SUSAN LEE, SERVICE CONSUMER
Synopsis
The case follows a young business school student from morning to late afternoon as she
uses a wide array of services during the course of a busy day.
Teaching Objectives
• Get students to recognize and discuss how many services they use routinely in the
course of their daily lives
• Examine the needs met by specific personal services
• Identify when alternative goods, services, or self-service could meet the same
needs
Study Questions
1. Identify each of the services that Susan Lee has used or is planning to use. What
needs is she attempting to satisfy in each instance?
2. In each case, are there any alternative goods or services (including self-service)
that could solve her need?
3. What similarities and differences are there between the dry-cleaning store and the
hair salon? What could each learn from studying the other?
Analysis
1. Identify each of the services that Susan Lee has used or is planning to use. What
needs is she attempting to satisfy in each instance?
The list of services Susan consumes is quite extensive as she attempts to satisfy many
different needs during the course of her day. These services include:
o Internet (information about the weather)
o Mailing a letter (communication with another party)
o Bus (transportation);
o Business school (self-improvement and enhancement of future employment
opportunities)
o Lunch and a latte (eliminating hunger and thirst – in addition to getting a caffeine
buzz)
o Banking (convenient access to her monetary assets)
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© 2005 by Christopher H. Lovelock
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o Telephoning (confirm hair appointment)
o Hairdresser (improve personal appearance through cleaning, styling and
grooming; enhance personal hygiene)
o Dry cleaners (maintenance of physical possessions; improve personal appearance)
o Picking up mail (information from new and current service providers)
o Insurance payment (protect assets)
o Planned eye exam (maintain effective vision and eye health)
o Dinner delivery (convenient reduction of hunger for self and room-mates)
2. What alternative goods or services (including self-service) could solve her need in
each instance?
• Internet weather forecast: Accessing radio, TV or newspaper reports on the
weather; owning a thermometer and barometer, or physically observing the
weather herself.
• Mailing a letter: telephoning, faxing or e-mailing her information or visiting the
other party in person.
• Bus: walking, bicycling, carpooling with a friend, buying a car or motorcycle and
driving herself, or taking a taxi.
• Business school: taking courses over the Web or via television; buying books
and/or CDs/tapes for self-study; enrolling in a correspondence course.
• Lunch and a latte: choosing alternative food and beverage vendors in the Student
Union; walking to an outside restaurant, bringing her own lunch from home.
• Telephoning: use payphone instead of cell phone, make personal visit, possibly
email; borrow friend’s phone.
• Banking: interacting with a teller at one of her bank’s branches; using an
alternative financial intermediary such as a post office savings account (if offered
in her country); keeping her money hidden under her mattress at home.
• Hairdresser: cutting and washing her hair herself (or getting a friend/family
member to do it); paying a service provider come to her apartment do the work;
letting her hair grow into a new style
• Dry cleaners: Using a self-service machine in a laundromat; washing, drying and
cleaning her clothes at home (depending on the specific fabrics); buying new
clothes
• Picking up mail: Receiving the information from service providers by visiting
their sites or communicating with them via fax, email or telephone.
• Insurance: Bearing the risk herself
• Planned eye exam for new contacts: No real alternative to visiting a trained
practitioner (no known self-diagnostic equipment yet for this type of work)
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• Dinner delivery: Purchasing ingredients and making the meal at home; ordering
Chinese take-out that she could pick up herself.
3. What similarities and differences are there between the dry-cleaning store and
the hair salon? What could each learn from the other?
Both services involve physical, tangible actions, but they are directed at different types of
recipients. The dry-cleaning store is a possession-processing service, while the hair salon
involves people-processing. Susan must be physically present during the delivery of her
haircut, and she actively participates in service delivery by making decisions about the
cutting and coloring of her hair. By contrast, she has very little involvement with the dry
cleaning of her clothes besides delivering and picking them up. Both services could
improve the timeliness of their service delivery (since Susan waited 20 minutes for her
hairdresser and her suit wasn’t ready as promised.) The dry cleaning establishment could
learn how to manage the tangible aspects of the service factory by making the visible
portion of its store cleaner, brighter and more professional in appearance. It could also
train and motivate its employees to provide better customer service. It’s difficult to come
up with a suggestion about what the hair salon could learn from this particular dry
cleaner. If all of Susan’s clothes had been completed on time, the dry cleaner would have
provided a better model of providing service in a timely manner.
Teaching Suggestions
This simple case is a good ice-breaker for an early class and should be sufficient for 10-
20 minutes of discussion—perhaps a little more if you subsequently ask students to
describe how their own days differ from Susan’s.
The case can be assigned in advance or, since it is quite short, even assigned for a quick
reading during the class itself. You can use it to bring home to students how many
services we use routinely during the course of a normal day without thinking much about
them, how dependent we are on technology for service delivery, and the multi-service
nature of a modern university. Be sure to get them to highlight the little things that please
or annoy them about service providers’ facilities and personnel even though they do not
affect core competences (e.g., the trendy décor of the hair salon, dirty fingernails,
unpleasant smells, failure to make eye contact, other customers not pulling their weight
on self-service such as table cleaning, etc.).
