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LM
26,8/9 Strategic planning for marketing
library services
Samuel Olu Adeyoyin
494 Circulation Unit, Igbinedion University Library, Okada, Nigeria

Received 15 November 2004


Revised 12 March 2005 Abstract
Accepted 16 July 2005 Purpose – The paper aims to centre on marketing of library and information services and to attempt
to correlate marketing as a concept to the provision of library services.
Design/methodology/approach – The user groups are identified with library classification in the
paper. The paper also highlights library management in relation to marketing its services and
products.
Findings – In view of the social, economic and technological changes, the paper advocates a
paradigm shift from the traditional marketing system into a more vibrant and dynamic, strategic
marketing of library services/products. The paper concludes that a major marketing campaign is
necessary to increase awareness and educate the library users about available library resources. This
crusade can be further strengthened by the provision of the right service at the right time and the right
price to the right users in the right place while supported by a quality management team.
Originality/value – The paper provides useful information on the marketing of library and
information services.
Keywords Information services, Libraries, Marketing strategy, Strategic planning
Paper type Research paper

Background
Any modern economy consists of households or consumers, business enterprises, and
non-business organizations, all of which constantly interact within the context of a
dynamic environment. The interaction results in the conception, development,
production, distribution and consumption of goods and services whose major purpose
is to satisfy human needs.
Within any organization, a number of activities are necessary to generate, facilitate
and direct the flow of goods and services. The entrepreneur must acquire resources
(men, materials, money, machines and technology) and combine them in suitable
proportions. The production unit, the personnel department, the finance unit and the
accounting department, should all work towards achieving the organizational goal.
The contribution of marketing to the attainment of the enterprise objective lies in
ensuring that there is a ready and profitable market for the company’s products (i.e.
goods and services). This role includes, but is not limited to, finding a market. Finding
a market presupposes a post-production search while ensuring that there is a market is
a continuous process that precedes and outlives the production activity.

Library Management Introduction


Vol. 26 No. 8/9, 2005
pp. 494-507 Services are those separately identifiable, essentially intangible activities that provide
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0143-5124
want-satisfaction, and that are not necessarily tied to the sale of a product or another
DOI 10.1108/01435120510631783 service. In the broadest sense, product marketing and service marketing are the same.
In actual practice, however, significant differences do exist between product marketing Planning for
and service marketing. marketing
Service marketing is also worth special attention because of its scope, about half of
what we spend goes for services, and about two-thirds of non-governmental jobs are in library services
the service field. Not only are services of considerable importance in our economy
today, but also the prospects are that the service sector will continue to grow faster
than the product sector of the economy. Services generally are intangible, inseparable 495
from the seller, heterogeneous, and highly perishable, and they have a widely
fluctuating demand. Each of these distinctive characteristics has several marketing
implications.
Unfortunately, the growth in services has not been matched by service
management’s understanding or acceptance of the marketing concept. Service
organizations have been slow to adopt marketing programs and techniques that, in
product marketing, have brought satisfaction to consumers and profits to producers.
The development of a program for the marketing of services parallels that for products
but takes into account the special character of services.
Marketing of library services and products becomes imperative and must not only
be vigorously canvassed for, but also must be conscientiously executed. The fast
growing sectors of the economy of the world such as fast foods, banking, advertising
and electronics, information and communication technology got to where they are
today not because they offer free services and products, but because of their
“flexibility”, “compromise” and “borrowed-leave” attitude. The library managers
cannot remain indifferent to the economic sweep presently experienced world over.
The innocent patrons are being sympathetically victimized by refusing them the
value-added, quantitative and qualitative services which any average information
seeker can afford to pay for. This is all because we are afraid that they might be
discouraged, protest or even blackmail the librarians for causing them hardship and
attempting to deprive them of their fundamental human right to information. Joining
such argument from the “right” angle, the same applies to paying for priced or
commercial services based on the agreement.

