The business literature almost unanimously presents a simple, positive picture of the beneficent effects of corporate social responsibility on customer attitudes toward the corporation. Through a series of four quantitative studies involving more than 4,000 customers and participants, a team of researchers revealed the much more ambiguous reality of how customers view companies that engage […]
Read More… from When Customers Can See More Cost than Benefit in CSR
How can companies that sell experiential products and services design an experience that leaves customers with highly satisfactory memories — and the desire to return? A team of researchers from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management developed a mathematical model for optimal customer experiences based on two variables: sequence and duration. In manipulating the sequence and duration […]
Read More… from Designing Experiential Services So Customers Remember the Best Parts
While material purchases are purchases of tangible products that one intends to keep, experiential purchases are purchases of products that must be experienced. Restaurant meals, movies, or vacations are examples of experiential purchases. While there is no official categorization of products into experiential or material, most consumers intuitively know the difference. Through an analysis of […]
Read More… from Buyers of Experiential Products and Consumer Reviews
How well is your company performing? For many companies, the answer to this question comes through customer satisfaction surveys, which tell companies where they are successfully meeting customer expectations and where they are falling short. Although subjective — that is, based on the customer’s subjective opinion of the company’s performance — customer satisfaction surveys are […]
Read More… from What Companies Learn from Customer Satisfaction Surveys
When people do good things, they reward themselves. This is the conclusion of a number of previous studies into the psychology of doing good deeds. Two researchers from Harvard Business School and Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business explored through their own series of studies the business implications of this previous psychological research. The researchers […]
Read More… from Reusable Grocery Bags: How Green Customers Help the Environment-and Your Business
Customers can stop interacting with a company in one of two ways: they inform the company that they are leaving (such as when they cancel a subscription to a magazine) or they simply stop interacting with the company. Unsatisfied patrons of a theatre, for example, may decide to seek their entertainment elsewhere. The company has […]
Read More… from Tracking Customers Who Leave Without Saying Goodbye
There are a variety of product-related services that manufacturers offer their customers. New research pinpoints the following different categories of services: Complementary services help customers feel more comfortable buying the product because they either smooth the sale and use of the product or they adapt the product’s functionality. Complementary smoothing services — such as financing, […]
Read More… from Adapt Your Choice of Product-Related Services to the Industry Life Cycle
A website today is indispensable for any retail operation, no matter how small. The Internet is an integral part of the shopping experience. Not every online retail experience is the same. Grocery stores might offer coupons, office supplies stores might offer coupons and the opportunity to purchase products, and sites such as BarnesandNoble.com are full-service […]
Read More… from The Unexpected Impact of Click and Collect Retail Programs
Companies marketing a new innovation or a new technology are rarely interested in older consumers, and for good reason. Past research shows that older consumers are much less likely to adopt new technologies or innovative products than younger consumers. The most common reasons given for this reticence are that older consumers have a psychological barrier […]
Read More… from Incentivizing Older Consumers to Adopt New Technologies
The best companies are forward-looking. They are not only concerned with what customers want to buy today, but what they will want to buy in the future. A company’s ability to project future customer needs is usually tied to factors such as how much a company knows about its customer and the extent of customer […]
Read More… from Work with Customers to Understand and Shape their Future Needs
