1- Nature and Characteristics of Services

Introduction:

Information scientists frequently provide services rather than tangible products (e.g., advice or searches). Marketing a service is more challenging than marketing a real product, according to marketing experts. The following are characteristics of services according to them:

• Intangibility: Because a service cannot be touched or seen, it’s difficult for clients to predict what they’ll get ahead of time;
• Inseparability of production and consumption: A service is produced at the same time as the client receives it (for example, during an online search or a legal consultation);
• Perishability: unused capacity cannot be saved and used later. For example, spare seats on one plane cannot be transferred to the next flight, and query-free periods at the reference desk cannot be kept until a busy period.
• Heterogeneity (or variability): Services involve individuals, and people differ in many ways. There’s a good chance that various people will respond to the same question in slightly different ways (or even by the same person at different times). It’s critical to keep performance variances to a minimum (through training, standard-setting, and quality assurance).
• Non-ownership: Unlike a physical commodity, the consumer does not own a service. Instead, the customer pays to gain access to or use the service. Another nice example is the hotel room. Similarly, though a customer may be handed a chequebook, credit card, and other items, these items serve primarily to enable the consumer to use what he or she is genuinely purchasing, namely bank services.

People frequently try to solve some of these challenges by ensuring that the service’s physical manifestations (the people who administer it, the library building, printed search results, web pages, and so on) reflect the service’s quality. If the personnel administering the service are responsive, dependable, pleasant, and professional, they are more likely to inspire trust in the service.

Types of Services:

As our understanding of service characteristics expands, so does our ability to deal with them from an economic and marketing standpoint. Intangible, inseparable, changing, and perishable are the characteristics of services. Each attribute offers a problem that necessitates the development of ways to address those issues.

• Core Services: A service that is the transaction’s core goal. A haircut, for example, or the services of a lawyer or a teacher
• Supplementary Services: Services provided as a result of purchasing a tangible item. For example, restaurants with a minimum bill value may offer home delivery services.

Difference between Goods and Services:

Goods	Services
A physical commodity	A process or activity
Tangible	Intangible
Homogenous	Heterogeneous
Production and distribution are separated from their consumption	Production, distribution and consumption are simultaneous processes
Can be stored	It cannot be stored
Transfer of ownership is possible	Transfer of ownership is not possible

Nature/Characteristics of Services:

Theory of Unified Services “With service processes, the customer provides a significant inputs to the production process. Individual customers’ only engagement in manufacturing processes is to pick and consume the result. Groups of consumers may offer ideas to the product’s design, but individual customers’ only participation is to pick and consume the output. This differentiation is the foundation of all managerial themes peculiar to services,” Sampson says (2001). Only the presence of client inputs and their consequences distinguishes service operations from non-service processes. Grasp the additional problems related to managing services requires simply understanding the consequences of customer inputs for people familiar with business management in general. Customer input is the primary source of the unique concerns and challenges of service management. Froehle and Sampson (2006).

1. Intangibility:

How can a marketer overcome the disadvantage of intangibility? Fortunately for him, there are ways and means to get around this one-of-a-kind feature of the service sector. The marketer will remember that intangibility prevents the consumer from touching, seeing, and feeling the product. As a result, he struggles to appreciate the magnitude of the service offer. As a result, communication, persuasion, and tangibility should underpin the plan. Intangibility can be overcome in the following ways:

• Visualisation
• Association
• Physical Representation
• Documentation, facts and figures
• Visualisation:

The marketer should discover strategies to assist the customer in visualising the transaction process and the service transaction benefits of using the service product. Evocative images, films, and other media should be employed.

• Association:

Because the service offer is intangible, it is difficult for the marketer to persuade customers of its credibility, character, or “ability to keep its word,” “service delivery,” and so on. This problem can be solved by linking the offer with a living persona or well-known inanimate items. It’s almost as though a well-known figure is endorsing the deal. In this method, the marketer can develop a bridge and hope that the favourable association will rub off on the service offer, changing the endorser’s personality. The customer draws the connection, trusts the service delivery promise, and understands the company’s personality. Building a relationship with customers becomes more accessible as a result of this.

• Physical Representation:

This method has been one of the most efficient techniques of ‘concretizing’ the intangibility of service offers. The architecture was visible, substantial, and soaring, conveying the service’s vision and ambition. The structure communicated the firm’s stability and accessibility.

