A Project Report On Customer Satisfaction
A Project Report On Customer Satisfaction
A Project Report On Customer Satisfaction
A Project Report on
Customer satisfaction
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PREFACE
This project is undertaken to fulfil the project work component of the MBA
program in the Summer Vaccations. My project guide from Chief Khalsa Diwan Institute
This project gives idea about what are the things which are to be taken in
consideration while handling an event and what sort of challenges are faced by an event
manager.
This project specifically talks about two events handled by me and my friend
academic year.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
First of all I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Chief Khalsa Diwan
Onstitute of management & Technology, Amritsar for having projects as a part of the
MBA curriculum.
Many people have influenced the shape and content of this project, and many
supported me through it. I express my sincere gratitude to Prof. Ravi.Hansdeep Kaur for
assigning me a project on CUSTOMER SATISFACTION, which is an interesting and
exhaustive subject.
He has been an inspiration and role model for this topic. His guidance and active
support has made it possible to complete the assignment.
I also would like to thank my friends and my parents who have helped and
encouraged me throughout the working of the project.
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Table of Content
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INTRODUCTION TO PROJECT
Customer Satisfaction is the pillar of the marketing concept.
Satisfaction is consumer’s fulfillment response. It is a judgment that a
product or a service feature or the product or service itself provides
pleasurable level of consumption related fulfillment.
Customer’s satisfaction influenced by specific product are service features
and by perceptions of quality. It is also influenced by specific service
attributions, and their perceptions
The telling factor in the company’s long run fortunes will be the amount of
customer satisfaction that it managers to generate. But it doesn’t not mean
the company’s sole aim is to maximize Customer Satisfaction. If that where
the case, it should simply put out the best product and service in the world
and price is below cost. There by it would be creating substantial customer
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Customer Loyalty
"It takes a lot less money to increase your retention of current customers
than to find new ones-but I know I don't give it as much effort as I should
because it does take a lot of energy and effort!"
Strategize And Plan For Loyalty!
Do you even have a specific plan for building customer loyalty?
I bet you haven't given it as much thought as you should- because to
tell the truth I need to give it more effort also.
If you currently retain 70 percent of your customers and you start a
program to improve that to 80 percent, you'll add an additional 10
percent to your growth rate.
Particularly because of the high cost of landing new customers versus
the high profitability of a loyal customer base, you might want to
reflect upon your current business strategy.
These four factors will greatly affect your ability to build a loyal
customer base:
1. Products that are highly differentiated from those of the
competition.
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In many business situations, the customer will have many more interactions
after the sale with technical, service, or customer support people than they
did with the sales people. So if you're serious about retaining customers or
getting referrals, these interactions are the ones that are really going to
matter. They really should be handled with the same attention and focus that
sales calls get because in a way they are sales calls for repeat business.
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2.4 HYPOTHESIS
The purpose of usage influence customer satisfaction.
Rural/Urban market influence customer satisfaction.
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When will you send your survey out? How many times will
you send it out? When are you hoping to get all your
information by? All of these questions can help you set
timelines for your survey.
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1. Be quick
If your survey is short and sweet, there's a greater chance
that more respondents will complete it.
2. Offer incentives
Little incentives like small discount or an entry into a
drawing can help ensure respondents complete your survey.
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PrimarySources
Primary research detailed discussions with event management firms and the
cor`porate clients. Subsequent additions were made to the interview
schedule to suit the specific events under study.
The Primary Data is collected through questionnaire survey to customers
Secondary Sources
The Secondary data are those, which have already been collected and being
processed through the statistical process.
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INTRODUCTION TO CUSTOMER
SATISFACTION
Customer satisfaction is the measure of how the needs and responses
are collaborated and delivered to excel customer expectation. It can only
be attained if the customer has an overall good relationship with the supplier.
In today’s competitive business marketplace, customer satisfaction is an
important performance exponent and basic differentiator of business
strategies. Hence, the more is customer satisfaction; more is the business and
the bonding with customer. Satisfaction is consumer’s fulfillment response.
It is a judgment that a product or a service feature or the product or service
itself provides pleasurable level of consumption related fulfillment.
