Anybody who has bought a car will tell you that there are tangible points of difference which affect their decision to make a purchase. For example, there are many different models of car which have various characteristics. They may have manual or automatic transmissions, fuel injection systems, be small and versatile, designed for a family or for a couple, have four-wheel drive and also have vast differences in fuel-economy, safety, security and performance. The prospective purchaser can read reports through the motoring press, visit a showroom, sit in a car and test-drive it in order to make a comparison of these features.
In the service sector, a consumer has to deal with a completely different set of circumstances. It is just not possible to walk into a hotel reception and ask if you can ‘test-drive’ a bedroom or to turn up at an airport and ask an airline if they could take you up for a ‘test flight’! The ways in which consumers select, test and make decisions about purchases do not apply in the same way for services as they do for manufactured goods. As a result there are more pressures upon service organisations to develop a series of brand values which help to communicate to prospective consumers not just the individual personality of the organisation they might deal with, but also the service elements and characteristics which help to distinguish it from its competitors.