L48: Field Project Briefing

Good morning, everyone. Welcome back to MGA-301. Last lecture we examined retail and e-commerce services. Today, Lecture 48, is our Field Project Briefing session. I will walk you through the end-of-semester field project in detail and we will work on project proposals. [0–10 minutes: Introduction] Over the past forty-seven lectures, we have built a comprehensive services marketing toolkit. You have learned the theoretical frameworks — the 7 Ps, SERVQUAL and the Gaps Model, the Service Blueprint, the Wheel of Loyalty, yield management, the Service-Profit Chain, Bitner's Servicescape model, and many more. You have applied these frameworks to case studies, exercises, and examples from Indian and Goan service businesses. Now it is time to go into the field and apply this knowledge independently to a real service organisation. The end-of-semester field project is your opportunity to demonstrate that you can do what professional service marketing consultants do — observe, analyse, diagnose, and recommend. Today I will brief you fully on the project requirements, and we will spend time developing your project proposals. [10–40 minutes: Core Content — Project Briefing] The Field Project — Overview. You will work in groups of four. Each group will select a real service business operating in Goa. Over the remaining weeks of the semester, you will conduct a comprehensive services marketing audit of that business, culminating in a ten-minute in-class presentation and a fifteen to twenty-page written report. The project has four specific deliverables. Deliverable 1: Service Business Profile. Describe the business: what service they provide, who their target customers are, how long they have been operating, what their current market position is, and any available information on their financial performance. Include a service encounter observation — visit the business as a customer at least twice and document your observations. Deliverable 2: Services Marketing Audit. Apply a minimum of four frameworks from this course to evaluate the business's current services marketing performance. You must include: at minimum, a service blueprint (with at least ten steps and all eight structural elements), a SERVQUAL evaluation (based on your observations and any available customer reviews), a positioning analysis (including a perceptual map), and one of the following: servicescape audit, CRM evaluation, demand-capacity analysis, or service guarantee assessment. Deliverable 3: Diagnosis and Prioritisation. Based on your audit, identify the three most significant services marketing problems or opportunities facing the business. For each problem or opportunity, provide a diagnosis using the appropriate framework (for quality problems, the Gaps Model; for positioning problems, the positioning framework; for operational problems, the demand-capacity or blueprint frameworks). Prioritise the three issues in order of their importance to the business's performance. Deliverable 4: Recommendations. For each of the three prioritised issues, provide a specific, actionable recommendation. Each recommendation must be: specific enough to be implemented by the business (not vague platitudes but concrete actions); grounded in the relevant theoretical framework from the course; realistic given the business's size, resources, and capabilities; and accompanied by an implementation plan with timeline and estimated resource requirements. Choosing a suitable business: The business must be a real, operating service firm in Goa. It should be accessible to your group — you should be able to visit it at least twice, observe the service process, and ideally speak with a member of the management team. Good choices include: local restaurants, hotels, clinics, coaching centres, travel agents, government-facing service offices, banks, retail stores, or any other service business you have personal connections to. Avoid: very large multinational firms where you cannot get internal access (Taj Hotels head office analysis is not feasible; a local restaurant or mid-range hotel is feasible); online-only businesses where physical observation is not possible; businesses that have already been frequently analysed in published case studies. Grading Criteria: Quality of frameworks application — thirty percent. Quality of diagnosis and prioritisation — twenty-five percent. Quality and feasibility of recommendations — twenty-five percent. Presentation quality and clarity — twenty percent. Timeline: Project proposals due at Lecture 51. Project presentations in Lectures 56-57. Written report due one week after presentations. Now let me walk through what a good project proposal looks like. A project proposal should be one page and should include: the name and brief description of the service business chosen; a brief justification of why this business is a good choice for this project; the names of all four group members and a preliminary division of roles; and an initial hypothesis — what do you think the most significant services marketing issue for this business is, based on your preliminary knowledge? [40–55 minutes: Activity — Proposal Development] Let us use the remaining time for proposal development. Form your groups of four now. I will circulate and help each group work through their initial business selection and proposal. Key questions to discuss in your group: One: Which businesses do you have personal connections to or access to? Two: Which business has a services marketing problem that is interesting enough to analyse and that has a realistic solution? Three: Which frameworks from the course are most relevant to your chosen business — this tells you where your analysis will be strongest? Four: Can all four group members commit to visiting the business together at least once? Fifteen minutes of group discussion. Then each group briefly states their proposed business and initial hypothesis to the class. [Allow fifteen minutes. Each group states their proposal in thirty seconds.] [55–60 minutes: Summary and Assignment] Today we covered the full field project brief — deliverables, grading criteria, timeline, and guidance on business selection. The project is your opportunity to demonstrate end-to-end mastery of services marketing — from observation and audit to diagnosis and actionable recommendation. Assignment for next class: Each group submits a one-page project proposal by email before Lecture 51. Include the business name, brief description, access plan, and initial hypothesis. The next three lectures — Lectures 49, 50, and 51 — will be student case presentations (from exercises we have been building throughout the term) and integrated service marketing plan development. We will then do our project presentations in Lectures 56 and 57. See you next time. Thank you.