Customer satisfaction is a part of customer’s experience that exposes a
supplier’s behavior on customer’s expectation. It also depends on how
efficiently it is managed and how promptly services are provided. This
satisfaction could be related to various business aspects like marketing,
product manufacturing, engineering, quality of products and services,
responses customer’s problems and queries, completion of project, post
delivery services, complaint management etc.
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Jeffery Gitomer speaks about how your customer is your paycheck. With no
customers, there’s nobody to pay you! By taking this approach to every
customer interaction you can naturally flip the angle on customer service.
Picture yourself as the boss… if your employee treated every customer the
way they treated you, how good would the service be!
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Did you know that 91% of your unhappy customers will never purchase
services from you again? Measuring customer satisfaction can help you
reduce the number of unhappy customers.
I agree with Jeffery and have included my five favorite ways to build
customer loyalty to increase customer satisfaction:
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The good news is you can do something to stop customers defecting. Here
are three common customer retention mistakes that are killing your customer
satisfaction:
If you’re like most businesses, you’ve probably had the odd wild over
promising salesperson.
For those who still have these wild ones, my advice – get them in
line! They are killing your customer satisfaction by setting expectations too
high!
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A customer feedback survey is the best way to find out how satisfied your
customers are, find ways to improve your product or service, and identify
customer advocates who really love your product.
Gregory Ciotti, Marketing Strategist at Help Scout recommends using a
customer feedback survey that asks participants to rank (1-10) how likely
they are to recommend you. I agree with Gregory and also recommend
keeping your survey to under 10 questions. A quick and relevant survey will
help increase survey response rates.
59% of B2B marketers believe email marketing is still the most effective
channel in generating revenue.
If it’s so good for marketers, why don’t we use it more to increase customer
satisfaction?
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LITERATURE REVIEW
This feasibility study commissioned by the National Institute for Advanced Industrial
Science and Technology in Japan (AIST) and supported by the Sustainable Consumption
Unit (UNEP) provided an overview of approaches used in different disciplines for
evaluating consumer behaviour. The study analysed the applicability of existing research
concepts, theories, and tools for evaluating consumer satisfaction with product-service
systems (PSS). It included a discussion over their strengths/weaknesses. This paper
presents a short overview of the study. BACKGROUND It has been recognised that eco-
efficiency improvements at production and product design level can be significantly
reduced or totally negated by rebound effect from increased consumption levels. In line
with this problem factor 10 to 20 material and energy efficiency improvements have been
suggested (Factor 10 Club 1994; SchmidtBleek 1996; Bolund, Johansson et al. 1998;
Ryan 1998). The improvements, however, if not carefully done, may still lead to rebound
effects through changes in resource prices. As a potential solution to the factor 10/20
vision system level improvements have to be made, contrary redesigning individual
products or processes (Weterings and Opschoor 1992; Vergragt and Jansen 1993; von
Weizsäcker, Lovins et al. 1997; Ryan 1998; Manzini 1999; Brezet, Bijma et al. 2001;
Ehrenfeld and Brezet 2001). The product service system (PSS) concept has been
suggested as a way to contribute to this system level improvement (Goedkoop, van Halen
et al. 1999; Mont 2000). Here the environmental impacts of products and associated
services should be addressed already at the product and service design stage. Special
focus should be given on the use phase by providing alternative system solutions to
owning products. A number of examples in B2B area exist that confirm the potential of
PSS for reducing life cycle environmental impact. It is, however, increasingly evident
that business examples are difficult to directly apply to the private consumer market.