• Documentation, facts and figures:

Service businesses overcome the intangibility barrier by using documentation to support their features and promises. Thus, companies like World Network Services, a former British Airways BPO recently acquired by the investment firm Warburg Pincus use ISO 9001 and 9002 quality certifications in their corporate communications to demonstrate their commitment to high-quality service delivery systems and processes. The National Association of Accreditation (NAAC), the National Board of Accreditation (NBA), and other accrediting bodies prepare educational institutions for accreditation. Lufthansa, known for its excellent service and punctuality, will highlight its better delivery and lack of accidents by displaying best airline awards and maintenance certificates. Facts, figures, and data are always used to emphasize a point and build credibility.

2. Perishability:

The perishability of a service marketer’s offering prevents him from preserving them. He loses the benefit of delayed sales as a result of this. Lost opportunities plague the service marketer. But there are ways and means to overcome the perishability factor:

• Over-Marketing
• Managing Demand
• Managing Supply

 

• Over-marketing:

A service marketer aspires to serve more consumers than he can handle. As a result, even if there are cancellations and dropouts, the real number of clients is the same as the servicing capacity. The service marketer will not lose any opportunities as a result of this. Over-marketing, on the other hand, has the potential to cause great unhappiness among clients who have been targeted for over-marketing yet have been denied services. No decent service marketer worth his salt wants to be in the situation of having consumers knocking on their door and having to turn them away.

So the trick is to over-market with several clauses, catchphrases, and terms and conditions. The customer is forced to participate in the over-marketing process and to agree to several terms in advance. For example, restaurants, customers who do not show up after making a table reservation are charged. The customer has no grounds for complaint because he consented to that restriction while making the reservation. Customers are also denied service if they arrive later than the specified time, even if they have made reservations; the next person in line is granted the service. Many service organisations use this strategy solely to reduce perishable loss and prevent attracting new customers.

• Managing Demand:

A service marketer must manage demand because delayed sales or inventory stockings are unavoidable. Accurate demand management would aid estimation and forecasting and prevent perishability. Marketing might be defined as the identification, measurement, and control of demand to avoid seeming arrogant.

Nine main types of demand have been identified. To avoid perishability, the service marketer must grasp and use these concepts in marketing. They are as follows:

1. Rising Demand: When a service offer is in the growth stage of its product life cycle, customers are aware of the service category and brand, and the rate of adoption is increasing in a geometric progression, with more first-time buyers trying the service offer and customers making repeat purchases, this is known as rising demand. The service marketer should recognise this trend and track the rate at which demand is increasing. This knowledge would enable him to meet expanding demand by suitably boosting service capacity — buildings, service employees, and so on – and minimise missed opportunities. However, the marketer should know that success breeds imitators, necessitating promotional and discount spending to stay ahead of the competition. The service marketer’s bottom line would suffer, and he should be ready for the next service product development. E.g., Mobile phone service: The marketer should not only understand that demand for cell phones is increasing across all demographics, particularly among the young, but also that demand is growing at an increasing rate (Chandigarh became the first town where cell phone users are more than land-line users). As a result, he will be ready to undertake his expansion plans for new network facilities, retail outlets, capacity, and employees. The service provider will be prepared to receive the approaching customers and not miss out on a sale.
2. Falling demand: There are various reasons why demand for a given service offer may decline: direct competition, substitute competition, unappealing pricing, poor service delivery, etc. Another example of technology affecting demand patterns is the decline in demand for video parlour services because of the ubiquity of satellite broadcasting TV channels.

The decline in popularity of pool parlours, which were once all the rage in Mumbai and other metros, can be attributed to the fact that both sexes of the rich, hedonistic urban young saw multiplexes, shopping malls, and beer bars as better places to hang out.

Whatever the reasons, the service marketer should recognise diminishing demand, assess the pace of decline, analyse the causes, and develop novel marketing programmes to halt the trend. If the service category is deteriorating, the marketer should exit and cut losses.

3. Zero demand: Because of numerous demographic, socio-economic, and occasionally geo-demographic reasons, the market may not need a certain service offer. The service marketer can either build demand for the service by determining the market’s needs, wants, and preferences or avoid entering the market altogether.

