Principles of Marketing
Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty, Management and Empowerment
Learning Outcomes
1. Customer empowerment. Student can identify how their chosen product or service offering uses social networks to communicate and empower customers to be part of the marketing process.
2. Customer loyalty. Student can explain customer lifetime value and how a customer loyalty program can retain its most valuable customers for the product or service offering choice.
3. Customer satisfaction. Student can identify how customers communicate their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the chosen product or service offering.
4. Customer privacy. Student can identify the product or service offerings privacy policy and analyze its effectiveness in protecting their customer's information.
Directions
• Refer to the product or service you selected last week. This week you want to take a closer look at the company's website to identify how that company interacts with its customers. If they have Facebook pages or other social media, check them out.
• If you are a customer of the product or service, consider whether you are a Most Valuable Customer (MVC) and if so, why?
• Calculate the lifetime value of a most valuable customer. See the formula in the week's readings. If you are not an MVC yourself, make and share your assumptions about your calculation. If you are not an MVC, you might want to find someone who is and ask them why they are loyal to the product or service. If your product is Krispy Kreme, for example, you might assume an MVC stops at Krispy Kreme every morning and orders two donuts and a cup of coffee. For all product or service choices, assume ten years is the average life of a customer relationship.
• You may need call or visit a store to take a look at your product or service if the website does not provide you everything you need to evaluate the company's product or service privacy policy. Usually the privacy policy is available on the website.
• Prepare your assignment by answering the following four areas of inquiry related to the learning outcomes noted above.
1. Customer Empowerment. How does your product or service offering empower its customers? In other word, how are customers part of the marketing for the company. Identify the feedback vehicles they may use, especially social media. Do the social media efforts seem to be creating buzz marketing? If not, what could they do to generate more ‘buzz'.
2. Customer loyalty. Refer to the MVC calculation you made in the directions above, What was your MVC estimate? Do you think this number is worth pursuing and retaining loyal MVCs? Describe what the product or service offering does to manage these profitable customer relationships.
3. Customer satisfaction. How does your product or service offering communicate ways for customers to express their dissatisfaction and if possible, outline what remedies the product or service may be taking to ensure satisfaction.
4. Customer privacy. Review your product or service offering privacy policy. Analyze whether you think they do enough to protect the customer's privacy or what steps you might suggest they take to protect customer's privacy. Refer to the privacy policies or the information on warranties and guarantees. The company's customer support page might also be useful.
Be sure to follow all of the submission requirements outlined in the syllabus and provided below again for your easy reference:
•Prepare as a word processed document (such as Microsoft Word).
•Your assignment should be the equivalent of two pages of double spaced text, approximately 1/2 page for each of the four questions.
•Be sure your name, writing assignment number, and the name of your product or service are on the first page of your writing assignment.
•Use a simple 12-point font such as Times New Roman. Use black ink for majority of your work and only use colors if it enhances your ability to communicate your thoughts.
•If the writing assignment requires external research, be sure to use footnotes and include a bibliography. You may use MLA or APA style, or any other college-level style guide. More information about using a style guide can be found in the UMUC's virtual library accessible from your LEO classroom or at umuc.edu/library.
•Upload your word processed document in your LEO assignments by the due date in the LEO calendar.
Refer to the grading rubric associated with the assignments. Be sure to note that 20% of your grade on this assignment will be based on your grammar, composition, adherence to the submission requirements, and use of an appropriate college-level style guide for writing and referencing.