Online Buyer Behavior
With the
existence of online environment, the basic principles of buyer behavior are
changing.
The
following specifics of online buyer behavior are (see the Tab. 1):
Tab. 1 –
Specifics of online buyer behavior. Source: own on literature review.
Analysis of Consumer behaviour
online
This
report will outline the most relevant behavioural characteristics of online
consumers and examine the ways they find, compare and evaluate product
information. Comparison of the newly collected survey data with the existing
consumer behaviour theory resulted in detection of a number of issues related
to a specific consumer group. The purpose of this report is to translate these
findings into a set of implementation activities on strategic and technological
level. Execution of these recommendations will result in better conversion of
visitors into customers and encourage customer loyalty and referrals.
The focus
group of this study will be young adults aged between eighteen and thirty-four
interested in buying a mobile phone or a related product.
Research
by Shun & Yunjie (2006) showed that there are product types, which are more
likely to be sold online such as software, books, electronics and music. Reason
for this is that when purchasing these types of products, one does not require
personal inspection and most, if not all features, can be outlined in the
product description and images. Most products in the mobile phone family belong
to this category.
According
to the recent research on consumer behaviour on the Internet users (Cotte,
Chowdhury, Ratenshwar & Ricci, 2006), there are four distinct consumer
groups with different intentions and motivations:
Exploration
Entertainment Shopping
Information
Music Videos, Lyrics
- Daily updated collection of music
videos and lyrics.
Majority
of young adults interviewed for purpose of this research tend to be active
information seekers. A high level of technological confidence within this group
tends to be an encouraging factor when it comes to product information research
online.
The
following analysis presents both, focus group results and behavioural theory in
a parallel fashion divided into two main research topics:
Information
Retrieval and Search Patterns Perception of Product Information Online
These two
areas are mutually dependent and particularly important in a market where
consumers have the power to choose the right product from a number of competing
suppliers. Well-structured product information that cannot be found easily
online is as much of a problem as is having easily accessible information that
does not meet the consumer's expectations.
1..Building & Measuring
Customer Satisfaction
Managing
customers‘ satisfaction efficiently is one the biggest challenge an
organization face. The tools or methods to measure customer satisfaction needs
to be defined sophisticatedly to fulfill the desired norms. There are following
methods to measure
customer satisfaction:
Direct Methods: Directly contacting customers and
getting their valuable feedback is very
important. Following are some of the ways by which customers could be directly
tabbed:
Getting
customer feedback through third party agencies.
Direct
marketing, in-house call centers, complaint handling department could be
treated as first point of contact for getting customer feedback. These
feedbacks are compiled to analyze customers‘ perception.
Getting
customer feedback through face to face conversation or meeting.
Feedback
through complaint or appreciation letter.
Direct
customer feedback through surveys and questionnaires.
Organizations
mostly employ external agencies to listen to their customers and provide
dedicated feedback to them. These feedbacks needs to be sophisticated and in
structured format so that conclusive results could be fetched out. Face to face
meetings and complaint or appreciation letter engages immediate issues. The feedback
received in this is not uniformed as different types of customers are addressed
with different domains of questions. This hiders the analysis process to be
performed accurately and consistently. Hence the best way is to implement a
proper survey which consists of uniformed questionnaire to get customer
feedback from well segmented customers. The design of the prepared
questionnaire is an important aspect and should enclose all the essential
factors of business. The questions asked should be in a way that the customer
is encouraged to respond in a obvious way/. These feedback could received by
the organizations can be treated as one of the best way to measure customer
satisfaction.
Apart
from the above methods there is another very popular direct method which is
surprise market visit. By this, information regarding different segment of
products and services provided to the customers could be obtained in an
efficient manner. It becomes easy for the supplier to know the weak and strong
aspects of products and services.
Indirect
Method: The major drawback of direct methods is that it turns out to be very costly and requires a lot of pre
compiled preparations to implement. For getting the valuable feedbacks the
supplier totally depends on the customer due to which they looses options and
chances to take corrective measure at correct time. Hence there are other
following indirect methods of getting feedback regarding customer satisfaction:
Customer
Complaints: Customer‘s complaints are the issues and problems reported by the customer to supplier
with regards to any specific product or related service. These complaints can
be classified under different segments according to the severity and
department. If the complaints under a particular segment go high in a specific
period of time then the performance of the organization is degrading in that
specific area or segment. But if the complaints diminish in a specific period
of time then that means the organization is performing well and customer
satisfaction level is also higher.
Customer
Loyalty: It is necessarily required for an organization to interact and
communicate with customers on a
regular basis to increase customer loyalty. In these interactions and
communications it is required to learn and determine all individual customer
needs and respond accordingly. A customer is said to be loyal if he revisits
supplier on regular basis for purchases. These loyal customers are the
satisfied ones and hence they are bounded with a relationship with the
supplier. Hence by obtaining the customer loyalty index, suppliers can
indirectly measure customer satisfaction.
2..How to Measure Your Customers’
Satisfaction Levels
You have
many ways to gather customer information about customer satisfaction so that
you can measure your organization's efficiency with regards to customer
service. One common way is to review your customer service inbox. If a customer
is dissatisfied with what you‘ve provided in terms of quality or service, they
are likely to send a letter or e-mail to let you know about the issues (after
chewing out some managers, of course).
Ways to measure customer
satisfaction
No doubt,
you have a method for dealing with customer complaints and the issues that
arise from time to time within your company. The Balanced Scorecard customer
leg is ideal for tracking these issues.
Here are
other common ways you can gather information from customers:
1.
Evaluate communication at call centers and help
desks.
Check out product-return centers.
1.
Interview field service reps and technicians.
2.
Conduct surveys and send out questionnaires.
3.
Hire a third party (consultants, websites).
4.
Hold discussions with focus groups.
3..Zero in on the right customer
measures
How do
you measure your customers? Most companies already have some data and
information on their customers, and we‘re sure you do, too. That‘s well and
good, but the first thing you need to ask when beginning the customer scorecard
is if your data and information include the right measures.
Do they
really reflect what your customers think and how they feel about your products
or services? Do they focus on the critical few things that are truly important
to customers? In short, does your data measure what you really need to measure?
You can
take many different approaches to measure your customers, but the key is to
find the critical ones that are important to you and your company so that you
can hit the right mark and avoid costly mistakes.
The
measures you select depend on where you are in your organization. A
strategic-level customer scorecard, for example, will have measures that
comprise high-level objectives, such as customer retention and loss rates and
profit and revenue per customer. Customer scorecard measures at the operational
and tactical levels will be more specific.
For
example, you can measure what it is about your product or service that drives
retention, profit and loss, or revenue measures at the strategic level. Such
measures usually focus on things like quality, cost, and speed of delivery.
So whom
do you survey? This would seem to be obvious, but it is actually not so easy.
Certainly you want to ask your customers, right? But which ones? And at what
level within your customers? You need to ask those customers that have some
knowledge about your customer service processes, likely because they have had
to avail themselves of your services at one time or another.
When you
consider the best way to ask your customers, surveys come to mind almost
immediately. This is because surveys provide immediate, up-to-date feedback.
However, conducting a survey requires that you already understand your
customer‘s needs and expectations.
Having a
customer-focused company means you must understand what your customers want and
expect from your business and then evaluate how well you‘re meeting those
desires and expectations. An often overlooked yet vital tool for accomplishing
those tasks is the survey. Surveying helps you
Gather
specific feedback about how satisfied your customers are with the level of
service they receive.
Provide
an initial benchmark against which you can measure future progress.
Make
changes, based on your research, to the way you do business
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