Evaluation and ranking of the importance of the mixing elements of marketing services in distributing industry of Iran.

This study sought to investigate the importance of the elements of service marketing mix (8p) in the distributing industry of Iran and rank them by their importance and average. In line with the research objective, the present study is of descriptive type. The statistical population includes salespersons and head managers from national distributing companies. Based on the data obtained from the Association of Distributing Industries of Iran, they were 1100 people out of whom 162 individuals were chosen as the sample by Cochran formula. Following interviews with some head managers and faculty members, a 34-item questionnaire, which consists of several items for each of the 8P elements, was designed. The data were analyzed by SPSS software and each item was graded based on the important industrial indexes and the 8p elements were ranked by Friedman Test. Based on the analysis of the data, the importance of the elements of service marketing mix was identified. As a result, the product element with the average of 3.88 ranked first and the productivity and quality element with the average of 3.25 ranked last. Based on the results of the study, the activists of distributing industries can utilize the elements of marketing mix to determine the most suitable marketing strategies for their organizations and consider the weight of each element in planning their strategies.