People in some areas may be uninterested in home delivery because they dislike outsiders entering their homes, especially while the men are absent. Due to this societal element, even courier services have taken a hit. As a result, modern retailing or non-store retailing may struggle to gain traction in that location. In rural Rajasthan, there may not be a demand for English or foreign language education. Similarly, in an area with no mobility of people – no motive to send or receive money – there may be no demand for counselling centres in rural India or Western Union money transfer services. Marketers will avoid making wrong investments if they correctly interpret demand.

4. Full Demand: In this case, the service marketer will discover that demand and supply are equal. It’s a beautiful situation for the company, but danger looms when a newcomer makes an offer. The market must, therefore, either raise consumption or the players must fight amongst themselves for a piece of the pie. Usually, price battles are unavoidable, margins erode, and service firms’ viability is questioned. Only the strongest survive; mergers and acquisitions become the standard, or the smaller players are forced to close their doors and declare bankruptcy.

The Reagan Administration deregulated the airline industry in the United States (1980-88). This drew a large number of people into the fray. People were less inclined to travel due to two consecutive oil crises (1973 and 1979). The sector suffered from the players’ enormous pricing battles; bankruptcies and mergers were commonplace. The unexpected occurred: airline legends such as PanAm and Trans World Airlines (TWA) were forced to close their doors. Long-distance telecommunications in the United States also saw a lot of competition when new competitors with the same fibre-optics technology entered the market. There were more lines than were required by the clients. WorldCom, the behemoth, lost its identity in the acquisition game due to frenzied mergers and some very well-known players like MCI. WorldCom could never recover from its enviable rise and eventually fell victim to a spate of scandals.

5. Overfull demand: This occurs when demand exceeds supply, and the service marketer cannot meet the need. This indicates that there are fewer capable players or that entrance hurdles and regulations are in place to stifle free market enterprise. In any case, the service marketer cannot be complacent and must be prepared for his service to be demarketed. Otherwise, dissatisfaction and unfavourable thoughts may develop in the customer’s head. The following examples illustrate over-demand:

• LPG supplies and connections are in higher demand in India.
• Prior to the introduction of the cell phone service, there was a massive demand for telephone connections that the Telecom Department of the Government of India could not meet.
• Berths on Indian Railways, particularly during the summer or other vacation periods.

Bookings, waiting lists, reservations, RAC (Reservations after Cancellations), and other methods of coping with the high demand could be used. The respective organisation or apex body also perform appropriate demarketing. For example, the Petroleum Conservation Research Association (PCRA) trains housewives and motorists on how to conserve energy and reduce consumption. Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd. used to discourage individuals from talking during peak hours because others were waiting in line. During World War II, bread, butter, margarine, and gasoline were in short supply. The War Ministry of Great Britain’s propaganda departments produced hoardings (billboards) with themes such as “Do you need to travel?” and so on.

If a service marketer discovers its service has an extensive waiting list, it may seek more capacity and support. As a result, Indian Railways offers “Holiday Specials,” and airlines add more flights, among other things.

6. Negative Demand: This is an anti-demand strategy. Customers will go to any length to avoid using a specific service. This could be due to concerns about bodily harm, irreversibility of consumption, significant risk, and so forth. They would pay to avoid consuming/experiencing the service supplied on occasion. Cosmetic surgery — With more media reports about the detrimental effects of cosmetic surgery and aesthetic treatments, the target market may have a negative perception of the service. Similarly, some people fear immunisation and will go to any length to avoid it.
7. Latent Demand: This demand exists deep within a consumer but is unmet since no service offer exists to meet it. The consumer may be unable to express his wants due to his inability to adequately explain his demands and the attributes of the offer. When such a service becomes available, he makes use of it. Services for mobile phones: Business, communication, and connectivity were all suffering in metros due to subpar infrastructural services. People took longer to business meetings because transportation networks were creaking and carrying seven times their typical capacity. People were dissatisfied with the MTNL network, and demand for the phone considerably outstripped supply. On the move, all Mumbaikars and Delhiites wanted to stay connected. As a result, when cell phone services were ultimately introduced to India, the enormous demand caught practically everyone off guard. India Today published a cover article with a clever nickname for cell phone users: Cellerati is a term used to describe a group of people.
8. Seasonal or irregular demand: Demand for certain services varies seasonally or irregularly. There is regularity in their irregularity at times (seasonal). There would be a high demand in some seasons and a lower demand in others. This has a significant impact on service delivery, management, and profitability. With appropriate marketing, the service marketer should be able to shift demand to off-peak hours/seasons.

