Services Marketing

Chapter 28 : Professional Services Marketing - (IT Services, Consultancy, Healthcare, Advertising & Retailing Industries)

IT Industry

Evolution of IT Services
Market Segmentation Market Strategy

Marketing Mix

Product Place
Price Promotion People Process Physical Evidence

IT Industry in India

Challenges before the Indian IT industry

Section Summary - IT Services

The IT industry needs to provide quality customer service and maximize customer satisfaction at the lowest delivery cost. It is an economy-dependent industry and is exclusively knowledge-based.The IT industry in India is one of the major contributors to the country's economy. The growth of the IT industry in India has supported the birth and development of ITES (IT Enabled Services) sector in the country.

The rapid pace of innovations in technology in the areas of telecommunications, software and related fields began to redefine the way the IT industry operated. The market segmentation of the IT industry can be done on the basis of geographic locations, turnover of the customer companies, requirements of the specific groups of the customers, categorization of industrial and non-industrial users, etc.

As major portion of IT solutions are targeted at the corporate sector, segmentation is generally corporate-centric. The fast and continuous product/service development, adoption of the right processes, competitive pricing of products/services and promotion of these along with recruiting and training the right people, are very important in the IT industry.

Shortfall of manpower, guarding against commoditization and the problems posed by the anti-outsourcing policy of USA and UK are among the challenges faced by the industry. Focusing on generating intellectual property, encouraging strategic acquisitions and alliances, improving the quality of business with a focus on developing domain consulting, carving niche markets etc. are some ways to combat the challenges.

The industry should also try to increase its presence in new service lines such as Packaged Software Support and Installation, IT consulting, Network infrastructure management, Systems integration, IS outsourcing, IT Training and Education, Hardware support and Installation, and Network consulting and integration etc. It needs to penetrate the under- exploited verticals like retail, telecom service providers and healthcare, which are believed to be the future of IT services.

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