toIncreaseProductivity(看看消费者提高生产力).docx

管理学院 营销1001 3100806022 赵潮 (1~24)
May 1979

Look to Consumers to Increase Productivity
by Christopher H. Lovelock and Robert F. Young

When productivity is a problem in manufacturing, managers turn to the R&D department or operations for help. In services, however, especially ones where there is a lot of contact with the customer, such in-house groups cannot by themselves improve productivity. Because services involve the customer in production, are labor intensive, and are time-bound, consumer behavior itself is critical. Increasing productivity, then, becomes a matter of changing consumer behavior and expectations, and that depends on enlisting consumer acceptance of the change. The authors describe five instances where managers have been less successful than they might in improving productivity in services because they did not take the needs of consumers into account. Then, drawing lessons from these experiences, they discuss three marketing strategies managers can employ in influencing consumers to become a part of the service process itself.
Most people agree that low productivity is a major contributor to inflation. Lagging productivity gains are particularly a problem for the service sector of the economy, which now accounts for close to two-thirds of the GNP in the United States.
Low productivity afflicts all three categories of service organizations—for profit, public, and nonprofit. In private companies, managers worry about their ability to maintain profits, yet fear that passing on higher costs in the form of higher prices might drive away consumers. Many public agencies find themselves with rising deficits at a time when taxpayers are angrily demanding tax cuts; yet a strategy of service cutbacks could have serious consequences for the welfare of disadvantaged citizens and the quality of life in general. Some nonprofit organizations that have relied unrealistically on increased donations or higher user charges have been hit particularly hard, some even to the point of collapse.
People usually think that improving productivity is a task for the R&D department, for the finance committee, or for operations and personnel management. Economists tell us that the three ways to increase productivity are (1) to improve the quality of the labor force, (2) to invest in more efficient capital equipment, and (3) to automate tasks previously undertaken by labor.
In this article, we are going to argue that there is a fourth component to improving productivity in service industries—that is, to change the ways consumers interact with service producers. This is a task that marketing—the art of demand management—can tackle best. Service managers can use marketing tools to encourage consumers to modify their behavior so that services can be delivered in a more productive and economically efficient manner. Our primary focus will be on what Richard B. Chase has termed “high contact” service systems, where there is a high level of interaction between service producers and their customers.1
One can divide services into two broad categories: those that do something for consumers themselves—such as transporting them to distant locations, cutting their hair, and healing their bodies; and those that do something for consumers’ possessions—such as transporting their mail, cutting their grass, and repairing their cars. The former, of course, involve a higher level of personal contact than the latter, but consumer behavior is important in both instances, and we will consider both here. Understanding consumer behavior is the first step in determining how to change it.
Impact of Consumer on Services
Why is consumer behavior a particularly critical factor for productivity gains in the service sector of the economy? Three basic reasons come to mind.
First, service industries typically involve the consumer in the production process. A haircut requires you to sit in the barber’s chair; a stay at a hotel requires that you check in and enter your room in person; to mail a letter requires that you address, stamp, and deposit it. If you fail to complete your bank withdrawal slip correctly and argue with the teller, then you will slow down the service and delay other customers as well.
Second, service industries are typically labor intensive, with the service being part and parcel of the overall “product” being purchased. Sometimes, though, consumers can do some of the work themselves, replacing all or part of that previously done by the service employee. Consumers now serve themselves at buffets in restaurants and dial long-distance telephone calls directly instead of going through the operator.
Third, a service industry’s product tends to be time-bound: it cannot be stockpiled. Thus the opportunity to sell an empty seat on the 9:00 p.m. flight to Boston is lost once the aircraft takes off. Conversely, theatergoers turned away by “house full” signs cannot be relied on to wait for the next available show. Because of the time-bound nature of service, managers place a heavy emphasis on capacity utilization. The productivity goal is to smooth the peaks and valleys of demand to avoid both excess demand (which cannot be satisfied) and excess capacity (which represents unproductive use of resources).2
In services where there is a great deal of personal contact, managers can increase productivity by changing procedures at point of delivery. But these changes, such as replacing a bank teller or a waiter with machines, directly affect consumers, and their acceptance of the change cannot be assumed.
Sometimes, as Chase points out, the “technical core” or “back room operations” of a service can be separated from the personal service aspect. In recent years, many of the productivity gains made by service organizations have been achieved within the technical core. Computers now handle accounting procedures and hotel/airline reservation systems, larger, faster, and more efficient aircraft fly more passengers, and partially automated mail-handling procedures speed up postal services.
But changes in the technical core may still affect consumers, requiring them to accept changes in bank statement formats, include ZIP codes when addressing mail, or accustom themselves to computer-generated reservation confirmations for seats on new kinds of aircraft. While many of these innovations offer benefits to customers—such as greater accuracy, faster service, more comfortable flights—service managers cannot take consumers’ acceptance of change for granted.
Five Cautionary Tales
In our experience, attempts to improve productivity in service industries all too often demonstrate a lack of sensitivity to consumer needs and concerns. Consider the following situations:
In the early 1970s, the Universal Product Code made its appearance. By 1978, it appeared on some 170 billion packages. Yet it is estimated that only 2 billion of those packages actually passed through scanners. Less than 1% of U.S. supermarkets have installed registers that can read the code, in part because consumers distrust them.
Between 1967 and 1974, the British Post Office introduced sophisticated alphanumeric postal codes. These identify mailing addresses down to a specific city block or even to a single dwelling. But a majority of Great Britain’s consumers are still not bothering to include these “postcodes” when addressing their mail.