Problems
It is observed that, despite clarion calls by the stakeholders in the field of information
provision – especially the academic librarians and researchers, through the avalanche
of information available in the literature, for the library managers to create effectively
an enabling environment through various types administrative planning, to market
library services both in quality and quantity to the users, it is apparent that while some
are making frantic efforts but being impeded by lack of funds, especially in the third
world countries, others have engaged themselves in the attitude of “siddon look”.
Experience has, however, revealed that there is yet a group among the library
managers who find it extremely incomprehensible, how marketing is applicable to
library services since most libraries is not commercially-based.
In the words of Stanton and Futrell (1987):
The growth in services has generally not being due to marketing developments in service
industries, but rather to the maturation of our economy and the rising standards of living.
Traditionally, executives in our service companies have not been marketing-oriented. They
have lagged behind sellers of products in accepting the marketing concept, and have
LM generally been slow in adopting marketing techniques. Marketing management in service
firms has not been especially creative. Innovations in service marketing have come typically
26,8/9 from product-associated companies.
We identify some of the reasons for this lack of marketing orientation. No doubt, the
intangibility of services creates more difficult marketing challenges for service sellers
than for product sellers. In many service industries, particularly professional services,
496 the sellers think of themselves as producers or creators, and not as marketers, of the
service. They are proud of their professional abilities. They do not think of themselves
as business people.
They further noted that the all-encompassing reason, however, is that top
management does not yet understand two basic things: what marketing is and/or its
importance to a company’s success. These executives seem to equate marketing with
selling, and they fail to consider other parts of the marketing system. They also do not
effectively coordinate their marketing activities. Many firms lack an executive whose
sole responsibility is marketing.
According to them, there are of course, exceptions to these negative generalizations.
Some extremely successful service firms have adopted modern marketing techniques.
The success of such organizations is traceable in large part to their marketing
orientation.
Dibb et al. (1991) observed that, in an attempt to marketing its services, one of the
strategic conditions employed by some libraries is to have units that travel to different
locations during slack periods. This innovation is called the mobile library service.
The purpose of this paper therefore, is to put the author’s shoulder on the wheel of
other writers in the field of library and information management, to elucidate those
library managers by taking form the pool of marketing concepts as treated by various
scholars and authors in the field of marketing and apply the “olive branch” which is
non-business marketing to the idea of marketing library services.

Definitions of marketing
Early definitions of marketing tended to be narrow in comparison to contemporary
ones. For example, in 1960, the Committee on Definitions of the American Marketing
Association (AMA) conceptualized marketing as: “the performance of business
activities that direct the flow of goods and services to the consumer” (Alexander, 1960).
Although this definition did reflect a more or less general consensus among marketers
at that time, it is today generally criticized for its parochialism.
In view of the criticisms that greeted the marketing definition by AMA, more
acceptable and less parochial definitions have been proposed. A noteworthy example is
that offered by Pride and Ferrel (1980). According to them:
Marketing consists of individual and organizational activities aimed at facilitating and
expediting exchanges within a set of dynamic environmental forces (Pride and Ferrel, 1980).
In spite of the obvious strength of Pride and Ferrel’s definition, Agbonifoh et al. (1998)
improved on it and according to them:
Marketing consists of individual and organizational activities designed to sense and serve the
consumer’s needs and to facilitate and expedite exchanges with a view to achieving the goals
of the individual or organization through the satisfaction of the consumer’s needs.
Marketing, as defined by Pulil Mazer, “is the delivery of standard of living to a society Planning for
as it bridges the gap between the producers and consumers” and according to the marketing
London Chartered Institute of Marketing, marketing is “the management process
responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements library services
profitably”.

Marketing concepts 497


. Marketing should be part of a society and should function along with a society.
.
Marketing is a social instrument concerned with the problems of the society.
.
Business strategy must be consistent with customer needs and perceptions.
.
Marketing concepts are based on a principle that marketing is a management
process.
.
That profit is one of the ultimate in business.

From the above, we could derive that concept of marketing revolves on three pillars
namely, marketing:
(1) is consumer-centered;
(2) is profit-centered; and
(3) is anticipating of changes through time.

Marketing concepts in relation to library services


. Marketing is consumer-centered – marketing library services should be centered
around the library clientele/customers/users.
.
Marketing is profit-centered – commercialization of library services via a priced
information system has been scholarly canvassed and adopted by some libraries
around the world. This includes some special libraries in Nigeria.
.
Marketing anticipates changes through time – since man is dynamic and change
is unchangeable, it is therefore incumbent on the library managers to formulate
policy plans in anticipation of changes in the field of information provision to
their various categories of clientele/customers/users, especially in this era of new
and emerging information and communication technology (ICT).

