Professor: Dr. Kathy Winsted
Offices:  Goldstein Academic Center in Pleasantville (PL) Rm. 121
           Graduate Center in White Plains (GC) Rm. 538
Phone Numbers:  Goldstein:   914/773-3905 (FAX 914/773-3908)
                                Graduate Center:  914/422-4158 (FAX 914/422-4184)
                                 Home office:  914/962-3029 (FAX 914/962-3029)
email address:  kwinsted@pace.edu
Web page:  http://webpage.pace.edu/kwinsted/kfw.html
Office Hours:  Monday:   11:00-1:00 (PL), 5:30-6:00 (GC)
                          Wednesday:  11:00 - 1:15 (PL), 5:30 - 5:50 (PL)
Class Session:  Monday 6:00 - 8:40
Prerequisites:  BUS 507

Texts:

• Services Marketing, Valarie Zeithaml and Mary Jo Bitner, second edition; McGraw-Hill, 2000.
• Bartenders, computer simulation case study, J. Ronald Frazer, Arbogast Publishing.
• Readings and case packet

Each graded component of the course will be evaluated on a 100 point scale, with each weighted as shown to determine a final grade.  Grades will be assigned as follows: A(93-100), A-(90-92), B+(87-89), B(83-86), B-(80-82), C+(77-79), C(70-76), F(0-69).

Course Description:

The U.S., as well as much of the world economy, is dominated by services. In the U.S., over 75% of the labor force, 70% of the GNP, 45% of an average family's budget, and 32% of exports are accounted for by services.  Yet, traditionally, most business school courses have focused on the manufacturing sector of the economy.  This course is especially designed for those students who are working in service industries or who are interested in working in the services area. Videotapes, cases, interactive exercises, analysis of service experiences, and guest speakers are used to supplement the text and to help students better understand the unique challenges of service organizations.  Cases and exercises are designed to give students some experience in wrestling with the decisions that need to be made to effectively market and manage service organizations.

Course Objectives:

• To give students a better understanding of the crucial and growing role played by services in the United States and the world economy.

• To give students an appreciation for the unique challenges inherent in developing, marketing, and delivering quality services and to provide strategies and tools for addressing these challenges.

• To give students an appreciation of the interfunctional coordination necessary to deliver quality services and to help them become more sensitive managers and consumers through increased understanding of the complexities of service design, delivery, and communication.

• To help students develop a better understanding of the marketing implications of the increasing internationalization of many service businesses and the increasing cultural diversity of customer bases.

• To foster a better understanding of the ethical issues confronting a services marketer.

• To further develop and improve students' written and oral communication skills through written projects and class participation, and to improve critical thinking skills through case analysis.

This class will be run as a discussion class. All sessions involve either a case analysis or some other type of interactive exercise. The success of the class is highly dependent on careful student preparation prior to class and active student involvement during class discussions.   It is expected that students will have read assigned chapters and cases prior to the class in which they are discussed and will have made written notes responding to questions posed for the cases. Class participation grades will be based both on quality and quantity of participation in class discussions and on attendance in class.  In addition to discussing cases and other exercises, students should be prepared to discuss personal experiences with service encounters and articles about service quality and services marketing in the popular business press.

Each student will be asked to sign up for one session at which he or she will discuss a personal experience, a business application, or a current article to help illustrate points made in the chapter and readings for that session.  (Please note that this does NOT mean presenting the material in the chapter, but rather applying the material to a specific situation.)  This presentation will be graded based on relevance to the chapter, additions to or clarification of material from the text, and quality of presentation.  Visual aids, preferably Power Point slides, are encouraged.   Each presentation should be no more than fifteen minutes long (they will be timed and cut off at fifteen minutes), with five additional minutes allotted for questions and answers.   Students are, of course, encouraged to discuss any additional articles or experiences at any class session.

When noted in the syllabus, a computer simulation game will be played in class.  This will involve forming teams in class and making decisions about the number of bartenders to hire for a bar each week after school sports events and the price to charge for drinks.  Each team will receive input about profits earned each week and will compete against other teams for maximum cumulative profit.  A one point bonus will be added on to the grade of all members of the winning team.  The case for the simulation should be purchased in the bookstore ($4.00) and read before the day on which the game is played.

This course involves three different types of graded written assignments.  Details for each assignment are outlined below and on separate pages.   All papers will be graded based on appropriate use of applicable textbook terms, responsiveness to the specifics of the assignment, presentation (including organization, appearance, grammar, punctuation, spelling, and readability), thoroughness of analysis, and demonstration of an understanding of the subject matter.  Because no exams are given in this course, these assignments, together with participation, need to demonstrate learning that has taken place in the course.  Therefore, it is very important to reflect as many of the concepts learned from the text and the readings as possible in each assignment.

