The Consumer Electronics Industry has worldwide arrived at a phase of reconditioning. Both manufacturers, consumers and the intermediate trade are confronted with Shakespeare's intriguing question mark: "To Be Or Not To Be?". Who will survive? There is no doubt that in the marketing era of Consumer Orientation and Consumer Satisfaction, the consumer will survive in the end. But what about manufacturers and the intermediate trade, where business is going more and more multi-national, regional or global? Will they endure, and how many manufacturers will endure? Market- and Marketing Research and Intelligence cannot solve all these questi- ons, but there is, certainly in these days, a tremendous opportunity to help solve these questions. Three major Issues will be highlighted, where alliances and partnerships are leading principles. The first Issue relates to the future of the Electronics Industry in Europe itself. It will pave the way for the second Issue, which refers to developments in Distribution in the European arena, and whether these will deliver opportunities to Consumer Electronics manufacturers. The concept of Added Value will be shown to be the cornerstone of new policy making. The last Issue covered refers to developments in Marketing Research and Intelligence, and whether Marketing Research and Consultancy can help improve Customer Orientation and the development of Partnerships, both at Trade, and Consumer level.
The financial service industry is moving towards a more consumer, rather than product-led, orientation, with the philosophy of good service now becoming increasingly important. However, in this expanding area of market research the facilitator and representative of good service is often not considered. The authors contend that involvement with and evaluation of staff should be a prerequisite of any consumer research in the financial services marketplace. In an attempt to demonstrate the importance of staff research, this paper examines the issue from a number of viewpoints. It deals with the consumer perspective on the importance of staff in the financial service industry. It also describes the benefits of staff research in achieving a deeper understanding of the complex interrelationships in the financial service industry and in more fully meeting research objectives. Finally, the paper deals with the political arena in which research is required to operate and its implications.
The banks that do well in the 1990's will be those which re-discover the customer and start to manage customer service. Customers tend to define service quality by what is spoken, heard or seen in their encounters with the bank. The 'service encounter', that is the interaction between bank and customer, is the obvious focus of service quality management. Yet the service encounter and the qualities of service cannot be isolated so easily in banking, especially retail banking. This paper focusses on the conceptual and managerial aspects of service quality rather more than methodological considerations.
The case study will show how consumer panel data are integrated into a consumer-oriented marketing model, how hypotheses on consumer's reaction can be checked and how different pricing strategies can be simulated.
The paper describes how retailers in the automotive business who are generally action oriented, overly concerned with prices charged and wanting to see real results in a short time frame can be made aware of their store image. Store image is here defined as the consumers' evaluation of all salient aspects of the store as individually perceived and weighted. An instrument used in 69 studies generating information for strategic decision making is described. An analysis of aggregated results is presented and interpreted as evidence that automotive retailers are in the business of services marketing. Where services marketing is defined as an interactive process in which the benefit is provided to the customer through that individualâs interaction with the physical environment and personnel provided by the retailer. The view is taken that an automotive retailer should lay emphasis on the human interface of his operation and on providing customer oriented after-sales services in order to achieve a successful store image.
In the past three years price behaviour has been more closely scrutinized than before. The efforts to improve the insight in the relationship between price and buying behaviour were stimulated by the increased competition in the field of retailing. They have resulted in a new approach in formulating theories on price behaviour. In the course of the studies in this field a new model has been designed; this model which is based on panel observations, shows per product category the interdependency of prices by means of a minimum price line. This price line is a line from which the quantity bought over a certain price can be read for all possible prices. This model is an illustration of the actual market situation in which a product field comprising varieties and brands shows differentiation in prices. The needs for more models based on buyers' behaviour has been argued before since the classic price theory proves to be of little value when looking for guidelines for pricing in a developing economy. Whereas marketing is consumer oriented, pricing is mostly guided by other factors than the consumers' preferences. The two main deciding factors are costing and competition.
Producing chemicals in Europe means traditionally an international approach to marketing and, accordingly, to market research. The reason why the activities of European chemical companies extend beyond national borders is because, on the one hand, chemical industries developed first in only a few countries of Europe. A new element has been added since 1945, when chemical market research as a whole became much more consumer-orientated. From that time onwards newly developed polymers in the form of plastic materials, textile fibres, elastomers and poromeric leather have been put on the market each year. In most cases the new synthetic chemicals appeared as branded materials, which distinguished them by property and performance from old established natural raw materials. Advertising campaigns and promotion programmes made the consumer aware of these new products in the introductory phase. At this stage, with new plastics and new synthetic fibres being offered on the market, the chemical companies got deeply involved in multi-country research of two types, industrial and consumer orientated research.