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GARY MARSHALL - Cundall Johnston and Partners
IAN MURDOCH - University of Northumbria at Newcastle

ABSTRACT
Services marketing is a relatively recent phenomenon throughout the world and is a philosophy that many service based organisations within Britain have yet to adopt and carry out successfully. Contemporary writers in the field of services marketing would suggest that a great emphasis is placed upon the areas of the service which provide tangible evidence to prospective users of that particular service. The tangible identifiers would include office appearance, company vehicles, brochures, advertising material and other physical elements that may be seen as providing an indication of the service providers business and ability to provide a desired level of service quality. The SERVQUAL model proposed by Parasuraman, Berry and Ziethaml in 1991 has allowed for an insight to be gained into the areas that customers and users of consulting engineers use to form an opinion of any particular organisation. Areas examined by the model are the tangible dimension, reliability dimension, responsiveness dimension, assurance dimension and empathy dimension of service provided. On analysis of survey information the suggestions that tangible elements are used to form the initial opinions of the users of the services provided by the consulting engineer is incorrect with other elements of the service and the organisation providing it, being more important.

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