Customers are the people who are happy with the product & services & are willing to come back & pay for it again. Today the firms aim to give satisfaction to the customer through the marketing concepts. The firm tries to help the buyers in solving the problem with their competitors. The marketers analyzes that the consumers have the purchasing power that constitute a potential to buyers and are identified. It is essential for the marketer to carry out the business in such a way that they give satisfaction to the customers. It is believed that consumers or customers make purchase decision on the basis of receipt of a small number of selectivity chosen pieces of information. Thus it will be very important to understand what & how mush to evaluate the goods & services offerings.
Consumer behavior can be said to be the study of how individual make decision on how to spend their available resources time, money, effort on various consumption related items. This simple definition of consumer behavior tells the markets to resolve every activity around the ultimate consumers & gauge their behavior by specially focusing on the decision making process of the customers. The decision making process identifies the number of people who are involve in this process & describes a role to them like users, decides, influences & buyers.
Customer expectation through look realistic is very often build upon on a very high platform. Then the quality of the product or services may not match the expectation. This again will affect the customer satisfaction level.
So as to reduce the level of dissatisfaction among the customers, the marketing decision maker could have adopted approaches wherein they can classify the market in relation to the degree of opportunity to deliver customer satisfaction. They could establish itself from the common factors evaluate each market opportunity against these.
Many of the companies are entrusting their customers to give a feedback & use this as a means of maintaining regular contact & dialogue, having realized the importance of obtaining a feedback on the consumers. Rather than avoiding comment. The companies are encouraging their customers to talk, as mentioned above, feedback helps them to market firm to get on idea about the customers view point on their product or services & more important is that this information will help them to take action & deal with any problem immediately. This implies that the company focuses its activities and products on consumer demands. Generally these are done by the sense of identifying market changes and the product innovation approach.
3. Literature Review.
Many companies are aiming for high satisfaction because customers who are just satisfied still find it easy to switch when better offer comes along. Those who are highly satisfied are much less ready to switch. High satisfaction creates an emotional bind with the brand not just a rational preference. The result is based highly on customer loyalty. Hence an attempt has been made to identify the customer attitude and satisfaction on Al Rawabi Milk Products and other Rawabi products.
Most businesses lose a certain proportion of their customers in every year they trade, and in many cases the customer is lost because they have been defected due to the competition. This is often referred to by marketers as ‘customer decay’ or ‘customer attrition’. In some markets, the average attrition rate is between 10 and 30%! There are many reasons why a customer defects, but without a doubt the primary driver is dissatisfaction with the product or service being offered.
Providing organizations can replace the lost customer with a new customer, ‘customer decay’ is not necessarily perceived as an urgent problem. But ‘customer decay’ should in fact be a problem for all organizations and ignoring it is both dangerous and inefficient.
Previous studies have identified that the benefits that customer retention delivers to an organization For example, the longer a customer stays with an organization the more utility the customer generates. This is an outcome of a number of factors relating to the time the customer spends with the organization. These include the higher initial costs of introducing and attracting a new customer, increases in both the value and number of purchases, the customer's better understanding of the organization, and positive word-of-mouth promotion.
Apart from the benefits that the longevity of customers brings, research findings also suggest that the costs of customer retention activities are less than the costs of acquiring new customers. For example, the financial implications of attracting new customers may be five times as costly as keeping existing customers. However, maintaining high levels of satisfaction will not, by itself, ensure customer loyalty. Banks lose satisfied customers who have moved, retired, or no longer need certain services. As a consequence, retaining customers becomes a priority. Previous research shows, however, that longevity does not automatically leads to profitability.
Examples of such constructs are competitive advantage, customer satisfaction, switching barriers, corporate image, and bank services characteristics. These form the basis for the present investigation. There have been few, if any, attempts to link them to customer retention. This is curious, for if retention criteria are not well managed, customers might still leave their banks, no matter how hard bankers try to retain them.
In a highly competitive market, the shortest route to differentiation is through the development of brands and active promotion to both intermediaries and final consumers. In the long run, however, branding, targeting and positioning would all be much more effective if the supplier had some tangible advantage to offer consumers. This is evident in the banking industry, where many banks are providing more or less the identical products for nearly the same price. Unless a bank can extend its product quality beyond the core service with additional and potential service features and value, it is unlikely to gain a sustainable competitive advantage. Thus, the most likely way to both retain customers and improve profitability is by adding value via a strategy of differentiation while increasing margins through higher prices.
3. Research Ethics.
When most people think of ethics, they think of rules for distinguishing between right and wrong, such as the Golden Rule "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", This is the most common way of defining "ethics": ethics are norms for conduct that distinguish between or acceptable and unacceptable behavior.
Many different disciplines, institutions, and professions have norms for behavior that suit their particular aims and goals. These norms also help members of the discipline to coordinate their actions or activities and to establish the public's trust of the discipline. For instance, ethical norms govern conduct in medicine, law, engineering, and business. Ethical norms also serve the aims or goals of research and apply to people who conduct scientific research or other scholarly or creative activities, and there is a specialized discipline, research ethics, which studies these norms.