• Movie theatres: Midday screenings are less popular than evening screenings. The theatre owner tries to increase the value of a matinée show by lowering the price.
• During less congested afternoons, McDonald’s and many other restaurants offer “Happy Meals” at a reduced price.
• Esselworld: During the monsoon, the theme park focuses on romance, with sirens summoning romantics, simulated “rain dancing,” and other activities.

 

9. Unwholesome demand: When people learn new facts about the service’s process or substance, they tend to lose interest in it. The new material is unappealing, and their interest in the service wanes. The service or product becomes unhealthy, lacking in nutrients, and resembling junk food. Organizations such as the police, NGOs, the military forces, religious and educational organisations, and others should employ persuasion, fear high prices, and discourage consumption by prohibiting distribution and accessibility.

– Managing Supply:

If a service marketer cannot regulate his supply, he suffers from perishability. At peak demand, the service provider cannot deliver simply because he is not prepared or ready — due to supply bottlenecks. They include anything from products to people:

• Goods: Supply issues with items arise in services that are highly tangible, such as retail, vehicle rentals, restaurants, tourists, hotels, bars, and so on. If a client requests a specific item that is unavailable (stock out), he is free to shop at another vendor. As a result, the service marketer will continue to lose income indefinitely. Rain checks (a guarantee to stock the SKU specifically for the client whenever he returns – which is an expensive proposition anyhow) may be offered by the store to keep the consumer.

Customers may abandon souvenir vendors if they do not have the desired items; bar management may face a similar predicament if he does not stock certain brands requested. If a car rental company, such as Wheels-Rent-A-Car, does not have a four-wheel-drive vehicle in its fleet when an adventurous tourist requests it, the customer may be lost.

• Systems and processes: Supply problems arise when service delivery methods and processes fail, leaving the provider unable to provide the service because he is entirely reliant on them. For example, following the terrorist attack in New York on September 11, 2001, and the demolition of the World Trade Center, several BPOs and banks in the United States were unable to continue their operations. Only because of their Indian connection via their BPO was American Express able to restore operations with much difficulty.
• People: Perishability happens when the service marketer cannot marshal sufficient numbers of internal clients in the right place at the right time. As previously stated, employees, channel partners, and other providers are considered internal customers. A retail store’s busiest hours are in the evenings, while its slowest hours are in the afternoons. The retailer’s challenge is how many staff to hire: if they hire according to peak-season crowds, there may not be enough work for them during slow periods, resulting in higher operating costs. On the other hand, if the company has enough personnel to attend to the afternoon and morning shoppers, the peak hour rush may overwhelm them. This could significantly impact the customer experience, causing shoppers to be inconvenienced, long lines, and, in turn, unpleasant encounters. The workers would quickly lose motivation, and impatient customers would likely switch stores.

During high demand, the retailer might thus handle the personnel supply problem by hiring part-time employees. For example, during their summer vacations, Esselworld, the theme park pioneer, hires students as temporary employees or trainees on internships.

• Essential services during peak hours: A retail bank may close a few non-urgent desks/counters and focus solely on essential services. Thus, during high withdrawal volumes (old-timers in PSU banks will recall the first ten days of the month in their branches as “salary days” – when people flocked to withdraw their salaries), non-essential areas such as the enquiry counter, dispatch, and so on may be temporarily shut down to man extra counters in the savings and current accounts withdrew.

As a result, service organisations will be able to develop strategies to manage their specific attribute of perishability while avoiding revenue losses during service transactions.

• Involve your customers in the process: This is an innovative technique to combat perishability caused by a lack of personnel. The consumer is made to feel like a collaborator in the service delivery process. The executive buffet lunch is a classic example of a high-quality service offer with minimal employee support. Whatever the crowd, the executive buffet procedure may deliver the meal, provided the provision and capacity are available. The diner assists and feeds himself, while the supplier ensures that all necessary utensils, such as cutlery and tissue paper, are available.
• Another example is self-service shopping at modern-format superstores. Customers wheel their trolleys and carts out of the store and load them with their purchases. After shopping, they proceed to the checkout counters to pay. Customers fill out their documents in a bank, whereas buying Dell computers on the Internet is complete self-service.

3. Variability: Variability in the service offer and delivery transmits an aspect of inconsistency and non-standardization to the customer. Every time a consumer interacts with a service, the experience is unique. This can be overcome in a variety of ways, including:

• Training of Internal Customers
• Recruitment and selection of Internal Customers
• Training of External Customers
• Automation

 

• Training of Internal Customers:

This is one of the most critical instruments a service organisation can use to combat heterogeneity and variability. As previously said, the variability arises from the internal consumers’ diverse backgrounds and their various moods, experiences, involvement, orientations, and talents. Internal customers — employees, channel partners, associate partners, and third-party administrators – would project uniformity in customer service delivery due to training. This projection is more significant because the service quality is what clients perceive.

Outbound call centres must give the impression that the call originated from within the country rather than from India. So, from the consumer’s perspective, the most essential skill for a telemarketing and customer service representative is apparent, accent-free speaking ability. Training is the only way to ensure all contact centre personnel have the same oral communication abilities.

Personal banking (savings, current accounts, and related deposits and withdrawals), small business, agricultural banking, international banking, institutional banking, and so on are all types of businesses that a retail bank has for different types of customers and their diverse demands. In one day, a customer may need to visit many desks – deposits, demand draughts, foreign exchange inquiries, personal loans, etc. However, the variable component is to blame for his various interactions. Varied personnel will give him different experiences: in one, he will be content with the customer service, in another, he will be disappointed, and in the third, he will be delighted. It’s also possible that the same professional performed admirably in personal banking but struggled in international banking. Training is the only way to smooth out the kinks in skill and orientation distinctions.

Few managers get the opportunity to build a company from the ground up. That would allow them to fully mould the organisation to their vision without being distracted by dissenters. Most people have to make do with carrying on the legacy of their forefathers. Internal clients, both in terms of number and quality, are included. As previously stated, internal customer training becomes a critical instrument for overcoming non-standardization for the late-arriving manager.

The following are examples of different forms of training:

• Orientation-cum-Induction
• Refresher
• Re-skilling
• Motivational, leadership, group dynamics

Recruitment and Selection of Internal Customers:

Through quality recruiting and selection, management can choose to have higher-quality employees. This would ensure that internal consumers have the same background, skill levels, and orientation, resulting in homogeneous service delivery. The decision-maker could hire the best people for the best jobs.

• Training of External Customers:

Another option to lower variability is to teach clients how to complete transactions. A transaction between a service provider and a consumer is called a service. It is insufficient if only one of the transaction game’s players (read provider) has a high skill level. Customers should also know the service offer, methodology, rules, and norms to complete the transaction process. Otherwise, the customer’s learning curve will likely be longer, delaying service transactions and reducing service quality.

The following differences among the consumers have an impact on the transaction:

• Diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, such as income, education, and family orientation, to name a few.
• Moods, participation, and orientation
• encounters

Students in a particular subject at a post-graduate college may have various demographic profiles. Some may have attended vernacular schools, while others may have attended convents or English-medium schools. Some may have a science background, while others may have a humanities background. This causes them to take a different attitude and attitude to the transaction, resulting in a high-quality or low-quality transaction, depending on the situation. To put it another way, if a professor has a class of only the top thirty students, the teaching experience will undoubtedly be considerably higher than if he has a class of only the bottom thirty students. In the latter instance, he would have had to lower himself to their level, slow down his speed, and use the tutorial mode more frequently.

A banker’s daily transactions would have included customers such as business executives who are familiar with banking procedures; housewives who want more courtesy, attention, and care; students who wish to spend as little time as possible in the bank; and the illiterate who may require detailed explanations, translations, and form-filling. He would need varied amounts of time and effort to execute the same type of business transaction with different types of consumers.

• Automation: The third technique to promote uniformity and consistency is to automate the service transaction process on a wide scale. Service delivery and transactions will be more consistent as a result of automation. As a result, banks are investing heavily in ATMs (Automated Teller Machines). Note-counting machines are found in bank branches; retail stores have infrared bar code scanners and Electronic Data Capture (EDC) machines, which are used to wash and polish credit cards; hotels, airports, railway stations, and many apartment hotels have touch-screen enquiry systems; Indian Railways accepts online reservations, and coupon validating machines validate tickets. Automation strives to overcome unpredictability and introduce homogeneity to a large extent.

