Reflect on the assigned readings for the week. Identify what you thought was the most important concept(s), method(s), term(s), and/or any other thing that you felt was worthy of your understanding.
Also, provide a graduate-level response to each of the following questions:
- New businesses are frequently launched as a means to address a current glitch in the industry. Pick an industry and identify a typical customer problem. What changes could you make to enter that industry and enhance customer satisfaction (and be profitable)?
- Run a taste test. Compare Pepsi vs. Coke, or bottled water vs. tap, or an expensive bottle of wine vs. the boxed stuff. Discuss participants’ level of knowledge and surprise.
[Your initial post should be based upon the assigned reading for the week, so the textbook should be a source listed in your reference section and cited within the body of the text. Other sources are not required but feel free to use them if they aid in your discussion].
[Your initial post should be at least 450+ words and in APA format (including Times New Roman with font size 12 and double spaced). Post the actual body of your paper in the discussion thread then attach a Word version of the paper for APA review]
Respond to the post of at least two peers, using 100 words minimum each.
Text Book:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qF1lHi5VsYmhxbFEKWCH-KBxyV8fnIye/view?usp=sharing
Discussion 1
This week, of course, offered effective insight into the behaviour of a customer that shows a significant impact on the performance of a firm and the sustainability of a business. The marketing framework includes key elements such as 5Cs, STP, and 4Ps. The 5Cs of a firm include key elements such as customer, context, collaborators, company, and competitors, STP includes the elements like segmentation, targeting and positioning and 4Ps includes the elements like product, price, promotion and place (Iacobucci, 2018). The factors that influence the behaviour of a customer include the phases through which consumers go to purchase the products, types of consumer purchases, perceive and sense and attitudes of customers to make decisions, culture diversity that influences the perceptions of staff towards the products. The course also offered insight into the three phases of a purchasing process such as pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase. Each phase of a purchase process offers effective insight into the customer needs, solutions, develops effective consideration set and narrows it, determine effective channel, determines the satisfaction of customers, likelihood, and word of mouth. It is understood that business processes such as B2B and B2C use the buying process for buying the products. The course of this week also offered significant insight into various types of consumer purchases like convenience purchases, shopping, and special purchases. In the convenience purchase, the involvement of consumers is less and they do not invest a lot of time into making a plan to purchase the product. Shopping purchases involve the customer’s medium and make them invest medium time to purchase the products. Specialty purchases involve the customers highly and makes customers put much effort into making the products. There are three types of business purchases such as new buy, modified by, and straight buy. It also offered effective insight into classical conditioning and operant conditioning that helps the businesses to advertise the products and sell products effectively. It also included Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, motivation, attitudes of customers and decision-making like beliefs, importance, and choices made by the consumers to compare a variety of brands to develop effective decision through various stages and socio-cultural differences that show a significant impact on the perceptions of customers and decisions creating by them. Among the various concepts, the key concepts that are most important to me include customer behaviour, phases of a buying process, decision making, and types of business purchases. The main reason for considering these concepts is important to me is that they help me to understand the behaviour of customers, understand its impact on the purchases of a firm’s products and know the benefits of various types of business purchases. This helps me to develop effective decisions and achieve success in the business when I established a firm and grow professionally.
References:
Iacobucci, D. (2018). Management. Cengage learning.
Discussion 2
In the current competitive business world, we can see that some businesses are highly successful while some are a failure. The success of the business depends upon several factors like customer satisfaction, leadership, etc. For any business, customers are the primary resources and a great asset. If the customers are not satisfied or lose trust, then the business is certain to fail. There are several instances where, due to dissatisfied customers or failing to analyze customer behavior resulted in a great loss to the organizations. A good instance is how the new coke project drastically failed as the company failed to analyze customer behavior. Here we can observe that the company wants to enhance its coke taste and offer quality drink and, in the process, disregarding the customer behavior that resulted in a great loss to the company. In the end, they again replaced the new coke with the old coke promoting as the classic coke is back. Hence, customer behavior is one of the critical factors that play a key role in the success of the business. With the changing trends, the customer’s tastes and preferences are also changing. Organizations need to constantly update themselves with the changing behavior of the customers to succeed in the business (Kailash & Srivastatva, 2010).
Customer Problem
Today in this highly competitive era, starting and running a business is not an easy thing as novel problems and issues are encountered at every phase of the business. They must be dealt with then and there to run the business successfully. We can also observe a trend where to start a new business; the individuals are launching the new business to address the existing issues in the industry. For instance, consider how customers faced issues with the restaurants for delivering the food. Zomato, Swiggy, etc. are the companies that addressed the food delivery issues of the customers and are very successful today in the food delivery industry. They immediately used the issue as a new business idea. This is because customers call the restaurants several times to know where the delivery boy is and how much time it will take the delivery man to deliver the order. But with Swiggy and Zomato, we can see how the customers can easily track the order, thus satisfying the customers with their needs (Melika, Slavo, & Muris, 2012).
In the same way, I want to enter into the clothing industry. At present, I observed that the fashion industry is changing day by day. The trend changes quickly, and customers want to stay in-line with the new trends in the fashion industry, but they do not know how. I will use this customer issue to start my new cloth business, where I will update with the current trends in the fashion industry using technological advancements like social media and following the famous fashion designers will help me to attract the customers and can earn good profits. Hence, I want to enter into the clothing industry, and I will make the changes like having a team to constantly update me with the current trends in fashion so that I will purchase and sell the trending items, thus attracting more customers to my store (Melika, Slavo, & Muris, 2012).
Taste Test
Today the companies before launching a new product their R&D team does vigorous research on various issues like taste tests if the food & beverage industry, customer behavior, tastes, and preferences, etc. before releasing a product into the market to ensure the success of the product. But sometimes we can observe that even after thorough research, the products fail to attract and satisfy the customer’s expectations. This is because sometimes the research also depends on the type of participants and their level of knowledge. For instance, it is a well-known fact that tap water is safer and pure than the bottled water and tap water is way cheaper than the bottled water. Also, much of the bottled water comes from the taps. Now if the company wants to do the research on the taste test it will test on a wide range of participants like form children to aged people and the tastes and preferences may vary according to the types of participants and their knowledge (Melika, Slavo, & Muris, 2012).
References
Kailash, B., Srivastatva, S, K. (2010). The Role of Consumer Behaviour in Present Marketing
Management Scenario. 5. 268-275. Retrieved from,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333774589_THE_ROLE_OF_CONSUMER_BEHAVIOUR_IN_PRESENT_MARKETING_MANAGEMENT_SCENARIO
Melika, H., Slavo, K., and Muris, C. (2012). Consumer Behaviour. School of Economics and
Business University of Sarajevo. Retrieved from,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317580429_Consumer_Behaviour