Customer Satisfaction

CHAPTER 1:

INTRODUCTON
INTRODUCTION TO MARKETING:According to W.J Stanton "marketing is a total system of business activities
designed to plan, price, promotion, and distribute want satisfying goods and
services to prevent and potential customers.
The company faces in any market opportunities and must carefully evaluate
them before choosing their target markets. They need skill in measuring and
forecasting the size, growth and profit potential of competing market opportunities.
Market potential is the limit approach by market demand as industry marketing
expenditures approach infinity, for given environment.
Total market potential is the maximum amount of sales that might be
available to all firms in an industry during a given period under a given level of
industry marketing efforts and given environmental conditions.

The marketing concept:

The marketing concept holds that the key of achieving organizational goals
consists of determining the needs and wants to target market and delivering the
desired satisfaction more effectively and efficiently than competitors.

Nature and scope:

Marketing is a goal oriented process marketing focus on customer Marketing
is a system. Marketing is a process of exchange. Marketing is part of total
environment.

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The marketing research:

Marketing research involves conducting research to support
marketing activities, and the statistical interpretation of data into
information. This information is then used by managers to plan
marketing activities, gauge the nature of a firms marketing environment
and attain information from suppliers. Marketing researchers use
statistical methods such as quantitative research, qualitative research,
hypothesis tests, Chi-squared tests, linear regression, correlations,
frequency distributions, Poisson distributions, binomial distributions,
etc. to interpret their findings and convert data into information. The
marketing research process spans a number of stages, including the
definition of a problem, development of a research plan, collection and
interpretation of data and disseminating information formally in the form
of a report. The task of marketing research is to provide management
with relevant, accurate, reliable, valid, and current information.
A distinction should be made between marketing research and
market research. Market research pertains to research in a given market.
As an example, a firm may conduct research in a target market, after
selecting a suitable market segment. In contrast, marketing research
relates to all research conducted within marketing. Thus, market
research is a subset of marketing research.

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Marketing environment:Staying ahead of the consumer is an important part of a marketers

job. It is important to understand the "marketing environment" in order
to comprehend the consumers concerns, motivations and to adjust the
product according to the consumers needs. Marketers use the process of
marketing environmental scans, which continually acquires information
on events occurring outside the organization to identify trends,
opportunities and threats to a business. The six key elements of a
marketing scan are the demographic forces, socio-cultural forces,
economic

forces,

regulatory

forces,

competitive

forces,

and

technological forces. Marketers must look at where the threats and

opportunities stem from in the world around the consumer to maintain a
productive and profitable business.
The market environment is a marketing term and refers to factors
and forces that affect a firm's ability to build and maintain successful
relationships with customers. Three levels of the environment are:
Micro (internal) environment: forces within the company that affect
its ability to serve its customers.

Meso environment: the industry in which a company operates and the

industry's market(s).

Macro (national) environment: larger societal forces that affect the

microenvironment.

Customer Satisfaction

Market segmentation:Market segmentation pertains to the division of a market of consumers into

persons with similar needs and wants. For instance, Kellogg's cereals, Fro sites are
marketed to children. Crunchy Nut Cornflakes are marketed to adults. Both goods
denote two products which are marketed to two distinct groups of persons, both
with similar needs, traits, and wants. In another example, Sun Microsystems can
use market segmentation to classify its clients according to their promptness to
adopt new products.
Market segmentation allows for a better allocation of a firms finite
resources. A firm only possesses a certain amount of resources. Accordingly, it
must make choices (and incur the related costs) in servicing specific groups of
consumers. In this way, the diversified tastes of contemporary Western consumers
can be served better. With growing diversity in the tastes of modern consumers,
firms are taking note of the benefit of servicing a multiplicity of new markets.
Market segmentation can be viewed as a key dynamic in interpreting and
executing a logical perspective of Strategic Marketing Planning. The manifestation
of this process is considered by many traditional thinkers to include the following;
Segmenting, Targeting and Positioning.

Types of market research:Market research, as a sub-set aspect of marketing activities, can be divided
into the following parts:
o Primary research (also known as field research), which involves the
conduction and compilation of research for a specific purpose.

