UNDERSTANDING CUSTOMER

EXPECTATIONS THROUGH
MARKETING RESEARCH
Finding out what the customer expect is essential in
providing service quality.
Key vehicle for understanding customer expectations
& perceptions.
Marketing research is a formalized means of
collecting, analyzing and interpreting
information to be used in helping making
marketing decisions.
 Customer
expectations

Company
perceptions
of consumer
Expectations
Key factors leading to provider Gap 1:
Insufficient Marketing research.
Inadequate use of marketing research.
Lack of Interaction between the Management &
customer.
Insufficient communication between contact
employees & managers.
 Stages in marketing research
Develop
Define problem Service Implement
& research Measurement Research
objective strategy program

Interpret
Collect & and analyze Report
Tabulate The findings findings
data
 Define the problem and research objective

First stage of services marketing research process

This is the stage where the services marketer poses

the qns to be answered.say
Does the company wants to know how the customers
view the services provided by yhe company.
What customers requirements are ,how customers
respond to new product,what customers want fm
company now & after 5 years.
 The following are the common objectives of services marketing
research
To identify dissatisfied customers
To discover customer requirements and expectations of
services.
To monitor and track service performance.
To access overall company performance.
To assess the gap b/n customer expectation and
services.
To appraise the service performance of individual
To forecast future expectation of services
To determine customer expectation for new services.
Develop services measurement strategy:
Company should match the research objective with the
measurement strategy.

In the planning stage of measurement strategy the

company did not know what aspects of services is best
predicted customer satisfaction bcos no comprehensive
research had been conducted to identify them.
MEASUREMENT STRATEGY FOR SKILL DYNAMICS
 WHAT WILL BE MEASURED EXECUTIVE STUDENT STUDENT
 MANAGER
Key predictors for satisfaction
Education planning/course X X
Enrollment X X
Course content X
Instructor effectiveness X

Overall satisfaction measures

Class/Program X X
Business unit X X X
Relationship X
Consequences of satisfaction
Value X
Loyalty X X
IMPLEMENT THE RESEARCH PROGRAM

This stage includes both developing and implementing

plan to collect all primary data needed to fulfill the
measurement strategy.
It involves many kind of decision
What type of research approach should we use?
How we will collect the information.
When will we collect the information?
How will we make sure that info is accurate?
How much will the research cost?
 Criteria for effective services research program:

Includes qualitative and quantitative research

Includes both perception and expectation of
customers
Balances the cost of research & value of information
Includes statistical validity when necessary
Measures priorities or importance.
Measuring the relative importance of service
dimensions & attributes help the managers to
channel the resources effectively.
Direct importance measures
Indirect importance measures
occurs with appropriate frequency.
Includes measures of loyalty and behavioural
intentions
Elements in an effective services marketing research
program
A good services marketing research prg includes
multiple types of research studies.
Complaint solicitation
 collects and documents complaints of customer.
Uses that info to identify the dissatisfied customers
Identify individual problem where possible.
Identify common service failure points
Research on complaints is one of the easiest type of
research the firms want to conduct
Techniques require rigorous recording number and
types of complaints thro’ many channels.
Critical incident studies
Customer provide verbatim stories about the satisfying
and dissatisfying service counter which they have
experienced.
It is powerful and vivid in eliciting customer
requirement particularly when the research is focused
on behavioural dimensions of employee performance at
transactional level.
It describes best practices at transactional level.
Requirement research
Identifies the benefit and attributes that customer
expect in the service.
Basic research
Eg structured brainstorming tech in IBM ‘s
advanced management system,
What they want?
Why they want?
How they know?
When they receive?
To examine existing research about the customer
requirements in similar service industries.
Eg hotel & hospital.
B cos hotels must have used longer marketing
research than hospitals
Relationship surveys:
Pose questions about all elements of customer
relationship with the service.(includes
price,product,service)
To find out the s & w.
To tract the performance ,usually being conducted
annually.
Used to compare company performance with that of
competitors.
Qns are asked about the focal companies & one or more
competitors.s
Contd:
Eg SERVQUAL
Multi dimensional scale for measuring customers
perception.
It reflects five dimensional service quality.
Contains 21 perception item that are distributed
throughout the five service quality dimension.
EG perception statement with reliability dimension.
1.when ABC promises to do something by a certain
time.it does so.
2.it shows a sincere interest in solving its customer
problem or not
Trailer calls or post transaction surveys
Realationship surverys is to gauge the overall
relationship with the customer.’
Trailer calls is to capture info about 1 0r all the key
service encounter with the customer.
Customers are asked particular set of qns after
transaction.
To get the assurance whether they are satisfied.
It acts as incentive for the employee to change asa soon
as.
Key client studies:
When the firms sells to business or to intermediate
customers rather than to end customers ,some clients
are large and important enough to be studied
individually and in depth
Eg GE aerosapace division
Law firms
consultancies
 Mystery shopping


companies hire outside org to send people

into service establishments & experience the
service as if they werecustomers..
These mystery shoppers are trained in the
criteria important to customers of
establishment & deliver objective assessment
of performance of service personnel.
Customer panels
Ongoing groups of customers assembled to
provide attitude & perception about a service over
a time.
They offer a company regular and timely customer
information.
Eg US air use business traveller firm that uses
several times ayear
Lost customer research:
It involves deliberately seeking customers who
have dropped the company service to enquire
about the reason
Some lost customer research is similar to exit
interviews with employees. In that it asks open
ended and indepth questions to expose reasons
for defection.
Future Expectation Research
Customer expectations are dynamic and change very
rapidly.
As competition increases as taste changes and as
customers become more knowledgable
Features Research
Synectics Approach
Lead User Research
Collect & tabulate data
Analyze & interpret the findings
Report the findings