Classification of services as applied to library services marketing


Services can be meaningfully analyzed by using a five-category classification scheme:
(1) Type of market – the implications are very similar to those for all products.
(2) A second way to classify services is by degree of labor intensity. Offering
library services involves human labor. This manifests chiefly from acquisition
to processing and systematic organization that involves sorting, collocating and
physically shelving those books and materials. Library services are more
labor-based services. In marketing library services, we must therefore recognize
that service providers are often viewed as the service itself. Therefore,
strategies relating to selecting, training, motivating and controlling employees
are very important. However, the digital revolution of ICT in library services
LM provision has introduced another dimension into library services provision
26,8/9 especially the use of the internet.
(3) Customer contact:
.
High-contact service – in the traditional library setting, this high contact
was more prevalent because of the manual operations involved. The library
clientele must therefore be present.
498 .
Low-contact services – with the emergence of ICT, through local area
network (LAN) and wide area network (WAN), more especially through the
internet and e-mail services, the library clienteles need not be present in the
library. Low contrast service, in contrast, commonly involves actions
directed at things. Consequently, the consumer is usually not required to be
present during service delivery. The consumer’s presence may, however,
may be required to initiate or terminate the service. The appearance of the
production facilities and the interpersonal skills of actual service providers
are thus not as critical in low-contact services as they are in high-contact
services.
(4) Skill of the service provider is a fourth way to classify services. Professional
services tend to be more complex and more highly regulated than
non-professional services. Library and information personnel are information
specialists and professionals. Librarianship is highly technical and
professional, and this makes library services to be more complex like any
other professional services.
(5) Finally, the goal of the service provider is considered last whether for profit or
not. Library and its services, however, fall under non-business organization. It
should be noted that most non-business organizations provide services rather
than goods (Dibb et al., 1991).

It is quite interesting to discover that of the five-category classification scheme used by


Dibb et al. (1991), through which services can be meaningfully analyzed, four fit-in
perfectly with the provision of library services. This goes to strengthen the fact that
strategic marketing plan can be applied to library services.

Non-business marketing for library services


Since the early 1970s, it has been persistently stressed that marketing principles are
applicable to non-business organizations. For example, it is demonstrated that:
religious organizations can apply marketing techniques to increase their membership;
hospitals can serve patients better and more profitably through the application of
marketing approaches; political parties do engage in numerous marketing activities;
government can gain increased public support for their policies by relying on
marketing; and finally, charity organization can raise more funds for their activities if
only they will appeal to marketers for assistance. For those libraries established by any
of the organizations mentioned above as the parent body; it is obvious that
non-business marketing approach would serve those libraries better in their marketing
strategy towards their respective users.
Non-business marketing is described as marketing activities conducted by
individuals and organizations to achieve some goal other than ordinary business goals
of profit, market share, or return on investment. This is divided into two categories: Planning for
non-profit organization marketing and social marketing. Library services definitely marketing
come under non-profit organization.
Exchange situation exists when individuals, groups, or organizations possess library services
something that they are willing to give up in an exchange. In non-business marketing,
the objects of the exchange may not be specified in financial terms. Usually, such
exchanges are facilitated through negotiation (mutual discussion or communication of 499
terms and methods) and persuasion (convincing and prevailing on by argument). Often
negotiation and persuasion are conducted without reference to or awareness of the role
that marketing plays in transactions. We are concerned with non-business
performance of marketing activities, whether the exchange is consummated or not.
Some of the ways through which the library seeks to engage in non-business
marketing are by organizing conferences, seminars, public lectures, training,
workshops, and symposia.

Target markets
Library as a non-business organization serves many diverse groups. This is
particularly determined by the type and objectives of the library. A target public is
broadly defined as a collective of individuals who have an interest in or concern
about an organization, a product, or a social cause. The terms “target market” and
“target public” are difficult to distinguish for many non-business organizations. For
instance, an academic library has its target public as the potential and current
students, staff and university community. However, the target market of an academic
library is current students and members of academic and non-academic staff of the
university.

Determining factors in marketing


.
The nature of the market – the type of the market in which the organization is
trading in, because the type of market determines the nature of the market.
.
The type of product(s)/services.
.
The volume of business activities.
.
The type of customers – whether rich or poor.
.
The organization’s objectives.

