The thing that all product manufacturer desire is able to sell the product. Without selling their products, the economic wheel in the company will not be running. If there is output, it should be there is input as well.

However, the problem is how the producers can sell their products well? How to raise consumers’ interest to products?

Offer. Yup, Offer should be made. How good does any product made if it is not supported with a good offer, consumers will never be interested. Good offer is a bidding that provides ‘adding value’ to the products that are sold. Let’s look flashback for a moment; people will not be interested in Domino Pizza if the company does not provide adding value for the pizza. The Domino Pizza’s ingeniousness is to promote the adding value of Pizza with a powerful campaign sentence or Tag Line.

Tag line is a written sentence that always accompanies the name of the product being promoted. To be able to sell in a quick time as possible, make a powerful tag line. Powerful Tag Line will attract the consumer’s attention, so consumers decide to buy the products. Tag line should be a sensational offer and irresistible, it is not the reality of the product.

For example, let’s see the marketing campaign of Domino Pizza: Pizza Hot and Fresh to Your Door in thirty minutes or Less or it's Free, Domino Pizza. "With the campaign

Domino Pizza became very popular. People who are hunger will think about the pizza and order it. In fact, how bad or good is its taste, people will always buying it.

Mark Joyner, in his book ‘The Irresistible Offer’, calls the Domino Pizza’s ad tag line as the most powerful marketing campaign over time. This powerful advertisement has make Domino Pizza grow rapidly. In 2004, the company is growing from 1 store to be 7,000 stores, with 4 billion dollars turnover. Strength tag line was greater than the product name.

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What is the most important in marketing strategy, service or caring? This is a case study on 'Caring' at the Mayo Clinic.

Since mid-October to early November I went to the United States. I was there to do general check-up at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, United States, from 20 to 24 October. I feel amazed with the place, how the process is supported by technology and human (process, people, technology / PPT) to make the process lasts horizontal.

This case study of marketing strategy at Mayo clinic is like this. There is a coordinator doctors named Salma Iftikhar, MD, after I met him, he then entry my entire medical records to the computer. Then he determines what tests should be conducted and also the specialist doctor who I should meet. Every time a test or consultation is conducted, the results can be directly seen on the computer. So that all doctors who treat me (5 doctors) can directly view the data. Their Comments can also be typed into the computer.

Thus, the process is very efficient for the matter of time. Everything can be done in parallel. Although the doctors have never met each other, they do good Team work. You can see how sophisticated technology and competent people are able to make the process progress quickly.

So, how do I check the results? In fact, my 100% healthy, though already exposed to diabetes for 24 years. Of course, I'm happy to hear the results from the Mayo Clinic. Its reputation that has spread widely has make patients from all over the world to come here. For example, the deceased King Hussein bin Talal of Jordan also been treated at the Mayo Clinic. He spent about 6 months for treatment of cancer. However, there have been severe, he finally returned to Jordan and died.

Interestingly, I also see some Saudi Arabian Airlines when landed at the small Rochester airport. It is chartered flight, which brought the wealthiest people in the world that comes from the Middle East. Actually, Mayo Clinic has never use ads for promoting himself. These institutions do not even have a marketing staff until 1986. And from 1986 until 1992, the marketing department only consists of 1 person!

When people learn Service from the hotel, now they must learn Caring from the hospital business, such as the Mayo Clinic. As said by Leonard L. Berry and Kent D. Seltman in the book titled Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic, customers of health institutional such as Mayo Clinic have different characteristics than other industries. In the hospital business, the customer alias patients are so sick in a very oppressive condition. Customers are not only stopping by just like at the store, but they even stay in the place.

Then, the service to customers in the hospital business must be very personal; not only the health conditions that should be considered, but also factors such as age, mental status, personality, preferences, education, family situation, and financial constraints also must be considered. And that is not less important, if the customer is in the wrong handling, consequently, can be fatal.

You can see that in handling customer here is not just a normal service, but it should really be taken and treated as a Caring. No wonder if the both authors, Berry and Seltman, stated that the Mayo Clinic is "one of the world's Most Admired Service Organizations."

