Legal Aspects of Business in India

CASE SUMMARY

Sylvia Cooper, a business school professor was delivering an executive education seminar for 30 senior managers of a fortune 500 company. Coopers secretary sent the material that she required for the presentation on Thursday at 2pm through federal express. Cooper found that the package was missorted by federal express and had been sent to savannah, Georgia. She had a good image about FedEx and always took its example of service for excellence. Therefore, she decided to get in touch with the company herself. Even on confirming the same with the company, she did not get a satisfactory response.

Federal express supports two money back guarantees.

At the time customer notifies FedEx, you need to provide the account no if any, date of shipment, recipients name, address and zip code.

* Firstly money is given back if any package is delivered even 60secs later than 10.30 am. In order to qualify for refund one must notify either by telephone or through post within 15 calendar days from the invoice date. This will occur if FedEx is not able to provide you with proof of timely delivery of the shipment or any information reflecting the failure within 30 days. There can be one refund per package and in case of multiple package credit is given for a service failure occurring for any package in the shipment. The money back guarantee does not apply to invoice adjustment based on overcharges and those destined outside service areas. You must notify along with the invoice number the payment to which it adheres.

* Secondly, one can get the exact status within 30 minutes per package , otherwise money would be returned. Package status is defined as the most recent electronically scanned location of your package as reflected in FedEx cosmos computer system. The same time of 15 days and one refund to claim for the credit. Money back guarantee does not apply to international shipments .it is not liable for any damage whether direct, incidental, special or consequential n excess of the declared value of a shipment.

Federal express is not liable for any loss due to the following

* Default on the part of the shipper and the recipient.

* Inherent vice of the shipment.

* Violation by the shipper or the recipient of any of the terms and conditions contained in our service guide, as amended from time to time.

* Omissions of any person other than FedEx including our compliance with verbal or written delivery instructions from the shipper or recipient.

* Seal of the article broken at the time of delivery but the package retains its basic integrity any disruptions beyond our control such as weather phenomenon, strikes by the government or employees of such organizations or natural disasters.

CONCEPTS

A service is any act or performance that one party can offer to another that is essentially intangible and does not result in the ownership of anything. Its production may or may not be tied to a physical product. There are five categories of offerings that can be distinguished;

1. Pure tangible goods.

2. Tangible goods with accompanying services.

3. Hybrid.

4. Major Service with accompanying minor goods and services.

5. Pure service.

Federal express falls under the pure service category, further it does not require the clients presence and caters to both personal and business needs thus it needs to develop a marketing plan considering the above.

According to Neil Bordon, a marketing manager is a mixer of ingredients. Marketing plans usually are structured around the traditional four P's of price, place, promotion and product but when its service that is being marketed the above four don't suffice. Services have four major characteristics that greatly affect the design of marketing programs;

1. Intangibility- unlike physical products services is not tangible. To reduce uncertainty buyers will look for the evidence of the service quality. They generally draw inferences about quality from the place people equipment, communication material, symbols and price that they see. The service providers task is thus to 'manage the evidence', 'tangibilize the intangible'.

2. Inseparability- services are typically produced and consumed simultaneously. Thus provider-client interaction is a special feature of services marketing.

3. Variability- services are highly variable since they are dependent on who provides them, when and where are they provided.

4. Perishability- this is not a problem here till the demand is steady.

When service business try to develop marketing and tactical programmes around the 4 P's, one fundamental difficulty they encounter is making the 4 P's fit the nature and characteristics of their operations. The 4 P's ignore important service marketing realities;

Namely, people, physical evidence and process.

As most services are provided by people the selection, training and motivation of employees makes a huge difference in customer satisfaction. Employees should exhibit competence, a caring attitude, responsiveness, friendliness, initiative and goodwill. Certain service companies also demonstrate their service quality through physical evidence and presentation ex- a hotel. Finally service companies use different processes to deliver their service.

ELEMENTS OF THE SERVICE MARKETING MIX

In a service company like Federal Express the traditional 4 P's would primarily emphasize on:

Price: The pricing of courier services depending upon the distance between source and the destination, the package