Distinguishing services from products


The following are distinguishing characteristics of services in general, according to
Stanton (1981):
.
Intangibility. This simply means that services cannot be seen or held like any
other products.
.
Heterogeneity. This implies that service delivery changes from one place to the other.
.
Inseparability. It refers to the fact services cannot be separated from other sellers.
. Perishability. Unlike products, services are highly perishable.
.
Fluctuating channel. The marketing for many services fluctuate considerably by
seasons, days of the week and hours of the day.
LM Marketing library services cannot be treated in exactly the same way the physical
26,8/9 products of manufacturing firms are treated. It is important here to recognize the two
fundamentally different perspectives.
In marketing its services, library must define its users on one hand, and offer
services and products to meet the needs of those users satisfactorily on the other hand.
By implication, the type of library and the aims and objectives of such library
500 exclusively determines its users’ group and consequently the market. For instance, the
public library is regarded as the people’s university and the door is widely opened at
any given time to all comers from the public. Although physical buying and selling of
products do not take place in the library, it is indisputable that quantitative and
qualitative services are being offered to the numerous clienteles. This double-sided
nature of library operations brings marketing problems which are more complex than
those which normally face marketers of other physical products.
In essence, because each type of library has its own defined users’ group, there
should be slight modifications in the application of marketing to library services and
products considering the uniqueness of each of these libraries. In its quest for products
and services development, libraries must put in place information services that
correspond to the information seeking behavior of its users (Skrzeszewski and
Cubberley, 1997).
Libraries and their user groups are revealed in Table I.

Applying marketing mix to market the library services


Marketing mix according to Kotler (1988) is:
[. . .] the set up of controllable variables and their levels that a firm uses to influence the target
market.
Any variable under the control of the firm that can influence the level of customer
response is a marketing mix variable. In the general studies of marketing, there is a
conventional approach of laying emphasis on what is generally referred to as the “4 or
5 Ps” of marketing mix – product, promotion, packaging, place and price.

Product
Product refers to the services which the library generally offers to its clienteles and
prospective users. In the general sense, library services encompasses the following:
.
Loaning: charging and discharging of library materials.
.
Referral services: offering reference services to the library patrons.

Types of libraries User groups

Public All comers from general public


School Pupils, teachers, other members of staff
Academic Students, lecturers, researchers, scholars, faculty staff members
Table I. Research Research fellows, research assistants, field officers, supporting staff
Types of libraries and Special Specialists, technicians
user groups Virtual or digital (via internet) International group
.
Organization of library materials: cataloging and classification of materials. That is Planning for
giving the physical description of library materials and collocating them accordingly, marketing
that is, grouping the like materials together while the unlike materials are separated.
.
Inter-library loan: this is the method through which unavailable materials
library services
needed by the patrons are sourced and borrowed in another library.

Packaging 501
Since intangibility is one of the distinguishing characteristics of marketing, one might
not be able to see packages of library services neatly unwrapped like Lux or Joy Soap.
Libraries must make it possible for its clientele to identify the lines of services they
offer with out mistake and clearly.

Promotion
Owing to the increased level of competition (from other sources such as compact disks,
the internet, etc.) the library needs to promote the services it offers. This could be in
form of advertisement, public enlightenment, sponsorship of events, etc. It is
imperative to appreciate the present and as a matter of fact shift ground from the
library’s publicity approach of traditional book jacket display, window display and
unimpressive book exhibition that hardly communicates, to a more vibrant and
dynamic approach. The traditional approach is no longer tenable in this “global
village”. Aggressive marketing of library services is required if the significance of the
library’s contribution to the development of the intellectual world in particular and
economic in general is ever to be acknowledged, appreciated and reciprocated.

Place
This refers to the convenient locations where the patrons could conveniently obtain
various library services. This is the reason why a library needs to have network outlook.
For instance, for a university library to be able to serve the academic environment where
it belongs effectively and efficiently, LAN is crucial to its operational system. The
various faculty and departmental libraries should be properly networked to enhance
proximity to the information, avoid congestion in the main or central library. This also
ensures the convenience of the students, lecturers, researchers and faculty members.