Dr. William J. Mayo, one of the founders of Mayo Clinic, said in 1910 that "The best interest of the Patient is the only interest to be considered." According to him, the patient is not like the train, which can be repaired its parts separately. Patients must be checked and treated as whole, as human beings. Dr. Mayo is believed that a medical specialist should work as part of a unit of unity when dealing with patients.

The doctors at the Mayo Clinic are indeed very concern about the patient. They, themselves who pick out the patients and bring them to the practice room, not the nurse. They are all friendly just like the patients own friends. Human resources are supported by sophisticated technology. Some of the technologies to diagnose patients are developed by IBM, a company that has a development and manufacturing facilities in Rochester.

So, to deal with the customers wholeheartedly, Mayo Clinic is able to integrate the process, people, and technology (PPT) yesterday. This is the key strategy to success in doing Caring in the era of New Wave Marketing.

Source: The story of Hermawan Kartajaya as written on Kompas.

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"Expanding Services dominate the world economy as never before, and nothing stands still." As said by Prof. Christopher Lovelock and Prof. Jochen Wirtz. They both stressed the importance in marketing strategy is the role of service in the today’s business world.

Service is the second element of Market Value to win the heart share, in addition to brand and process. The definition of this service not just a after-sales service, pre-sale service, or during the sales-service. The service also can not talk about a toll-free phone number for customers, maintenance problems, or customer service.


For me, service is the value of a company Enhancer. Service is the paradigm of a company to create lasting value for customers through product ( "p" small) and services ( "s" small). So, here Services Service refers to the "S" large, not "s" small. This is the answer to Peter Drucker’s question, the management expert, "What business are you really in?" The only answer to the question is, "We are in Service Business!" So, there is only one business category, namely Business Services.

Whether the company is running on the field of restaurants, hotels, manufacturing or shoes, the only category for the entire business should be only the Business Services. To become a true Service Company, a company must continuously improve products and services (the "p" and "s" small). To create a lasting value and build relationships with customers, what is offered by the company must provide a constant value to customers.

Then, for the implementation of day-to-day operational activities, is known as the concept of Service Quality (ServQual). This concept is introduced by A. Parasuraman, Leonard L. Berry, and Valarie A. Zeithaml to analyze the extent to which the service is provided.

ServQual consists of five elements, namely Reliability, Assurance, tangible, Empathy, and Responsiveness, commonly abbreviated as RATER. In the research, they found that the combined dimensions Reliability is considered as the most important elements by customers, followed by Responsiveness, Assurance, Empathy, and tangible. If the five elements are met, then the customers will be satisfied. This is the basic concept of customer satisfaction.

After this RATER concept, there is a concept that is called the Experience Economy, introduced by Joseph Pine and James Gilmore. Here, companies is not only perform excellent service, but also must be able to provide experience (stage experiences). In this Experience Economy, the customer should be able to feel the sensation (customer sensation), not just satisfied.

For the last level of service, the company must be able to make the transformation for the customers. Customers served personally, one by one. Therefore, companies must be able to provide solutions for customers, not just the satisfaction or sensation (customer solution). That is little thing about the service in the era of Legacy Marketing.

However, in the era of New Wave Marketing, the term service is not appropriate anymore, but Caring. For me, service is taken for granted, it is something that should exist. All the companies have done so. All customers have also hope for it. It is not something extraordinary anymore.

Caring is beyond service. Caring is not just a service that relies on RATER or experience only. However, how marketer is really considering the customers as a human. So, for Service we learn from Hospitality business, for Caring we learn from the hospital business. This is the difference. In the Hospitality industry, if we are not doing a good service, as consequences customers will not feel satisfied and may not be loyal to us. However, in the hospital industry, if we do not do the service well, we bet on the patients’ life.

With this perspective, New Wave Marketers will surely consider the customers with wholeheartedly. Each person will attempt to be the "doctor" and "nurse" for customers. And that is not less important, the company will build itself into a good service organization just like a hospital. By Caring, customers will not only feel satisfied, but can also be a "new man" like a patient who just completed the treatment.

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