The modern concept of Marketing is that it delivers added value through customer satisfaction and quality. Customer satisfaction is the result of a product meeting or exceeding the buyers needs and expectations. Importantly We must also realise that customers today want far more than just products and services, they also want value.
Value interms of the quality being commensurate with the price and with the overall cost of acquisitiona concept that goes beyond basic price to incorporate delivery and other additional charges. Value in terms of a product or service that exceeds expectations. Value in terms of the brand reputation of the supplier; a reputation for quality can enhance a firms competitiveness, whereas a slip in quality can damage a firms image and ability to compete. Equally quality in areas such as Customer service can be palpable in terms of competitive advantage. Figure 4 shows a conceptual model for value and hints at the complexity involved, this is a primary reason why traditional economics based theory can never explain purchasing behaviour.
Customers who believe that they have received value are more likely to remainsatisfied with the company and continue their relationships. In order to deliver this marketing has four major goals:
- To develop deep understanding of customers needs, operating procedures and decision making processes.
- To formulate value propositions that meets customers needs and creates a differential advantage.
- To move from successful transactions with customers to long-term relationships based upon loyalty and trust.
- To understand that superior value requires superior knowledge, skills, systems and marketing assets.
A key concept within the role of Marketing in a business is that of Customersatisfaction and feedback. Information is the foundation of understanding customer wants and needs and it is the successful companies that make every attempt to ensure the satisfaction of their customers, by astutely and assiduously collecting this information. One of the best ways to find out whether or not customers are satisfied is to obtain customer feedback
For many businesses this is actually a main use of their website, where customers can leave unconstrained comments and suggestions about products, services and experiences. In it no accident that customer complaints are excellent sources of customer feedback. Indeed many customers often feel greater loyalty after a conflict has been resolved than if they had never complained at all From this we can safely conclude that customer service and satisfaction have key roles in marketing. Indeed we should also be able to see that personal selling also has a key role within marketing if we extend the service metaphorpersonal selling is often a key aspect of such service, especially for products with large intangible service elements to them.
So what other areasina business does marketing have impact upon? Let's explore this using the customer service concept as a basis. There is a major change in the way companies organise themselves as firms switch from product-based to customer-based structures. A key driver of this change is the advent of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) - the marketing concept is central to CRM – which is underpinned by information systems convergence, the development of supporting software and organisational structure and training which combine to significantly improve the implementation of Relationship Marketing principles.
So already we have three main issues that can enable (or hinder) the development of the organisational issues of culture and communication, management metrics and cross-functional integration, especially between marketing and information technology. So we can see that as companies have moved towards
amore marketing orientedway of operating, the issues within marketing and thus the values associated with marketing have become increasingly important in all functional and operational areas of those businesses. In essence we are back to Regis McKenna - "Marketing is everything.