Q.1 Marketing involves satisfaction of consumer needs’. Elucidate the statement.
Answer : Customer satisfaction refers to the extent to which customers are happy with the products and services provided by a business. Customer satisfaction levels can be measured using survey techniques and questionnaires. Gaining high levels of customer satisfaction is very important to a business because satisfied customers are most likely to be loyal and to make repeated orders and to use a wide range of services offered by a business.
The need to satisfy customer for success in any commercial enterprises is very obvious. The income of all commercial enterprises is derived from the payments received for the products and services to its external customers. Customers are the sole reason for the existence of commercial establishments.
Since sales are the most important goal of any commercial enterprise, it becomes necessary to satisfy customers. For customer satisfaction it is necessary to establish and maintain certain important characteristics like:
a. Quality
b. Fair prices
c. Good customer handling skills
d. Efficient delivery
e. Serious consideration of consumer complaints.
Satisfaction is the feeling of pleasure or disappointment attained from comparing a products perceived performance (outcome) in relation to his or her expectations. If the performance falls short of expectations, the customer is dissatisfied. If the performance matches the expectations, the customer is satisfied. If the performance exceeds expectations, the customer is highly satisfied or delighted.
A. Discovering Consumer Needs
Marketing’s first objective is discovering the needs of prospective consumers.
- The Challenge of Launching Winning New Products Discovering and satisfying needs can be difficult.
- Companies invest huge sums on marketing and technical research that reduces, but cannot eliminate, new-product failures.
- Discovering needs involves looking carefully at prospective customers.
- A firm’s marketing department must understand
- what its customer needs,
- industry trends,
- competitors’ products,
- and needs of a customer’s customer.
Consumer Needs and Consumer Wants
- A need occurs when a person feels physiologically deprived of basic necessities, such as food, clothing, and shelter.
- A want is a felt need that is shaped by a person’s knowledge, culture, and personality. Marketing does not create the need for a product, but shapes a person’s wants.
ETHICS AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY ALERT
- Potential consumers make up a market,
- which is people with
- the desire and
- with the ability
- to buy a specific product.
B. Satisfying Consumer Needs
- An organization does not have the resources to satisfy the needs of all consumers.
- It focuses on the needs of its target market
Target Market one or more specific groups of potential consumers toward which an organization directs its marketing program.
Global Competition, Customer Value, and Customer Relationships
- Intense domestic and global competition has prompted many firms to focus on providing customer value.
- Firms try to place a dollar value on a loyal, satisfied customer.
Customer value the unique combination of benefits received by targeted buyers that includes quality, price, convenience, on-time delivery, and both before-sale and after-sale service.
Relationship Marketing and the Marketing Program
1. Easy to Understand
1.Relationship marketing links the organization for mutual long-term benefits to
- individual customers,
- employees,
- suppliers,
- other partners.
2.Difficult to implement on a long term basis
3. critical in developing effective customer relationships
C. The Marketing Program: marketing program a plan that integrates the marketing mix to provide a good, service, or idea to prospective buyers.
- This process is continuous:
- Consumer needs trigger product concepts
- that become actual products
- that stimulate further discovery of consumer needs.
Q.2 Conduct a SWOT analysis for any one automobile brand of your choice. How will this analysis help in planning marketing strategies for the brand?
Answer : SWOT is an acronym for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, and represents the key categories for a particular type of business analysis. Car dealerships use it to determine how they fare versus competitors in their local markets.