Price
This refers to the cost outlay plus the mark-up to cover the outlay and the expected
profit. Pricing information services in the library sounds repugnant to some people, but
the economic indices world-wide clearly show that quantitative and qualitative library
services can no longer remain absolutely free. A recent survey among the Nigerian
library patrons revealed that more people are embracing the provision of library
services at a subsidized rate. However, the survey also revealed that they hate to be
bugged by the idea of full commercialization of library services (Adeyoyin, 2003).
The marketing approach that librarians need to be versatile with in order to market
effectively the library services are identified as follows:
.
Have a good knowledge of the library’s capability to offer users’ services.
.
Ability to identify the user’s needs.
.
Identify which products/services meet those needs.
LM In the context of library, marketing concept means recognizing that a library cannot
26,8/9 sell its services unless those services have been developed so as so satisfy the needs of
certain patrons of the library. According to De Saez (2002):
[. . .] marketing concepts and techniques can contribute a dynamic approach to total strategy
development for libraries and information professionals that will ensure effective
management, the achievement of goals and the creation of a confident blueprint for the future.
502
Applying non-profit marketing characteristics to marketing library
services
.
Education. Some non-profit organizations see their role as not only meeting
current needs of their customers, but also educating them in new ideas and
issues, cultural development, and social awareness. These goals may be at
conflict with maximizing revenue or audience figures. The library managers
should take note of this as the type of the library, its parent body and objectives
should determine the library’s public.
.
Multiple publics. Most non-profit organizations serve several groups or publics.
The two broad groups are donors, who may be individuals, trusts, companies,
and government bodies, and clients. Managers of public libraries especially
should understand that there is a need to satisfy both donors and clients,
complicating the marketing task. However, to succeed, both groups have to be
satisfied.
.
Measurement of success and conflicting objectives. For profit-oriented
organizations, success is measured ultimately on profitability. For non-profit
organizations, measuring success is not easy. Measuring success in library
services marketing could be difficult. Nonetheless, there have been several
approaches employed by various types of libraries to measure their customers’
satisfaction. The same methods can still be adopted.
.
Public scrutiny. While all organizations are subject to public scrutiny, public
libraries which fall under category of public sector non-profit organization are
never far from the public’s attention.. The reason is that they are publicly funded
from taxes. This gives them extra newsworthiness as all tax payers are
interested in how their money is being spent. They have to be particularly careful
that they do not become involved in controversy, which can result in bad
publicity.

Marketing strategies for service firms


There are several reasons why service firms neglected marketing in the past. Many
service businesses are small and do not use formal management or marketing
techniques. There are also service businesses that formerly believed it was
unprofessional to use marketing. Other service businesses faced so much demand
until recently that they saw no need for marketing.
In view of the complexity associated with service marketing, Grönroos (cited in
Kotler (1991)) argued that service marketing requires not only 4P traditional external
marketing but two other marketing thrusts, namely internal marketing and interactive
marketing. External marketing describes the normal work done by the company to
prepare, price, distribute, and promote the service to customers. Internal marketing Planning for
describes the work done by the company to train and motivate its internal customers, marketing
namely its customer-contact employees and supporting service personnel, to work as a
team to provide customer satisfaction. Everyone must practice a customer orientation, library services
or else a high and consistent level of service would not be forthcoming. Berry has
argued that the most important contribution the marketing department can make is to
be “exceptionally clever in getting everyone else in the organization to practice 503
marketing”.
Interactive marketing describes the employees’ skill in handling customer contact.
In service marketing, the service quality is enmeshed with the service deliverer. This is
especially true of professional services. The client judges service quality not only by its
technical quality, but also by its functional quality. Professional cannot assume that
they will satisfy the clients simply because they provide good technical services.
Therefore, the professionals have to master the skill of interactive marketing.

Managing service quality


Parasuraman et al. (1985 cited in Kotler (1991)) identified five gaps that cause
unsuccessful service delivery. They are described below:
(1) Gap between consumer and management perception. Management does not
always perceive correctly what customers want or how customers judge the
service components.
(2) Gap between management perception and service quality specifications.
Management might not set quality standards nor very clear ones; or they
might be clear but unrealistic; or they might be clear and realistic, but
management might not be fully committed to enforcing this quality level.
(3) Gap between service quality specifications and service delivery. Many factors
affect service delivery. The personnel might be poorly trained or overworked.
Their morale might be low. There might be equipment breakdowns. Those
operations typically drive for efficiency, and sometimes this runs counter to a
drive for customer satisfaction.
(4) Gap between service delivery and external communications. Consumer
expectations are affected by promises made by the service provider’s
communications.
(5) Gap between perceived service and expected service. This gap results when one or
more of the previous gaps occur. It becomes clear why service providers have a
hard time delivering the expected service quality.