Customer Satisfaction

o Secondary research (also referred to as desk research), initially conducted

for one purpose, but often used to support another purpose or end goal.
By these definitions, an example of primary research would be market
research conducted into health foods, which is used solely to ascertain the
needs/wants of the target market for health foods. Secondary research in this case
would be research pertaining to health foods, but used by a firm wishing to develop
an unrelated product.
Primary research is often expensive to prepare, collect and interpret from
data to information. Nevertheless, while secondary research is relatively
inexpensive, it often can become out dated and outmoded, given that it is used for a
purpose other than the one for which it was intended. Primary research can also be
broken down into quantitative research and qualitative research, which, as the
terms suggest, pertain to numerical and non-numerical research methods and
techniques, respectively. The appropriateness of each mode of research depends on
whether data can be quantified (quantitative research), or whether subjective, onnumeric or abstract concepts are required to be studied (qualitative research).

There also exist additional modes of marketing research, which are:o Exploratory research, pertaining to research that investigates an assumption.
o Descriptive research, which, as the term suggests, describes "what is".
o Predictive research, meaning research conducted to predict a future
occurrence.
Conclusive research, for the purpose of deriving a conclusion via a research
process.

Customer Satisfaction

Importance of marketing:Marketing plays an important role in the success of a business enterprise.

Market primarily concerned with movement of goods and services from the
producer to customer order to satisfy their needs.
Marketing helps in the realization of the objective for the organization has
been setup.
Its helps the community to satisfy their economy and social needs and thus
raise their standard of living.
It helps the in producing those products that are needed by the customers
and community at large.
Its helps in an efficient and production utilization of resources, human and
materials eliminating wastages.
It helps the enterprise to adapt to the changing conditions and circumstances.
It helps the enterprise to achieving the maximum efficiency, productivity and
profitability with the minimum effort and cost.

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UNIT-B
INTRODUCTION TO CUSTOMER SATISFACTION:
Today in the customer driven economy all firms are engaged in rat race to
attract customers and build a long term relationship with their loyal customer
The key to customer loyalty is through customer satisfaction. A satisfied
customer will act as a spoken person of the company's products and bring non
buyers. There is high correlation between loyalty and profitability. That is to say a
small percentage of loyal customers will lead large weight to the company's sales.
So marketers have to ensure customer value satisfaction.

Definition of customer satisfaction:Customer's satisfaction is a person's feelings of pleasure are disappointment

resulting from comparing a products perceived performance in relation to his or
her expectation. As this definition makes clear, satisfaction is a function of
perceived performance and expectations. If the performance falls short of
expectations, the customer is dissatisfied. If the performance matches the
expectations, the customer is satisfied. If the performance exceeds expectations the
customer is highly satisfied.
Many companies are aiming for eye satisfaction customers who are just
satisfied still find it easy to switch when a better offer comes along. Those who are
satisfied are much less ready to switch. Eye satisfactions are delight creates an
emotional affinity with the brand, not just a rational performance. The result is
high customer loyalty.

Customer Satisfaction

A satisfied customer:
o Buy's again Talks favourable to others about the company.
o Pays less attention to competing brands and advertising.
o Buy's other products of the same company.

Importance of customer satisfaction study:

The manufacturer and dealer have to conduct market surveys to determine
company's success or failure from long term prospective. It is an effect to discover
how satisfies their customers. The study depends much on the feedbacks given by
the customer this will create wealth of information for the company to fall back
upon to improve the product and services from the angles.

Gain (importance) to manufacture

It creates brand name and image
It helps and identifies grey area if any
Helps in increasing sales by satisfied customers
It helps rectifying product defect
It helps in future implements

Gain (importance) to dealer

It increase the sale of the particular dealer
It helps in promotional strategy
It helps in sales section
It helps in building up of a force of loyal customer

In order to ensure satisfaction and retain customer on the long term,

the following areas needs to be consider.
Knowledge of customer requirement and expectations:
There is a need to regularly and systematically study who the customer and
what they need and what they expect from the firm.

Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction result:

Collect information regularly on customer satisfaction to compare
satisfaction level with the previous view and check if the companies are
reduced.

Customer satisfaction comparison

Compare customer satisfaction level with that of the other companies in
similar and different industries those considered the best.
Customer relationship management
Listen to the customer response who what they say and have well trained
customers contact employees who have the authority to resolve are deal
promptly.
Customer service standard.
Have a clearly stated set of customer service standards are governing direct
contact employees and customers.
Commitment to customers.
Product and services should be back by guarantees and warranties which
are made clear to customer and are upheld 100%.

CHAPTER-2

RESEARCH DESIGN
Research design is a systematic planning, organizing and executing a
research project within specified time limit and resource allocation. Research
design tells the type of data to be collected, the sources of data and the procedures

Customer Satisfaction

to be followed in data collection. Research design provides suitable framework that

guides the collection and analysis of data.

