Amazon and Waterstones - their approaches to services

GCSE: Business Studies

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We are going to use the servuction system framework conceptualized by Pierre Eiglier and Eric Langeard, which was expanded by Christopher Lovelock in his book in contrasting the approaches of services provided by the two retailers.

This framework consists of three major stages:

1- Service operation,
2- Service delivery, and
3- Other contact points.


Waterstones:

Waterstones is high contact services retailer, which means that the customer is directly exposed to the services provided by the store. Which means that the service is delivered once the customer physically comes to the store. So the question here is, how does waterstones make this experience an appealing one for the customers in terms of both the physical environment and their interaction with the personals providing the service?
• Service operation and service delivery systems:
In a high contact service retailer, these two systems are overlapping and have visible and invisible elements. A good example of the invisible elements at waterstones would be their book ordering system. The customer who enters a Waterston bookshop would not know when do they order their books? From where do they get it? Who is their retail buyer? This part of their operation is invisible to customer and has little to do with him unless they do their job wrong and affect the customer directly by not having the book he requested because it sold out or because they do not sell it in waterstones.
So unless something goes wrong backstage, the customer will not pay attention to the invisible services that go on there. What the customer notice sharply in high contact service like water stones is the visible part which includes the interiors and exterior facilities, the equipments used, the display of the product, the prices and the service people in other words the environment that surrounds the store, and this area is what a high contact retailer is more focused on.
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