Customer Satisfaction

1. Customer Satisfaction • Customer satisfaction is the extent to which a firm fulfills a consumer’s needs, desires, and expectations • As some needs are met, others may become more important • Expectations may change based on experiences • Satisfying experiences may lead to increasing expectations • Disappointing experiences may reduce expectations • Expectations may be realistic or unrealistic

2. What Is Marketing? • MICRO-MARKETING: • the performance of activities that seek to accomplish an organization's objectives by anticipating customer or client needs and directing a flow of need-satisfying goods and services from producers to customer or client • MACRO-MARKETING: • a social process that directs an economy's flow of goods and services from producers to consumers in a way that effectively matches supply and demand and accomplishes the objectives of society • AMA COMMITTEE DEFINITION: • marketing is the process of planning and executing conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational objectives

3. Marketing-Directed Economic Systems Planned Economic Systems Consumer choices are the invisible hand that guides the economy Government planners decide what consumers should get Economic Systems

4. Micro-Macro Dilemma • Micro-macro dilemma: what is "good" for some producers and consumers may not be good for society as a whole. • Examples: • some consumers want handguns, but guns can be dangerous • all terrain vehicles are fun for some people, but may result in injuries or damage to wilderness areas • non-returnable soft drink bottles are convenient, but sometimes result in litter and dangerous broken glass along highways. • repairing an old air-conditioning system might save the owner money, but might require continued use of ozone depleting fluorocarbons (used as coolant)

5. Stages of Economic Development • 1. Self-supporting agriculture • 2. Preindustrial or commercial • 3. Primary manufacturing • 4. Nondurable and semidurable consumer products manufacturing • 5. Capital equipment and consumer durable products manufacturing • 6. Exporting manufactured products

6. Nations’ Macro-Marketing Systems Are Connected • Economic growth has prompted more international trade • World Trade Organization (WTO) • Only international body dealing with the rules of trade between nations • Replaced the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) • Tariffs and quotas may reduce trade

7. Economies of Scale • Economies of Scale: as a company produces larger numbers of a particular product, the cost for each of these products goes down. • Facilitated by mass production • Facilitated by mass distribution • Not always possible (for example, in labor intensive services) • Flexible production--to meet varying or changing needs--may be more important than economies of scale in creating real customer value

8. Facilitators • Ad agencies • Marketing research firms • Information technology suppliers • Product testing labs • Public warehouses • Transporting specialists • Financial institutions • . . . and others

9. Some Criticisms of Marketing • Some criticisms focus on micro-marketing and some focus on the whole macro-marketing system: • "Too many ads are annoying, misleading, or both." • "There are too many unnecessary products." • "Middlemen raise prices but don't add value." • "Marketing makes people materialistic." • Many criticisms result from misunderstandings about marketing!

10. Marketing Orientation • Trying to carry out the marketing concept • Maintaining a customer orientation • All departments work together guided by customer needs • Focus on profit objective (or other overall objective) • NOT just trying to "unload" what the firm has produced