4. Inseparability: The requirement that both the service provider and the service consumer be present at the time and location of the service encounter means that marketing takes the form of event management. Its success would hinge on its capacity to bring the service provider and the customer together under one roof. The service transaction will not take place if this is not the case.

There are several approaches to overcoming inseparability:

1. Internal customer training: With the assistance of his organisation, the service provider should make an extra effort to train other service providers as trainees under the supervision of an expert. The goal is to attract additional service providers with the same expertise. The number of individuals that can be served at once would increase, and the service catchment area might be expanded.

A surgeon accepts interns with the help of the hospital, medical colleges, and the Medical Council of India. They work under the surgeon’s supervision, assisting him in several surgical procedures and being present throughout surgeries. Making the initial incision, clamping blood arteries, swabbing blood flow, holding the cut area for more profound and significant surgery, sutures and sponge count, and other surgical activities are common, preliminary, and may not require skill. If the interns get the necessary experience, they can begin the surgery’s preliminary phases while the surgeon works on another case. Minor operations are then delegated to junior doctors. Once this training process is perfected, most of the preliminary operation procedures are conducted by junior surgeons, with the expert present just for major surgery. As a result, more patients will be able to benefit from the expertise of the primary surgeon.

A management professor has teaching assistants who sit in his class, observe and adapt various pedagogical (teaching methodology) skills, supervise assignments, quizzes, and group work, and aid the professor with assessments. In addition, the TA creates case studies and teaching materials and maintains contact with the class to ensure smooth coordination. Inseparability is being sought to be overcome by bringing more qualified and capable service providers.

1. Adopting and innovating new service models: Psychiatrists have devised ways to meet treatment goals, such as group therapy. They used to see one patient at a time and connect with them one-on-one. As a result, they had less contact with patients. Psychiatrists in group therapy, on the other hand, see a large number of patients at once by design, and the procedures appear to be working. This method is used successfully by organisations such as Alcoholics Anonymous and drug recovery centres. Today’s gurus use only group therapy.
2. Video conferencing: The service professional might overcome inseparability by offering video and satellite conferencing instructions. As a result, it is now fairly standard to have a significant surgery videotaped for reference and replay and transmitted to medical institutions nationwide. Video and satellite technologies are used to seek and receive expert views in medical and legal matters. This technology is used to overcome inseparability in teaching, corporate conferences, intra-company meetings across global branches, and economic leaders’ conclaves.
3. Robotics: Many complex surgeries are now performed with robot assistance. In sophisticated countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States, surgery can be carried out by robots guided by signals given by a surgeon hundreds of miles away, running the controls and watching the procedure on a monitor.

5. Customer Participation: The ability, skill, and performance of the employee, as well as the ability and performance of the customer, have a significant impact on the service’s production quality. Although the employee and the customer are not equal parts of the production process in the service contract, the importance of the client’s contribution cannot be overstated. Service providers should inform customers of the service package and manufacturing process through appropriate communication. If necessary, they should take the required steps to train consumers to give a high-quality service experience. Perfectionism on the part of the organisation in service production will not guarantee favourable outcomes unless consumers are involved in the process. As a result, different groups of clients require different types of customer orientation. Customization is one of the most important tactics service businesses use to ensure that clients participate efficiently and effectively. Medical treatment, hairdressing, health clubs, colleges, and beauty care centres all have active customer participation.

6.  No Ownership: Consumers of services will gain experience but not ownership. The question of ownership does not arise because services are intangible and perishable. However, this trait will exacerbate the service marketer’s troubles. It is considerably easier to persuade a customer with tangible things over which he will have ownership through transfer of title than to persuade a consumer with an experience over which nothing remains after consumption but a memory. In the case of services, customer dissonance would be higher than in the case of commodities.

Contrary to commodity manufacturers, service providers confront a variety of marketing obstacles and hurdles due to the aforementioned features of services. Marketers have new and more difficult issues due to the six service characteristics. To reach organisational goals, service organisations must build a unique and comprehensive marketing strategy considering current obstacles. The service triangle is one of service businesses’ most well-liked marketing methods. Let’s take a closer look at this strategic strategy.