Private consumers, contrary to businesses, prefer product ownership to service substitutes
(Schrader 1996; Littig 1998). Even if accepted, the environmental impacts of “servicised
products” offers depend to a large extent on consumer behaviour. To address this
problem, either behavioural or service system design changes are needed. Changing
human behaviour and existing lifestyles contributes to the vision of sustainable
development, but at the same it is extremely difficult and time-consuming process. ”Life
cycle approaches to sustainable consumption”, AIST 2 A potentially easier way is
changing the design of product-service system to reduce behavioural pitfalls. In order to
change system design, it is necessary to understand how consumer acceptance of more
sustainable solutions is formed, influenced or changed, what are the influencing factors
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and what are the leverage points for best results with lowest costs. Understanding
consumer perceptions and behaviour in this context is crucial. CONSUMER
RESEARCH IN DIFFERENT DISCIPLINES A considerable body of literature in a range
of different disciplines exists on consumption, consumer behaviour, and consumer
decision-making process. Research in economics, business, marketing, psychology and
sociology domains studies consumer behaviour from different theoretical premises: “for
economists, consumption is used to produce utility; for sociologists, it is a means of
stratification; for anthropologists – a matter of ritual and symbol; for psychologists – the
means to satisfy or express physiological and emotional needs; and for business, it is a
way of making money”(Fine 1997). For more than a decade now, a range of studies that
address environmentally sound consumer behaviour, e.g. car use, waste sorting,
minimisation and recycling practices, have been conducted. However, few studies
evaluated consumer acceptance of the PSS concept – a consumption based on non-
ownership of physical products, see, for example, studies on car sharing schemes
(Schrader 1999; Meijkamp 2000), ski rental and washing services (Hirschl, Konrad et al.
2001). One reason explaining the lack of studies in the area could be that, there are still
not many PSS schemes in place to serve as test grounds. Another reason could be
uniformity of research focus. Most of consumer research focused on adopter categories,
habits, attitudes and intentions, rather than on actually measuring the satisfaction level
with the service. The reason is probably that PSS ideas have been promoted by
researchers from the environmental management, marketing, design and engineering
fields, and to a lesser extent by sociologists, who hold the banner of research in customer
satisfaction. CONSUMER SATISFACTION PROCESS The paramount goal of
marketing is to understand the consumer and to influence buying behaviour. One of the
main perspectives of the consumer behaviour research analyses buying behaviour from
the so-called “information processing perspective" (Holbrook and Hirschman 1982).
According to the model, customer decision-making process comprises a need-satisfying
behaviour and a wide range of motivating and influencing factors. The process can be
depicted in the following steps (Engel, Blackwell et al. 1995): • Need recognition –
realisation of the difference between desired situation and the current situation that serves
as a trigger for the entire consumption process. • Search for information - search for data
relevant for the purchasing decision, both from internal sources (one's memory) and/or
external sources. • Pre-purchase alternative evaluation - assessment of available choices
that can fulfil the realised need by evaluating benefits they may deliver and reduction of
the number of options to the one (or several) preferred. • Purchase - acquirement of the
chosen option of product or service. ”Life cycle approaches to sustainable consumption”,
AIST 3 • Consumption - utilisation of the procured option. • Post-purchase alternative re-
evaluation - assessment of whether or not and to what degree the consumption of the
alternative produced satisfaction. • Divestment - disposal of the unconsumed product or
its remnants. Besides the information processing perspective, marketing analyses
consumer behaviour by employing a psychologically grounded concept of attitudes
(Balderjahn 1988; Ronis, Yates et al. 1989; Luzar and Cosse 1998). It is consumer
attitudes that are usually named as the major factor in shaping consumer behaviour and a
wealth of studies is available on the topic of how attitudes can predict behaviour. INTER-
DISCIPLINARITY OF CONSUMER RESEARCH Different research disciplines diverge
in their presuppositions about the human nature, factors influencing consumer behaviour,
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market response, etc. Therefore, they naturally employ different research approaches.
