cheaper brand, special offers, and use of information on the package or consumer magazine

Understanding purchasing and consumption behaviour is a key challenge for marketers. Consumer behaviour, in its broadest sense, is concerned with understanding how purchase decisions are made and how products or services are consumed or experienced.

Some purchase decisions involve long, detailed processes that include extensive information search to select between competing alternatives.[6] Other purchase decisions, such as impulse buys, are made almost instanteously with little or no investment of time or effort in information search.

Some purchase decisions are made by groups (such as families, households or businesses) while others are made by individuals. It is customary to think about the types of decision roles; such as (a) The Initiator - the person who proposes a brand for consideration; (b) The Influencer- someone who recommends a given brand; (c) The Decider- the person who makes the ultimate purchase decision; (e) The Purchaser - the one who orders or physically buys it; (f) The User - the person who uses or consumes the product.[7] All of the decision roles are normally performed, but not always by the same individual.