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Portfolio Activity Unit 2

BUS5112: Marketing Management

Dr. Harsha Lalwani

November 24, 2022

By Dimitra Triantafyllou

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1. Read the article: “Exploring Factors That Influence Consumer Loyalty to

Automobile Dealerships in New York.” and then perform the following:

 Provide some customer retention strategies which benefits

organizations

Customer retention is a way to measure customer loyalty, or the ability for an

organization to keep its customers over time. Customer retention can reflect or

predict customer satisfaction, repurchase behavior, customer engagement and

emotional ties to a brand. Turning a prospective client into a loyal customer is a costly

endeavor that is essentially an investment in the future. Retention runs beyond loyalty.

Customer retention strategies include creating a strong onboarding experience,

providing personalized customer experiences, building the sense of trust and long-

term relationships with your customers, creating a vigorous customer loyalty program

implementing a customer feedback loop, maintaining a customer communication

calendar, sending a company newsletter, offering education program to customers,

offering unique services, controlling customers’ data, personalizing your offers and

communications, re-engaging customers using marketing automation. Some customer

retention strategies that benefits organizations includes, targeting customer for

retention, bonding, internal marketing, promise fulfillment, service recovery and

building trust.

Nearly all the industries show improvements in Customer Retention over the last

years, but the improvements are moderate.

 What actions are involved before the final decision to buy or consume
a product and services?

A consumer goes through the following stages before the final decision to buy or

consume a product or service. 1. Acknowledging problems, 2. Collecting data, 3.

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Appraising Solutions, 4.Purchasing goods and services, and 5.After-purchase

considerations. (Nicasio F., 2019) Marketers tend to underestimate or even disregard

this last stage. Marketers should have strategies to effectively research what their

customers feel after they have purchased the firms’ product or service. Do they feel

satisfied or do they feel the company let them down? A company should be interested

in knowing what led their customer to feel that the product or service did not rise to

their expectations.

2. Using what you have learned from the course materials and other sources in
Unit 1 and in Unit 2, consider your own behavior as a buyer. Think about the
kinds of things that move you to make purchases, both large and small, and
then answer the following:

 Before making a major purchase, what types of data do you gather?

Prior to decide on a major purchase, which consequently means a high cost, I

will search product’s attributes, customers’ critiques regarding the specific

type or brand, price ranges among different selling points, possible payment

arrangements, and producing company’s reputation.

 What types of data are most compelling to you? Do you buy

impulsively?

The most appealing types of data are customers’ evaluation and more

specifically friends’ experience with a product or service. I rarely buy

impulsively due to financial restrictions and due to past unmemorable

experiences of impulse purchasing.

 If so, what type of products do you buy impulsively?

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I could easily proceed to an impulse purchase only when it is a low price

product that is offered in reduced/sales ticket price. Impulse purchases are

mostly related with leisure time during travelling.

 Are there ways in which you want to improve your own consumer
behavior?

I would like to spend more time researching offered prices for a specific

product after having decided on acquiring it. I repeatedly try to convince

myself to better read products’ specifications and user’s guides.

3. Take a moment and reflect on the topics introduced in this Unit.

 Formulate at least one question that arose while you were reading the
material and completing the assignments.

I am seriously contemplating on the accuracy and insightfulness of consumers’

evaluation of a product or service. Over the years I observe that consumers, when

asked in public, tend to positively evaluate their purchases as a means to support their

ability to take correct and flawless decisions and praise themselves. Above all we

need to psychologically boost our self-value.

 Was there anything in this Unit that surprised you or caught your
attention? Explain.

What caught my attention was that the impact of retaining 2% more customers is

almost same as cutting costs by 10% (Tatikonda, 2013). It cost at least five times

more to get a new customer than to retain an existing one (Chokera & Dube, 2011). I

was unaware of the fact that customer retention and loyalty are such important

cornerstones in business field considering the existence of merciless competition. As

Simon Sinek writes companies can build customer loyalty when they start with “why”

they do whatever is what they are doing. Sinek, S. (2010)

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REFERENCES

1. Chokera, F., & Dube, R. (2011). Relationship Marketing Strategy (1st ed.).

Booklove Publishers, Zimbabwe.

2. Nicasio, F. (2019, June 18). 5 essential steps in the consumer buying process.
PowerReviews. Retrieved November 25, 2022, from
https://www.powerreviews.com/blog/consumer-buying-process/

3. Sinek, S. (2010). Start with why: How great leaders inspire everyone to take

action. Penguin Audio.

4. Tatikonda, L.U. (2013). The Hidden Costs of Customer

Dissatisfaction. Management Accounting Quarterly, 14, 34.

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