However, despite that seemingly insurmountable abyss between disciplines, we see that
many research topics and methods overlap, and that there is no clear-cut line between
different domains of consumer research. Many consumption-related issues are being
increasingly addressed from interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary perspectives. Many
interdisciplinary concepts and factors are of interest for research on consumer satisfaction
with eco-efficient services and PSS. Contrary to the suggestions from many traditional
neoclassical theories, consumption patterns are much more flexible and prone to various
influences. Today consumer behaviour is increasingly dynamic as the choice of
alternatives increases with the growth of global markets. The complexity of the decision-
making process and a large number of influencing factors suggest that changing
consumer behaviour towards more sustainable consumption is a challenging process,
which requires coordination at individual and societal level. The area of PSS and eco-
efficient services is still developing. Further efforts are required in order to understand
relations between functional and emotional needs of customers. DIFFERENT LEVELS
OF COMPLEXITY When evaluating satisfaction with a product, customers initially
assess tangible features of the product. In the service context, the features, though
observable, are considerably less tangible and are thus more difficult to assess. A product
service system comprises four components (products, services, infrastructures, and
networks, see Figure 1), rendering the evaluation process of consumer satisfaction even
more complex. Here the part of the system, with which customer comes into direct
contact, is larger than in the case of a pure product or service, which has implications for
customer evaluation process. In the case of PSS or eco-services, customers are exposed to
both dimensions: product and service. In addition, due to closer relations with the service
provider customers can even become exposed to infrastructure and networks that support
PSS delivery. Therefore, in the PSS context, an evaluation of all four PSS components
becomes relevant: • Product evaluation is conducted by assessment of products or
technologies. • Person-based or other types of services (technical, information and
knowledge services) that are included into PSS may be evaluated. ”Life cycle approaches
to sustainable consumption”, AIST 4 • Infrastructure can be evaluated when the customer
comes into contact with enabling supporting technology, or by evaluation of ambient
conditions, spatial layout or by evaluating signs and artefacts of the PSS. • Networks,
usually are not exposed to the eyes of the customer, but in some cases may be evaluated
when they come into contact with the customers. Product Products Technologies Service
Person-based services technical, knowledge, information services Infrastructure Support
technology Ambient conditions Spatial layout Signs, artefacts Networks Partners and
suppliers of service provider Figure 1 PSS dimensions that can be exposed to customer
judgement RESEARCH FRAMEWORKS AND METHODS A great variety of methods
and frameworks for understanding and evaluating consumer acceptance and satisfaction
are used in different disciplines. The study has discussed the following frameworks: Kano
model of customer satisfaction, the Innovation diffusion of Rogers, the service quality
model of Grönsroos, and SERVQUAL model by Parasuraman. The study has also
surveyed a range of tools used for evaluating and measuring consumer satisfaction. These
included surveys, in-depth interviews, focus group interviews, observations, mystery
shopping, and psychographic portrait of customers. A number of drawbacks and benefits
pertaining to the tools have been pointed out and discussed. Both the research models and
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the tools, while diverse to different extent, were found to be useful for application in the
PSS research area.
Benchmark results: You can administer the same survey every so often to
customers to gain continued insight into your customers. Surveys can have the
same questions, which will allow you to compare data over time and
benchmark survey data across previous years to determine if any changes
need to be made.
Show that you care: Customers like to be asked for their feedback. It gives
the customer the perception that your company values them; is committed to
keeping them as a long-term customer; and bases business decisions on their
feedback.
Disadvantages of Customer
Satisfaction
Too many surveys, so little time: Your customers are bombarded with online
surveys. Surveys may be simple to complete, however, some people simply
don’t like to complete them. Sending surveys too often can irritate customers
and lead to customer burnout. Customer burnout can result in low response
rates or result in lower satisfaction scores, despite your reputation for providing
excellent products or services.
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to your customer satisfaction surveys will not be used. Without this disclaimer,
it may be difficult to receive a good response rate.
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QUESTIONNAIRE DESIGN
Questionnaire Design is prepared on the basis of the following parameters.
Customers satisfaction
Customer Awareness
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QUESTIONNAIRE ADMINISTRATION
Information is gather through questionnaires from customers of
Anantapur Zone.
2.8 SAMPLING
Population = 1200
Sample size = 100
Sample unit = Customers of Mall
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sss
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4.1 FINDINGS
From the survey it is found that every body is aware of Mall of Amritsar
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4.2 SUGGESTIONS
*-*-*
Questionnaire for Measuring Customer Satisfaction
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books
Principles of Marketing - Philip Kotler / Gary Armstrong
Marketing management - V.S. Ramaswamy &
Namakumari 1998
Research methodology - C.R.Kothari
Marketing Research - G. C. Beri
Search Engines
http://google.com
http://.com
http://.com
http://wikipedia.com
http://answers.com
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