STATEMENT OF PROBLEM:
After going through various sources like magazine, newspapers, websites
found that lot of research work as undertaken by researcher regarding impact of
customer satisfaction. But there was a gap in the research regarding satisfaction
level .so there is a need to discover this fact. It is predicted that Vikas enterprises is
the one which is producing continuously at all seasons. To increase the sales of
product marketing is necessary for a firm.
Keeping this in mind management should concentrate more on increase in
customer satisfaction and profit by introducing new products or by improving
products quality from year to year. It is felt that the demand for Furniture products
in Bangalore city is less because of the lack of marketing efforts and heavy
competition. So to convert this region into more attractive the Vikas enterprises is
needed some basic information of customers attitudes, competitor's attitudes and
distribution system of Vikas enterprises products etc... So I decided to work on this
particular aspect.

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY:

1. To understand the present demand in market of Vikas enterprises.
2. To analyse the customer satisfaction of Vikas enterprises products,
particularly TV tables, Computer tables, wardrobes.
3. To analyse quality of service and customer satisfaction by Vikas enterprises.
4. To gain the practical knowledge of an organization.

Customer Satisfaction

SCOPE OF THE STUDY:

The study is purely based on the survey conducted in Bangalore city that is in
Nagarabhavi, Govindarajnagar and nearby places. This survey is focused on
householders and shopkeepers. The study aims to provide solutions for the better
source customer satisfaction.
The study covers information about the various competitive brands in
popular segment the customers attitudes towards the Furniture
The population of whole Nagaravabhavi , govindarajnagar and the nearby
places convenience sampling method has been used to select the final consumers
and agents and time allotted for this research was 30 days.
The result obtained cannot be generalized to the whole population as the
methods for arriving at the sample size and selecting the sample were unempirical.
The study will also help the management to decide how and where to better
allocate the resources.

METHOD OF DATA COLLECTION:

Research methodology is way to systematically solve the research problem. It
may be understood as a source of studying how research is done scientifically.
It is a descriptive cum case study. For the purpose of gathering primary data,
a structured questionnaire was used and also personal interview of respondents
were conducted. Some of the documents provided by the company are referred for
the purpose of secondary data and also various books, interne information; articles
are referred for gathering secondary data.

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Data collection method:

Research is based on survey method which is done randomly.

Sources of data:
The data collection forms were of the structured non-disguised type. For this
purpose of the present of study the data has been collected from two sources.
1. Primary data
2. Secondary data

Primary data:
Primary data was collected using structured questionnaire which were predominantly
closed ended ones with open ended questions used wherever felt necessary. Consumers with
sample size of 30 - 50 were surveyed using the questionnaire. The questionnaire is appended in
the 5th chapter.

Secondary data:
Secondary data is collected from the company sources like books, journal,
magazines, and internet and company reports.
Personal interviews with the dealers of Vikas enterprises were conducted in
order to understand various issues, particularly the brand they try to push and why,
in depth, each interview lasted at 20 to 40 minutes.

The questionnaire divided in to two sections

Personal profile (about the consumers)
Specific (only with reference to Vikas enterprises furniture products)
Sampling Unit:

Customer Satisfaction

Consumers of leading brand of Vikas enterprises were chosen as the sampling unit.
In this project the sampling unit is customers.
Sampling size Collection of data was made from customers of the Vikas
ennterprises. Here the sample size would be 30 - 50 customers.
Sampling method Random sampling is being used because it gives each element
independent chance of being selected (equal chance has been given to all
customers for selection).

LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY:

The time provided by the company to conduct our study was limited, so it
was not sufficient for us to collect more information about the topic.
Due to busy schedule of personal officers they did not provide much
information require to my study.
The personal interviews are not idealistic and informative.
The company doesnt leak out some necessary data and information , as they
feared about loss or security.

CHAPTER SCHEME:
Chapter 1: Introduction
This chapter will include an introduction to the marketing and introduction to
the broad area of the topic chosen.

Chapter 2: Research design

This chapter will includes an introduction, statement of the problem, scope of
the study, objective of the problem, operational definitions of concept,

Customer Satisfaction

methodology, and limitation of the study to the broad area of the chosen design of
the study.

Chapter 3: Industry profile and Company profile

This chapter will include Industry and Company profile of the selected
organizations.

Chapter 4: Data Analysis and Interpretation

This chapter will include data analysis and interpretation (it includes Tables
and Graphs).

Chapter 5: Summary of Findings, Suggestions and Conclusions

This chapter will include Summary of Findings, Suggestions and Conclusions
and policy implications and scope of the further study at chosen topic.