Though many banks have installed automatic tellers, some of their customers are refusing to use them. As a “once bitten” consumer reports: “Well, I tried that machine just once, and it ate my card. The card came back in the mail, but I didn’t bother using it again.”
In an effort to reduce crowding on its trains during the rush hour, Boston’s transit system introduced “Dime Time,” which offered a 60% discount on travel between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. But because most consumers must travel during rush hours, Dime Time had only a modest impact on travel patterns and was finally abandoned as too costly.
Despite the fact that self-service gas stations are quicker and cheaper, many people express a dislike for them. “I’m not going to slosh around in gas to save a penny” was a typical response to a recent research study.
The common thread linking these attempts by five major service industries to improve productivity is that consumers resisted the change, and the anticipated gains have yet to be fully achieved. In most instances, management has scaled down its expectations and has even abandoned some specific efforts for the time being. Let us look briefly at each situation in turn, and then consider what can be learned from them.
Universal product code
When they first introduced the concept in the early 1970s, marketers of the Universal Product Code had high hopes. They expected it to reduce labor costs, eliminate errors, and provide better information for retail management. In 1973, the UPC symbols began appearing on thousands of mass-merchandized consumer items. Why has so little progress been made in the past five years? Equipment costs are one reason, union resistance a second, and consumer opposition a third.
Some supermarket executives now concede that they did a poor job of preparing the public for the scanners. “Consumer groups raked us over the coals,” admitted a senior executive of Giant Stores, “because we didn’t bring them into the decision-making process two or three years earlier.”3
Consumers’ concerns centered around the fact that items would no longer be price marked (a potential source of labor cost savings for food stores). Consumer organizations expressed fears that, if items were not individually marked, surreptitious price hikes would result. In response to lobbying, six states—including California and New York—have passed laws forcing stores to retain item pricing.
Nevertheless, recent experience in those stores that have UPC scanners suggests that consumer reception for the new technology has been generally positive. Customers have accepted the clear price labeling on the shelves as a substitute for item marking (where it is not mandated by law), and like the faster checkout and itemized receipts.
The future of the UPC is now beginning to look a little brighter. Equipment costs have recently been cut and union opposition has eased. But any retailer who hopes to take advantage of this innovation will have to respond to consumers’ concerns and make sure that they understand the new checkout procedures as well as the benefits of the system.
Postal codes
Several years ago, Great Britain completed introduction of a sophisticated postcode designed to improve productivity through major advances in automated mail handling. In most developed countries postal codes, like the U.S. ZIP code, are limited to the “outward sort” at the origin sorting office. From there mail is directed to a specific destination sorting office where the “inward sort” into letter carriers’ routes is done manually. By contrast, the British codes allow for a mechanized inward sort as well, which breaks down the incoming letters according to particular buildings or groups of houses on a mail-delivery route.
Conceptually, the system is brilliant, and the assignment of the codes represents a triumph of operations research. But consider the nature of the codes themselves. A typical British code looks like this: PL20 6EG; the first half of the code represents the outward sort and the second, the inward sort.
Now we come to the marketing problem. There are 1.5 million postcodes in Britain. People find it hard to remember the alphanumeric combinations; and since there are 114 postcode directories nationwide, there is no ready means of finding out a complete code for a specific address unless one is responding to an incoming letter that already includes it as part of the return address. Moreover, delays in implementation of the program have left people skeptical about its value. While many Britons, not surprisingly, resist using these postcodes, U.S. citizens now almost universally use the simpler ZIP code.
Of course, the United Kingdom has experienced other setbacks associated with mail mechanization, including machine problems and union resistance; yet the fact remains that the Post Office can never achieve full productivity savings until mail users cooperate by including postcodes when addressing letters. And the needed cooperation will be that much harder to obtain because the original design was poor from a user’s perspective and also because consumers perceive a lack of commitment to this program by the Post Office.
But perhaps a lesson has been learned. Since the mid-1970s, the British Post Office has adopted a much stronger marketing orientation, which accounts for some of its success in running all major facets of the service—including mail—in the black for the past three years.
Recently, the U.S. Postal Service announced its intention to add another four numerals to each ZIP code to facilitate inbound sorting. The numerals avoid the complications imposed by alphanumeric combinations, but consumers will still have to remember nine-digit codes. How the Postal Service markets the enlarged ZIP codes will be an important determinant of the extent to which consumers will use them.
Automatic bank tellers
The American Productivity Center has singled out banking as a particularly poor productivity performer. One strategy for improving this situation is to replace human tellers with machines for routine transactions.
In 1967, 24-hour cash dispensing machines were first installed in British banks; by 1969, the innovation had spread to the United States. In the early 1970s, a few banks began to experiment with automatic teller machines (ATMs) capable of performing the same range of transactions as a human teller.
A growing number of banks are now using ATMs but with varying degrees of success. Some consumers resist the machines because they represent a new and strange approach to banking, others because the machines cannot replace the human contact tellers provide. The greatest success in introducing ATMs is enjoyed by banks that invest time and effort to develop carefully thought-out introductory programs. Typically, these programs emphasize deployment of specially trained staff to help customers learn how to use the machines and assist them if they have any problems.
In addition to personal selling, another important factor in consumer acceptance has proved to be the design of the machines. Some ATMs swallow the customer’s magnetically coded card at the beginning of the transaction, returning it when all is completed. If a customer punches in the wrong personal identification code more than a predefined number of times (typically three), then the machine retains the card as a security measure. Sometimes, ATMs malfunction and refuse to return valid cards, which is very disconcerting to consumers, especially ones who are new to the ATM concept