Services communications: from mindless tangibilization to meaningful messages

Abstract

Service businesses face a unique challenge: how to effectively communicate the necessarily intangible benefits of their service offering. Their attempts to tangibilize the service are often ill‐designed, making service benefits more rather than less obscure. This article presents a scheme that identifies the communication task at various stages of consumer decision making and then matches appropriate communication strategies. Rather than embracing misguided tangibilization, the recommended strategies handle the intangibility challenge without necessarily using any tangible props.