Surviving in a competitive market becomes extremely pathetic when one is in the Service sector, the sector which survives on intangible sales! India's 64% GDP is contributed by the service sector alone. There is no rocket science to understand the phenomenon how this sector operates. Though, everyone knows what does the customer needs, yet they take no steps or (let me correct my vocabulary) they take no proper steps to come up with a solution for customer satisfaction. All that a customer needs is "Satisfaction". And this is one thing that lacks in most of the service providing organizations out there in the market. They keep concentrating on the facts what they feel would satisfy the customers or what their competitors are doing. They never take a step ahead to research the exact changing needs of customers. Result? - A lost "Account" for the business. They forget that its not just an "Account" but its something more than that. That one "Account" would never turn back for the services of that company again, he would also recommend his friends and family not to use the same. What Sir Kotler terms as a "Negative word of mouth". These negative word of mouth might seem simple but its not actually! These word of mouth actually holds a position in the minds of the consumers. Anyone who knows the basics of marketing must be aware of the fact that there is something called as a "Consumer Decision Making Process". There are 5 subsets of a consumer brain. 1) Universal Set - Where the consumer has all the brands in his mind 2) Awareness Set - Where the consumer comes to know about the brand in more specific terms. 3) Consideration Set - Here the consumer considers that few amongst those brands can be considered to accept. 4) Choice Set - Here the consumer actually choses the brand which he prefers to go ahead with. and 5) Decision Set - Where the consumer takes the final decision to go ahead with the brand.
As a marketer, one should concentrate that his brand should reach the Decision set of the consumer before the competitors' brand reaches there. Now let me link it to a word of mouth phenomenon. A positive word of mouth will speed your pace to move out from the Awareness set to the Consideration Set. Whereas similarly, a negative word of mouth will just remove you from the subset.
Research proves that an unsatisfied consumer shares his word with 13 people out there in the market. But a satisfied one only talks to 2 of them out there. Numbers speak for themselves.
We got to be more than smarter to survive here in the market.
Thanks for your kind patient reading.. Its an honor.. Please comment with your views and critics.. I would be more than pleased to accept it..
Thanks,
Ashutosh Arun.
