The aim of this assessment is to encourage you to examine a sector in the service industry and analyse the service marketing issues affecting one of the organisations in that sector. You may have already identified sectors and companies of interest through your service diary.

The sectors from which you should choose are:

– Education
– Financial services
– Leisure
– Not for profit/charity
– Professional services
– Retail (excluding food retail sector)
– Telecomms (excluding mobile phones and network providers)
– Travel (excluding the airline industry)

Please note that you CANNOT select any of the following:

– The airline industry
– Food retail sector
– Telecomms retailing- mobile phones and network providers

Any work related to the above three sectors will be given a nil mark.

In Week 5 the seminar will be given over to an advisory session and discussion with your module tutor to ensure planning and progress are properly grounded, and to answer any questions you might have.

Project tasks

If your selected service industry is a broad one, you may need to narrow it by defining one competitive sector or discrete market. The sector you select for study should be UK-based, and have a defined or definable competitive structure. For example, if you choose ‘retail’ as your industry you might select ‘sporting goods’ as your competitive sector; if you choose ‘charities’ as your industry you might select ‘children’s charities’ as your competitive sector.

The elements that form this assignment are:

1. A definition of your chosen sector by size and competitive structure. If applicable, identify the major strategic grouping(s) and the one you have selected for study.
2. Your assessment of the opportunities and threats facing the sector/grouping using original and
coherent analysis based on properly referenced sources.
3. A summary of the commonalities and differences between the current service marketing strategies of your chosen sector’s ‘major players’.
4. Select ONE of the existing players (major or otherwise) and:
a identify that organisation’s key strategic service marketing issues for the next 5 years, drawing on your foregoing analysis.
b briefly demonstrate the relationship between any one of these issues and some relevant theoretical principles of services marketing, taken from any appropriate and referenced source.