The same researchers developed a list of the major determinants of service quality.
They found that consumers use basically similar criteria regardless of the type of
service. The criteria are as follows:
.
Access. The service is easy to obtain in convenient locations at convenient times
with little waiting.
.
Communication. The service is described accurately in the customer’s language.
.
Competence. The employees possess the required skill and knowledge.
.
Courtesy. The employees are friendly, respectful and considerate.
LM .
Credibility. The company and employees are trustworthy and have the
26,8/9 customer’s best interests at heart.
.
Reliability. The service is performed with consistency and accuracy.
.
Responsiveness. The employees respond quickly and creatively to customers’
requests and problems.
504 .
Security. The service is free from danger, risk or doubt.
.
Tangibles. The service tangibles correctly project the service quality.
.
Understanding/knowing the customer. The employees make an effort to
understand the customer’s needs and provide individual attention.

The roles of library management


There should be management strategy to plan and execute the marketing of library
services. The guidelines listed below are proffered to optimize the results of marketing
efforts within the library:
.
Inclusion of basic marketing functions within the marketing organizations, e.g.
establishment of corporate services sections in the public and commercial
libraries.
.
There should be top management support.
.
There should be marketing participation in key library decisions.
.
Libraries should have product orientation to complement the hitherto service
orientation.
.
The marketers should be vast in librarianship. That is, qualifications in both
marketing and librarianship should be a requisite to become a “marketer
librarian”.
. Use of external services like advertisement.
.
Marketing and other units in the library should maintain cordial relationship.
.
A record of achievement should be developed.
.
Funds should be provided.

Others that are of interest to management are:


.
encourage personal relationships with customers;
.
ensure effective internal communications;
.
ensure quick decision making;
.
allow responsive customer feedback;
.
developing, executing and controlling the annual marketing plan; and
.
ensure marketing orientation throughout the library.

Having successfully mapped out a regional information strategy for the Caribbean.
Durrant (1987) concluded that, although the systems have all been put in place and are
gradually being developed, one important factor has not been adequately recognized:
communication with the user, in terms of marketing of the information systems, their
products and services.
The decline of one-time growth industries is due to management failure rather than Planning for
market saturation, and the principal failure of management lies in the definition of their marketing
business environment in terms of products and services instead of changing markets.
Should the library managers stay glued to the traditional marketing system, the library services
inevitable tendency is to operate without vision, indeed, with blinders on. Social,
economic and technological events change the very nature of markets and their
requirements, and yet products tend to remain the same. It is high time the library 505
products/services are packaged and marketed in accordance with users’ current needs.
Finally, the provision of the right service at the right time and the right price to the
right users in the right place supported by quality management team is what effective
marketing of library services is all about.