Late papers will be graded based on a starting grade of 10% off per day for each day or partial day late, unless approved by the instructor prior to the class in which they are due.  Use of any work that is found to be not original will result in a grade of zero on the assignment.  The department academic honesty policy will apply to all honesty issues.

Each student will pick two of the seven cases assigned from the text (noted with an * in the schedule) to write up and hand in for grading.   Questions to be answered for each case are available on my web site.   Case analyses should be 5-10 pages long (though no minimum or maximum is required), typed, double-spaced and stapled, and should clearly identify each question being answered (it's useful to use the questions as section headers).  Be sure to thoroughly answer each question.  Grading will be based on thoroughness and on understanding of the case and of relevant concepts.   Papers are due at the end of the class session in which they are discussed.   Late case writeups will not be accepted, nor will handwritten changes or additions made during class discussion.

Any student wishing to write a third case may do so and the best two grades will be used.  (Clearly, this option is not available to someone not handing in any cases before the last two which are due.)  Anyone not handing in two cases by the date the last case is due will receive a zero for the one or two cases missing.  All students not selecting to write up a particular case should still write notes for class discussion and be prepared to state and defend a recommended course of action.

In lieu of writing up a case analysis (or as a third paper to improve a grade), any student may choose to write up a case based on one of his or her own service encounters.  For this option, the written work should include a case that describes a situation that links well to one of more of the text chapters, a decision to be made with alternative possible courses of action, at least five questions that link to text material, and a suggested answer for each of the questions.

Each student should record experiences from 20-25 service encounters using the service encounter journal format included at the end of the syllabus.   It is crucial that you record your entry on the day you experienced the encounter and that you start as soon as possible. You can create a template on your computer and sit down each night to analyze service encounters of the day or you can carry a blank pad around with you and record your experiences while on the go.  Either way, be sure to record as much detail as you can on the same day as you have your encounter and present the encounters all together when due in a consistent, neat, typed volume with dates for each encounter.   In the open-ended question at the end of the suggested format, be sure to discuss how any of the concepts covered in class reading or discussion might apply to your experience.  After all the material has been covered, you can go back and add in concepts as appropriate for earlier encounters.   Please highlight text concepts and terms in bold type in your discussion and double space all entries.   If you remember any particularly good or bad service encounters prior to the beginning of class, you may also include two or three of these in your journal.

By October 15, pick your best service encounter experience and your worst service encounter experience (so far) and write a letter to the company which provided each.  The letter to the company providing the best experience should thank the company and detail why the experience was so satisfying to you, encouraging them to keep up the good work.  The letter to the company providing the worst experience should include details of what caused the experience to be so negative for you and suggestions for how the company could serve its customers better.  Be sure to include your name and address.  Most companies will respond.

On the date due, you should turn in a report containing 1)  all of your service encounter journal entries, typed, double-spaced, 2) an analysis of your best and your worst encounter along and the cause for your appraisal, along with the letters you sent and any responses, and 3) a brief (5-10 pages typed, double-spaced) summary analysis discussing and analyzing your experiences and your reactions to the encounters you detailed as a group. Your analysis should include concepts discussed in class and in assigned readings (please include these in bold type).  You should also be prepared to discuss your best encounter and your worst encounter in class (including an explanation of why you selected each as the best or worst) the day the journals are due.

Each student will interview a manager or managers (e.g., chief operating officer, president, general manager, service quality manager, director of marketing) and a customer service person or persons in a service business.  Students who currently work for service companies may wish to analyze their own companies, but any service company can be chosen. Based on these interviews and any other data gathered, each student will discuss the service quality and marketing strategies of the company.  Any differences in perceptions between managers and customer service personnel should be discussed and analyzed.  Papers should be 10-20 pages in length (though there is no required minimum or maximum), typed, double-spaced, and should discuss as many of the topics covered in class and in the assigned reading as possible (highlight text terms and concepts in bold throughout).

This paper can be considered as a take home final to pull together all of the material learned in the course and apply it to a real world case. Headings and subheads should be used throughout the report to clearly divide up the content (these will probably closely resemble the chapter headings in the text) and appendices can be used for any detail that doesn't fit well within the body of the paper (these should include questions asked, blueprinting, positioning maps, company data and perhaps other material).  Each student will have between five and ten minutes to present the most interesting findings of the interview on the last day of class.

 Marketing 654 home page

 Prof. Winsted's home page