Customer Satisfaction and Engagement

Customer Satisfaction and Engagement

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Words: 1500

Table of Contents

Executive Summary:        3

Introduction:        4

Customer Satisfaction vs. Customer Engagement:        4

Assessing the Consumer Data:        6

Recommendations:        7

Conclusion:        8

References:        9

Executive Summary:

In order to comprehend the customer retention and loyalty in the retail sector, it is important to evaluate the difference between both the customer satisfaction and customer engagement as a tool. Customer engagement tool encompasses on various elements required for the retail sector to focus and also provide the ability to forecast the future set of events.  

Also from the data set provided, it has been found that, today’s the customers are greatly influenced by the two factors, and they are the price and social media. Since these two factors are considered to be the stronger contributors towards customer loyalty and retention in the current business perspective.

Introduction:

Hollebeek (2011) defines customer engagement as an emotional linkage that a customer has with a brand. Hollebeek (2011) also asserts that both customer engagement and purchasing rate are directly proportional, because if the customer engagement goes higher, the purchasing rate also increases with it. When the customer engagement rises, it is not only the purchasing rate that goes higher says Bijmolt et al (2010) in their research journal, but also loyalty and the promotion (mainly word to mouth) of the brand through the customers as well.  For this reason, it becomes significant for every business organization to offer the higher quality customer experience, since it is one of the most significant tools in the strategy of customer engagement.

On the other side customer satisfaction, is a term used in the marketing sector for the measurement of customer expectation with a specific product or service. Bergman and Klefsjö (2010) defines it as a tool that a company measure in order to determine whether their product or service have surpassed the customer or the consumer expectation.  They also assert it as a pivotal metric that can be utilized for improving business operations and growth through suitable development of strategies that would enhance the customer satisfaction rate.

The report aims to understand the idea of customer satisfaction and customer engagement. The study also intent to learn and determine the factors or the variables that influence the customer satisfaction rate, through a thorough assessment of data sheet of a ‘consumer shopping survey’ provided.

Purpose of the Report:

(100 Words) (The aim is to understand customer engagement and satisfaction through data from the countdown supermarket)

Customer Satisfaction vs. Customer Engagement:

“Measuring customer satisfaction and their engagement with the brand and the product is always significant for the business, especially for the future strategic development and sustainability,” says Deng et al (2010, p. 291). The importance of measurement is always a significant part in science as well as in the business field, as Deng et al (2010) evidently established the pivotal role of it; since it is not only a growth strategy but also a survival tactic as well for the business organizations.

One of the main dilemmas within the business and scholarly community was on the most effective and efficient measurement tool. Van Doorn et al (2010) stated this notion in their work ‘Customer engagement behavior’, and according to them adapting to an measurement tool is indeed tricky, since an effective tool should be able to analyze, forecast and even improve the customer loyalty. Customer satisfaction was in the sector since 1980, and has been popularized by both the business and the scholarly communities as one of the best measurement tool for the improvement of customer retention. Although customer satisfaction persisted as one of the most utilized tool in the business sector, there has been a dire concern over it by many various scholarly and business communities. As Anderson and Swaminathan (2011) posited, many experts from the business and the intellectual fields have questioned the significance of the customer satisfaction, and the main concern they raised was the weak impact over the loyalty factor.

Currently many business enterprises are indulging in recording customer engagement instead of retention. Anderson and Swaminathan (2011) says this came as a result from the realization that customer engagement metric system have a greater stability and accuracy in determining and improving the retention as well as the customer loyalty. Therefore they term it as the “best measurement tool” in business today (Anderson and Swaminathan, 2011).  One of the main issue with the customer satisfaction tool was its unpredictable nature says Anderson and Swaminathan (2011), since the metric mostly uses the past customer behavior to predict the future. The same argument was asserted by Tripathy (2014) in his work, and supporting the notion of Anderson and Swaminathan (2011), and according to him the entire approach of customer satisfaction sometimes fails to forecast the customer behavior.

Tripathy (2014) also says that the customer satisfaction tool has been a popular tool among the business communities for a prolonged time. He also affirms that the customer satisfaction could successfully assess and determine the gap between the customer perception and customer expectation, especially in determining whether or not the customer expectations are met.  It is an evident factor that customers who are satisfied from a product or a service are the one who met or even exceeded their expectations.

According to So et al (2016), it was during the late 1990s that the business communities had a realization, especially on the goals they set on customer retention.  The studies posited that customers, who are considered as satisfied, are just on the borderline of satisfaction (So et al, 2016). This is the fundamental case that many of the scholars and business communities started terming the customer satisfaction tool as ‘defective, says So et al (2016).

According to Verhoef et al (2010) the emergence of customer engagement occurred when the element of emotion was added as a significant component that drives customer experience. As a basic functional measuring tool, customer satisfaction was assessing the review on tangible and above all rational results such as pricing. In this case when a less costly or priced service or product comes into the market, the probability of customers switching towards became extremely high. With many following researches and studies regarding this, the scholars as well as the business communities started verifying the significant difference between the customer satisfaction and the customer engagement, and as a result the realization came that more the customer engagement higher will be the loyalty (Verhoef et al, 2010). Therefore comparing customer engagement with the customer satisfaction tool, it become affirmed that customer engagement tool is far more effective and efficient, for the improving the retention rate.