Conclusion
Marketing in non-profit organizations requires an appreciation of the characteristics
that distinguish it from profit-oriented marketing. Many non-profit organizations are
concerned with educating the public as well as satisfying immediate customer needs,
they have to deal with multiple types of public, have difficulty in measuring success
and conflicting objectives, and are subject to close public scrutiny. Their objectives
may mean that rules that apply in the profit sector may not be relevant to their
situation.
Services are intangible dominant products that cannot be physically possessed, the
result of applying human or mechanical efforts to people or objects. They are a
growing part of the economy. Services have four distinguishing characteristics:
intangibility, inseparability of production and consumption, perishability and
heterogeneity. Because services include a diverse group of industries, classification
schemes are used to help marketers analyze their products and develop the most
appropriate marketing mix. Services can be viewed as to type of market, degree of
labor intensity, degree of customer contact, skill of the service provider, and goal of the
service provider.
When developing a marketing mix for services, several aspects deserve special
consideration. Regarding product, service offerings are often difficult for consumers to
understand and evaluate. The tangibles associated with a service may be the only
visible aspect of service, and marketers must manage these scarce tangibles with care.
Because services are often viewed in terms of the providers, service firms must
carefully select, train motivate and control employees. Service marketers are selling
long-term relationships as well as performance.
Promoting services is problematic because of their intangibility. Advertising should
stress the tangibles associated with the service or use relevant tangible object.
Customer contact personnel should be considered an important secondary audience for
advertising. Personal selling is very powerful in service firms because customers must
interact with personnel. Some forms of sales promotion, however, such as displays and
free samples, are difficult to implement. The final component of the promotion mix,
publicity, is vital to many service firms. Because customers value word-of-mouth
communications, messages should attempt to stimulate or simulate word of mouth.
Many professional service providers, however, are severely restricted in their use of
promotional activities.
LM Non-business marketing includes marketing activities conducted by individuals
26,8/9 and organizations to achieve goals other than normal business goals. Non-business
marketing uses most of the concepts and approaches applied to business situations.
The beneficiary of a non-business enterprise should be its clients, its members, or its
public at large. The goals of a non-business organization reflect its unique philosophy
or mission.
506 The marketing objective of non-business organizations is to obtain a desired
response from a target market. Developing a non-business marketing strategy consists
of defining and analyzing a target market and creating and maintaining a marketing
mix. In non-business marketing, the product is usually and idea or service. Distribution
is involved not so much with the movement of goods as with the communication of
ideas and the delivery of services, which results in a very short marketing channel.
Promotion is very important in non-business marketing, personal selling, sales
promotion, advertising, and publicity are all used to communicate ideas and inform
people about services. Price is more difficult to define in non-business marketing
because of opportunity costs and the difficulty of quantifying the values exchanged.
In a nut-shell, an in-depth marketing plan that is specifically geared to economic
development should be fashioned by the various libraries. A major marketing
campaign is necessary to increase awareness and educate the library users about
library resources while appropriate promotional materials are created. This becomes
imperative as the mandate now is to change the perceptions of the library.

References
Agbonifoh, B.A. et al. (1998), Marketing in Nigeria: Concepts, Principles and Decisions,
Afritowers, Aba.
Alexander, R.S. (1960), Committee on Marketing Definitions: A Glossary of Marketing Terms,
AMA, Chicago, IL, p. 15.
De Saez, E.E. (2002), Marketing Concepts for Libraries and Information Services, 2nd ed., Facet,
London.
Dibb, S., Simkin, L., Pride, W.M. and Ferrell, O.C. (1991), Marketing Concepts and Strategies,
Houghton-Mifflin, Boston, MA.
Durrant, F. (1987), A Regional Information System Strategy for the Caribbean to the Year 2000,
IDRC, Ottawa.
Kotler, P. (1991), Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, Implementation and Control,
7th ed., Prentice-Hall, London.
Pride, W.M. and Ferrel, O.C. (1980), Marketing: Basic Concepts and Decisions, 2nd ed.,
Houghton-Mifflin, Boston, MA, p. 7.
Stanton, W.J. and Futrell, C. (1987), Fundamentals of Marketing, international ed., McGraw-Hill,
New York, NY.

Further reading
Baker, M.J. (1997), The Marketing Book, 2nd ed., Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford.
Dibb, S. (1994), Marketing: Concepts and Strategies, 2nd ed., Houghton-Mifflin, Boston, MA.
Enis, B.M. and Cox, K.K. (1988), Marketing Classics: A Selection of Influential Articles, 6th ed.,
Allyn & Bacon, Boston, MA.
Jobber, D. (1995), Principles and Practice of Marketing, McGraw-Hill, London.
Keegan, W.J. (1999), Global Marketing Management, 6th ed., Prentice-Hall, London. Planning for
Kerin, R.A. and Peterson, R.A. (1993), Strategic Marketing Problems: Cases and Comments, marketing
6th ed., Allyn & Bacon, Boston, MA.
Littler, D. (1984), Marketing and Product Development, Philip Allan, Oxford.
library services
McDonald, M.H.B. (1990), Marketing Plans: How to Prepare Them, How to Use Them, 2nd ed.,
Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford.
Paliwoda, S.J. (1993), International Marketing, 2nd ed., Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford. 507
Weitz, B.A. and Wensley, R. (1984), Strategic Marketing: Planning, Implementation and Control,
Kent Publishing, Belmont, CA.

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