Service Marketing Management (saga)

Ba (HONS) Sports Development with Marketing.

Level 2.

Service Marketing Management.

Assignment - "The rise and rise of the Grumpies"

Student - Ben Lees.

Student No - 4410346

Content. Page.

Title page. 1

Contents. 2

Task 1. 3

Saga. 3

The Services. 3

The 50 and over Market. 6

Understanding what the Customer Wants. 7

Task 2. 9

The Need of Service Quality. 9

Saga and the Servqual 5 Gaps Model. 9

Why Should Businesses use the Gaps Model. 11

Closing the Gap. 11

Saga Closing the Gap. 13

Bibliography. 15

Task.

This section will look at the steps which the company needs to take across all the services offered, or to be offered by Saga to build mutually beneficial relationships with its customers and the importance of understanding its customers.

Saga.

The Saga group (Saga.co.uk, 2007) look to offer the provision of high quality services for the over 50s. These include holidays including cruises on there own ships, an award winning magazine, insurance and financial products as well as there own radio stations.

The look to strive to consistently uphold core Saga brand values namely trust, security, quality and understanding the needs of older people. While being an efficient, caring, progressive, profitable and responsible organization that seeks to serve the needs of there customers and not exploit them.

Saga believes that they achieve this by encouraging innovative and imaginative new business and product development that, in turn, is underpinned by good value, first class, caring customer service and excellent product quality.

The organization also believe that there future growth and effective differentiation from there competitors is dependent on them delivering the highest level of customer satisfaction at all times.

The Services.

Saga started more than 50 years ago when Sidney De Hann launched low-cost, off-peak trips to Folkestone and other British destinations.

In the following 50 years Saga Group Ltd has developed into a market leading organization bought for an amount believed to be in the region Ј1.4 billion by Charter House in 2004 (advfn.com 2004). And with sales of around Ј656 million in 2006 (The Times, 2006) and earnings of around 132 million the organization was expanding at around 24%% a year in its first two years under Charter House.

Saga offers six main services to the over 50s market they include:

 Saga Magazine.

 Saga Holidays.

 Saga Services (Insurance and Finance).

 Saga Radio.

 Saga Circles.

 Metromail

Saga strives to understand the importance of each service and the way that each service is put together. They each have specific roles within the organization not only as marketing tools but also as ways of providing the best possible standard to there customer base.

It is important for any organization to be able to understand that services must be what the customer wants and needs. Saga also offer the opportunity in many of there services of broadening there wants and needs to cover other elements of there lives.

They know that putting these services is of paramount importance and the way that they are put together will compliment all there other services.

For instance a couple in there 50s are sat in a doctors surgery reading the Saga Magazine needing a holiday they read about the offers Saga have so they contact Saga Holidays, Saga Holidays in turn advise the customer that it would be beneficial for them to take out holiday insurance. The customer then contacts Saga Services to arrange holiday insurance. Saga then asks if the couple have home insurance.... This in turn gives the couple and other members of there age group a one stop shop for a number of there everyday needs.

Saga has worked on this concept of providing easy to use services to an age group that are increasingly diverse using the following services.

Saga magazine.

The Saga Magazine is a market-leading, award-winning publication that reaches over 1.25 million readers each month selling 600,000 copies.

It is used to offer readers the advantages of the growing number of services and benefits offered by Saga.

Saga claims that the magazine is more than just a marketing tool. By providing topical and current news story's in a more mature fashion than a number of its competitors who follow the current trend of dumbing down current affairs for there readers.

Saga Holidays.

Where it all began for Saga, they have continued to serve the over 50s market. Looking to offer high quality value-for-money holidays that caters for the changing values and aspirations of what they call an increasingly sophisticated and experienced age group.

They are committed to developing holidays