Given the importance of ethics for the conduct of research, it should come as no surprise that many different professional associations, government agencies, and universities have adopted specific codes, rules, and policies relating to research ethics also have ethics rules for funded researchers, which we will they need to follow. We should strive for honesty in all scientific communications. Honestly report data, results, methods and procedures, and publication status. We should not fabricate, falsify, or misrepresent data. We should not deceive colleagues, granting agencies, or the public. We should avoid bias in experimental design, data analysis, data interpretation, peer review, personnel decisions, grant writing, expert testimony, and other aspects of research where objectivity is expected or required. And we should try to avoid or minimize bias or self-deception. Disclose personal or financial interests that may affect research. We should keep up our promises and agreements; act with sincerity; strive for consistency of thought and action.
We should avoid careless errors and negligence; carefully and critically examine our own work and the work of our peers. Keep good records of research activities, such as data collection, research design, and correspondence with agencies or journals. We should honor patents, copyrights, and other forms of intellectual property. We should not use unpublished data, methods, or results without permission. Give credit where credit is due. Give proper acknowledgement or credit for all contributions to research. Protect confidential communications, such as papers or grants submitted for publication, personnel records, trade or military secrets, and patient records. Publish in order to advance research and scholarship, not to advance just your own career. We should avoid wasteful and duplicative publication. Help to educate, mentor, and advise students. Promote their welfare and allow them to make their own decisions.
Respect our colleagues and treat them fairly. Strive to promote social good and prevent or mitigate social harms through research, public education, and advocacy. We should avoid discrimination against colleagues or students on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, or other factors that are not related to their scientific competence and integrity. Maintain and improve our own professional competence and expertise through lifelong education and learning; take steps to promote competence. Know and obey relevant laws and institutional and governmental policies. Many of these actions would be regarded as highly unethical and some might even be illegal.
Most of these would also violate different professional ethics codes or institutional policies. However, they do not fall into the narrow category of actions that the government classifies as research misconduct. Indeed, there has been considerable debate about the definition of "research misconduct" and many researchers and policy makers are not satisfied with the government's narrow definition that focuses on FFP. However, given the huge list of potential offenses that might fall into the category "other deviations," and the practical problems with defining and policing these other deviations, it is understandable why government officials have chosen to limit their focus.
Finally, situations frequently arise in research in which different people disagree about the proper course of action and there is no broad consensus about what should be done. In these situations, there may be good arguments on both sides of the issue and different ethical principles may conflict. These situations create difficult decisions for research.
4. Research Objectives.
- To explore the level of satisfaction of the customers of Al Rawabi Dairy Bank.
- To find the areas of satisfaction and dissatisfaction among the customers of the bank.
- To analyze the findings gathered from the customers of Al Rawabi Dairy.
- To conclude with a report on the benefits of conducting a customer satisfaction survey.
- To find the areas where Al Rawabi can improve their services.
- To find the areas where Al Rawabi is lacking it services and trust on the customers so that it regains it old customers and as well as obtaining new one.
5. Significance of Study
1) The GCC countries are developing rapidly. The purchasing power is high and the awareness is growing due to the marketing campaigns that have been done by dairy companies.
2) Sales of milk are booming across the Middle East as consumers turn to products that are natural, nutritious and offer good value, so it becomes difficult to sell products.
3) A major outbreak of disease within the herd could have a material adverse effect on the company. However this risk is mitigated by the captive sourcing of over 90% of company's requirement of milk through its own dairy herd. Further, the Saudi Arabia and UAE are officially recognized as free of disease. The company has strict internal controls and procedures in place to avoid such a risk.
4) Profit margins and profitability may come under pressure if there was a water shortage and the company was forced to import forage from abroad.
5) Fresh dairy products have a limited shelf life of six days. Any disruption in the distribution network of the company could adversely affect the sales.
6) With so many newcomers entering this industry, competition is becoming tougher day by day. But then competition has to be faced as a ground reality.
6. Sampling Method.
Simple Random sampling method has been used for the data collection method.
7. Sampling Size.
This Study consists of interviewing 20 customers of the Al Rawabi Dairy in Dubai, U.A.E.
8. Data Collection Method.
A questionnaire is used to gage the level of customer satisfaction for data collection.
9. Data Analysis & Interception
The data will be analyzed using simple percentage table.
10. Universe
The study is done on the customers of the Al Rawabi Dairy and the report is based on the survey of the customers of the dairy
11. Time Scale
3rd August 2009 – Research Proposal
10th August 2009 - Draft of Questionnaire / Interview Schedule
17th August 2009 - Finalization of Schedule & Permission of data collection
17th August 2009 - Draft of Introduction and Research Methodology
24th August 2009 - Draft of Review of Literature
13th September 2009 – Completion of data collection
20th September 2009 Completion of Data Analysis & Interpretation
28th September 2009 – Completion of Findings, Conclusion & Suggestions
28th September 2009 – Final Draft of Research Project
5th September 2009 – Submission of Research Conducted
12. Resources
Word, Excel, Google.com, Yahoo.com, AlRawabi.com, Wikipedia.com
