PRINCIPLES OF MARKETING

Customer Satisfaction and Brand Survival

Customer Satisfaction and Brand Survival

Introduction

The term marketing has derived from the core of market. A market is a place where buyers and sellers exchanges things of value, most probably goods and services for money. However, marketing refers to an interactive process targeted towards developing, pricing, placing and promoting goods, services or ideas for facilitating the exchange process between customers and sellers (Truell, 2001, p. 576). This whole process revolves around the concept of satisfying customer's innate needs through providing buying options in the form of wants.

If any marketer succeeds in achieving maximum sales targets with extremely satisfied customers, it is not a coincident. There are extensive efforts going in the backhand processes including consumer behavioural research, product research and development, designing of effective marketing campaigns through segmentation, targeting and positioning and the marketing mix. In order to better understand the reasons for a marketer's success and evaluate the factors necessary to succeed, an in depth study of the basic marketing concepts is required.

Discussion

Needs, Wants & Demands

It all starts with a Need

Human beings have innate needs such as hunger, sleep & intimacy etc. And these needs require some means of satisfaction to be met. The most basic job of a marketer is to analyze existing needs and come up with products to meet those needs.

The Customer Wants Options

After analyzing the customers' needs, products are created through a complex process and presented in the market. When a customer gets two or more options to satisfy a need, it is called a want (Kotler, 2002, P. 6). For example, if a customer is feeling thirsty which is a need, he/she would have different options to fulfil that need through either drinking water, soda or any other beverage. The customer than evaluates the different options through a sub conscious cost benefits evaluation process and finally decides which product would better fulfil his need.

Finally comes the Demand

Finally, the customer decides to demand a product dependent on his/her affordability level. For example, the choice to drink water, soda or any other beverage would be made dependent on the amount of money that the customer has at that time. Let's say someone is out of home for shopping and suddenly feels the thirst to drink something. Through a subconscious process, the customer's mind would evaluate the amount of money that could be spent and will compare it with the available options and the level of thirst. Finally a decision would be communicated by the mind about the best option and the customer would buy and consume the beverage.

Organizational Objectives

From the point of marketing, the goals of the Organization can be divided into Commercial and Social Objectives dependent on their contribution to the overall marketing objective.

Commercial Goals

Commercial goals of the marketing department include increment in the Product prices, company revenues and product demand because these factors contribute in increasing cash inflow into the Organization. However, the entire inflow process starts at the point where the customer selects a company's products ...