Management Assignment
As a marketer, I have the philosophy that “the customer is the king”. So, I make my buying decisions as a King. What do I mean? A king is likely to make decisions that will bring benefits to his people and move the community forward. As a customer, I always make decisions in order to buy goods of high quality that are affordable and durable.
- Psychological Motivation:
Like most customers, I must be endowed with a psychological motivation about the product in question. I must be able to identify the need for the product. An interesting situation was where I needed to buy body cream but on my arrival at the cosmetic shop, I was sensitized on five different types of body lotions. Although I was determined to buy a body lotion, I did not have any prior knowledge on the sensitized body lotion. The perception I had based on the information the selling agent gave me, I focused on the brand of body lotion I thought could match my skin type (selective attention) but the brand, on my understanding, was main for people with try skin ( selective distortion). Lack of selective retention and lack of brand trust, I decided to buy baby Johnson as my body lotion because I believed it was primarily main for babies, and I will have no risk using this baby cream.
- Purchasing Power and Revenue Vs Social Factor:
As a business student, I make a lot of price comparison when I am to purchase any expensive item. For me, anything, especial electronics costing $100 and above require price observation in at least three different shops before a final buying decision will be drawn. Nevertheless, I do not carry out a lot of price observation on clothes, food stuff or drinks. I was offered $500 by my uncle to buy a phone and cater for any other need that I needed for at least a week. I needed just a simple phone to receive and make calls so that I could save the rest of my money. Reaching the electronic store, I met an old friend (membership group) of mine “Nestor”, he wanted to buy a template for himself. So, as we both went through the phones and other galaxies in the shop, he convinced me that obtaining a smart phone will keep me updated, and I will be in the mood or fashion as every other person in town. So I was influenced by a member of my social group to buy something I did not plan to buy.
I have stopped running my night club business in remote areas, areas that are not considered remote areas but are quite far from the city center. My main reasons for leaving such zones were because; the club was never populated as a normal night-club should be, even on weekends. I also discovered that, few youths that lived in those areas rather went to night clubs found in the city centers for show up as they had fun. As a result, I made pretty little turnover and could not even fund my bills. Clubbing was not appreciated in those areas; there were not seen as a place of fun or relaxation. Sometimes, youth that managed to spend time in my club tried to have a price cut-down entering fee “it was unbelievable but it is quite true”.
- I realized that I needed to give my customers multiple ways of contacting me. That is, making my club accessible – being based on a strategic point where everybody will find it easy to travel to my club without any transport difficulties.
- Though I received very few customers, I needed to acknowledge the customers who came to my club and deliver them a warm service to retain them as I moved to a strategic location for my business.
- It is not good to make an over-promise and an under-delivery to our customers.
As marketers, we must understand that the eyes of our customers’ are on us. We should promise what we can delivery and in our best of quality. It is good to understand that, though we could make a high turnover in a short while with false information, we could also lose loyal customers for ever. Situations of such customer turnoff may include making a false advertisement pitch of 25 minute food delivery for online grocery while it takes 2 hours to deliver the groceries to the customers, 50% natural juice instead of 100% as advertised, unable to provide after sale delivery to customers as promised in the advertisement, being deceptive to customer by displaying high quality for samples, when customer realized that the brand name is fake.
- Give customers multiple ways to contact you :
Giving customers a variety of ways on how to contact us is very essential. For example: by phone, web, mobile devices, email, in person, snail mail – we will be sure that, our customers will reach us by any means without any difficulties. When they contact us, we have to respond as well with an action.
- We should not ignore existing customers in pursuit of new ones:
We have to be sure that, we have retained our existing customers and are maintaining our relationship with them as we pursuit new ones. “Gartner claims that a 5% increase in customer retention can increase profits by 25% to 125% (Small Business Computing, Nov 16, 2012, Three Customer Turnoffs, retrieved from http://business.time.com/2012/11/16/three-customer-turnoffs/). So we ought to reward our existing customers with special offers and other loyalty perks. Let them know that we appreciate them. Example may include cases where; we do not provide warm customer services to our loyal customers, we do not offer them any free gifts or perks, we do not listen to their queries, we take a lot of delivery time, we argue with customers, or do not tell them how happy we are to see them again in our shop.
Customer Feedback:
Today, organizations have realized the need of a social platform not only as a means to sharpen their insight on what customers think or feel about their companys, but also as a means of practicing globalization. Five ways in which today’s organizations and individuals can sharpen their insights by using customer feedback include:
- Organizations can start up communication by asking questions on its new brands, perhaps the prices or qualities. At least, every customer who have used the product will be able to say something about the product. The data disclosed by the consumers about the product or brands will help the organizations in its analysis, many negative responses mean there is a call for adjustment on the product or brands.
- An organization may also find out on how well its performances in the market when customers leave comments for appreciations on the comments-board. Such appreciation signifies that the organization should do well to maintain its status.
- A customer recommendation could help us derive new strategies that will spies our product for perfection.
- Customers’ feedback could also help us know who our secret competitors are in the market.
- Customers’ feedback may help us determine the need of a new branch in a particular location or the creation of a new branch.
Sources
- Small Business Computing, Nov 16, 2012, Three Customer Turnoffs, retrieved from May 31, 2014, << http://business.time.com/2012/11/16/three-customer-turnoffs/ >>
