A Value Added Service (VAS) can be defined as: Any service provided by the service provider to promote its main service business (Wikipedia) Or Value added services is a term that is used to refer to service options that are complimentary to but also ancillary to a core service offering.
(wiseGEEK) As Kotler as said: “Over time the augmented benefits become the expected benefits. ” The same applies to Value added services, what a customer sees as a value added service today becomes a part of the expected base service in some time.VAS can be said to have a time dimension associated with it. A value added service becomes a basic service when it becomes sufficiently common and widely deployed to no longer provide substantive differentiation on a relative basis. A classic example of this is the ATM machine, when launched it was a VAS by the banks providing it, but now it’s expected by every bank to provide ATM access.
It is difficult to mark when a value added service can no longer be called so, but in general, all VAS share some common characteristics : 1. Not a form of basic service but rather adds value total service offering
