The 7Ps Classification of the Services Marketing Mix Revisited: An Empirical Assessment of their Generalisability, Applicability and Effect on Performance - Evidence from Jordan’s Services Organisations

The purposes of this research are: (a) to investigate the generalisability of Boom and Bitner's (1981) services Marketing Mix Paradigm (SMM), 7Ps, and (b) to examine the effect of SMM on business performance in Jordan's services organisations. A quantitative methodology was adopted in which a structured questionnaire was developed and distributed to a sample of 164 marketing managers in Jordan's services organisations. With a response rate of 91.2%, 146 questionnaires were returned and were valid for data analysis. Structural equation modeling was used to test the research model and hypotheses. The empirical findings of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses indicate that the 7Ps of the SMM are found to be only 5Ps in the Jordanian context. Structural paths analyses findings indicate that the 5Ps of SMM have a positive and significant influence on Jordan's service organisations performance. The findings also indicate that the strongest predictors of the 5Ps model on performance are people (the service providers), service price and service distribution, respectively. A major finding is that the expanded 3Ps (people, process, physical evidence) of SMM have loaded on only one factor named as people, meanwhile the 4Ps of traditional marketing mix loaded on four factors as theoretically proposed. Managers should adopt the 5Ps of SMM but the fifth P (people) should include the expanded 3Ps (people, process, physical evidence) as an integrated approach to achieve intended performance levels. However, the research model is developed and tested in Jordan's services organisations which may limit its generalisability to other service industries without further examination. The major contribution of this study is that it is the first quantitative empirical study that has examined the SMM model elements and their effect on business performance in the Jordanian context. Keywords: