Source Referencing In Essays And Research Presentations Is Crucial.

All ideas, theories and statistics that you provide in your essay, research essay and research presentation require source referencing.

If you do not source reference, then this is considered as plagiarism - so make sure that you always cite the source authors for your material. Here’s some examples:

In-text referencing of a theory/ideas that is taken from a text book: In-text referencing an idea which is not yours:

The ten strategic Operations Management decisions form the basis of how Operations Managers plan, organise, lead and control (Heizer & Render, 2014). Note the full stop goes after your reference, and not before.

In-text referencing for a direct quote:

Schermerhorn et al. (2014, p. 111) state that “specialists provide expert guidance on the unique needs of various countries or regions.” In-text referencing if you paraphrase this same direct quote:

Schermerhorn et al. (2014) recognise that expert guidance on the variety of needs that are presented by both countries or regions can be provided by specialists.

Important: Please note that you should only provide one or two direct quotes in your assignment; over-reliance on direct quotes will lose you marks as this shows that all you’ve done is simply copied and pasted from the source. This is why you should always paraphrase and use direct quotes sparingly.

Business and Segment Background

The name of the business is Kathmandu business enterprise which is involved in traveling commodities. The enterprise falls under the tertiary industry. Most of its product is for traveling. The business anticipates for traveling. Hence it offers luxury travel products.(So, 2016) The enterprise is divided into three broad segments. This situation influence which is involved in where the company is located, social definition, task definition a lastly time taken by the consumer, secondly its internal influence, this deals with consumers’ personal thoughts, self-concepts, feelings, attitudes, lifestyles, motivation, and memory. (Rhee, 2015)  The segment is more focused on the consumer view of the product and feedback that consumers give about the product and last segmentation is external influences, this deals with the origin 0of Kathmandu enterprise, culture influences this is where Kathmandu connects their information to the national culture to adapt to their information this is because culture is very obvious to every community, demographic and lifestyle this is whereby  demographic characteristics (such as age or income), specifically used to identify changes in market conditions (Sniukas, 2016). This is where the company studies the size of the population its distribution and structure of the organization

The key assumptions that a business relationship with the segment includes; the business believes that due to the strategic location of its shop in different cities, it will attract customer, it influences or attracts the customer by use of green painting on its walls which signifies traveling, the enterprise also assumes that consumers’ personal thoughts, self-concepts, feelings, attitudes, lifestyles, motivation, and memory are influenced with the product positioning and branding, (Pagalday, 2018) whereby if the product is well branded it will attract more consumers and position itself in consumers memory. The business also believes that by the study of culture, demographic the company is able to identify products for verse ethnic group, the gender of the group, age of the group and also the company will be able to settle its shops in areas that are populated in order to expand its market. (Pansari, 2017) All this assumption on the segments the company wants to keep them because they clearly show how the company will be able to achieve its objectives

Customer engagement objective is the main goals that the business strives to archive, Kathmandu enterprise strives to achieve brand loyalty of the customers and customer retention. These two objectives are vital when it comes to business. (MacLeod, 2017) Every business aspires to maintain its customer and promote its brand so that the company can increase the market of the product. Hence Kathmandu enterprise makes sure that the above objectives are maintained to boost its sales and expand its market. Brand loyalty in the part of the consumer is a consumer behavior pattern where consumers become committed to only one particular brand hence making regular purchases over time. (Lemon, 2016) This behavior of regular purchases by the consumer increases the sales of the company and also makes the company engage more with the consumer to learn how effective is the product and if there any improvement that is needed for the products. (Kenney, 2016) This is also important in internal influence segmentation; the enterprise will be able to learn consumers’ personal thoughts, self-concepts, feelings, attitudes,  and lifestyle on how the consumer perceives the product. Lastly is customer retention this includes all the activities and activities that are undertaken by the enterprise to hold their customer and reduce customer defection. Holding customer defection is not an easy task because ‘you're not the only fish in the lake’, the industry is posed with many competitors some even offering homogeneous product. Hence their measures need to be taken in order to maintain the customers. Kathmandu enterprise offers incentives and discount to their loyal customers; their product is also of high quality, hence through this measures, the company is able to maintain its consumers. Benefits that accrue from customer retention to the enterprise include, profitability that arises from the customers, the companies brand will stand out for the crowd, loyal customers provide feedback on the service offered and areas to be improved, and most important the company will earn more word of mouth referrals hence increasing number of customers.

Preliminary Assumptions

Customer engagement is the technique that a company employs to create a relationship with its customers in order to foster brand loyalty of the customers. For the company to achieve this the company needs to use brand attribute engagement indicator to learn, how successful is the company in terms of engagement with the customer and its implications. (Juanjuan, 2018) To determine if the customers are loyal to your brand is good to ask the following question to obtain the real answers to the phenomena this is How do customers view your company overall? What words would they use to describe your brand? And how do their opinions line up with your expectations? (Van de Walle, 2016)This question is important because by asking this question to the customers the company will be ab;e to determine how their customers view the companies brand.  This is the best method to ensure that customer engagement will be achieved. This could be done by giving out a questionnaire that contains the above questions and offers them randomly to the customers at a given purchase time interval. This will enable the company to engage customers and learn more of their product fully. The feedback obtained from the customers enables the company to identify strength, weaknesses, and opportunities of the brand. This feedback will enable the company to work towards achieving the goal of maintaining brand loyalty and if there is any weakness hindering the objective the company can work towards correcting the issue. (Jaakkola, 2014) By use of overall satisfaction indicator the company is able to determine the level in which the customers could gauge the overall performance of the company, this is vital because the company is able to determine the hinderers of achieving customer retention objective which one of the main aims of the Kathmandu enterprise, through this method the company will engage the customers fully this can be done by asking few questions to customers through online means or just orally. This engages customers fully and there ale to give feedback ab

3. Aspirational Journey Map

While interacting with the customer it came to notice that customers go through smooth and rough interaction with the company’s product, one of the key interaction on the map journey is how the customers perceive services offered when purchasing the product, the customers are more satisfied when there are extra service offered after purchasing the product, example after sale services, through the interaction journey the customer stated that by offering after sale services there are fully satisfied because they do not strangle on how to use the product. The customer suggested that the company should provide guidelines on how to use the product, this essential because the customers will not be having a rough time when using the product. (Kumar, 2015) This key interaction is important for the organization if it truly needs to attain the objective of brand retention by the customer and also to retain the customer. If customers are satisfied with the services that the company offers they will tend to purchase more and also urge their friends to purchase a product from the company. Hence if the company implements the suggestion from the customer, it will be able to archive the overall objective of the company, which is to maximize the income of stakeholders. (Hill, 2017) By offering after-sale services, the organization will be able to determine difficulties that face the customer when using the product. (Zhang, 2016) This will also lead to interaction with the customer when offering the services; this is crucial for the company because the company will be interacting with the customers learn the behavior of the product, learn what changes do the customers need for the product to meet the needs of the customer fully. This will help the company to achieve the objective of customer engagement

Objectives

In situational influence, consumers are rational actors who choose to act in their best interests when choosing which item to purchase. (Van de Walle, 2016) This has great influence when it comes to the company; this is because the customer will have to take time when choosing a product hence the company should provide a variety of products that are of high quality, hence giving the consumer an opportunity to choose from the products. The customer will not have a second mind of shifting to the competitor to look for the product they satisfy the customers need, the company can randomly ask the interest of the consumer and be able to design their product in a manner that it meets the need of the consumer, hence this helps the company to achieve the engagement objective. (Juanjuan, 2018) Intern influence deals with individual motives towards the product; the company should be mindful of personality and lifestyle of an individual in order to achieve the company objective. Consumers value their adventure, and hence the company should provide products that are to satisfy different personalities and their lifestyle, by engaging with customers the company can be able to determine what the consumers need. External influence is one of the major challenges that the company should be able to deal with; the company should identify the structure of the population in order to provide products that Mets different structures in the group. (Baker, 2016) Through interaction and survey the company is able to identify the structure of the population that its serves if and define the population into ratio form, this interaction helps the company to learn what differ rent groups in the population requires hence the company is able to archive its objective of customer engagement.

After sale service is one of the interactions that are dangerous to high-quality service provision. This affects the overall engagement indicator in the business. After sale service is all the help and information that it provides to customers after they have bought a particular product in the organization this is important because it plays a great role in customer satisfaction, (Hollebeek, 2015) this shows that the organization has interest on the customer satisfaction, this is crucial when a company needs to succeed. (Bolton, 2015) By offering customer after sale services, the customers will be able to market the companies brand, and also it helps in retaining the customer. This can be justified because the companies that offer after sale services have great return and they tend to retain the customer. (Hollebeek, 2015) If one purchases a product and he/she is shown on how to use the product the consumer will always be appreciative and due to that the consumer will always be purchasing the products from that enterprise. (Kumar, 2015) The other gap that will hinder the company from achieving its goal is delay delivery of product and services. This is whereby there is lugging and lateness in delivering the products. The act annoys the consumers, and it may lead the consumer to shift to other rival companies that are offering quick services. This is solely seen when a consumer request for a product through online means but the product arrive at a late date from the agreed time. (Lemon, 2016) It creates a bad picture of the company, and this may hinder the company from achieving its objective.

Indicators of Engagement

Service gaps that hinder the success of the business need to be closed in order for the company to achieve the stated objective. In our case, there is a lack of after sale service as one of the gaps, to curb this problem the company should evaluate its system and implement a system that allows after sales services. (Bolton, 2015) This could bring a great positive impact on the business in terms of increase of sales and also create a platform that the company can be able to interact with their customer when offering the services. This system will allow the workers in an organization to guide the user on how to use the product the importance of the product and safety measures to be taken when handling the product. Through this, the consumers will be grateful for the service offered by the company. (Pansari, 2017) When offering after-sale service one can interact with customers freely this help in getting the feedback from the customer about the product. this plays a great role because the company will learn on what to improve from the product and how to handle their customers. (Kenney, 2016) There is a gap of late delivery of products after purchase and during the purchase. The company can close this gap by adding more employees to the service deck and implement a management model that is able to monitor how products purchased by the customer are delivered. (Baker, 2016)This will enable the organization to increase customer engagement by creating a good relationship with the customers.

Customer management software helps the organization to gain and achieve its objective, it helps the organization to know to satisfy their customer, and customer satisfaction plays a major role in the marketing sector. (Kenney, 2016) A satisfied customer is more likely to make further purchasing and also return to do the same; the satisfied customer will also promote the organization name and also recommend other customers to purchase from the organization. CRM has software that can help customer interaction through contact management. (Frow, 2015) This is whereby the company regularly contacts its customer to learn how effective is the product hence this helps in archiving customer engagement. Installing CRM software helps in your customer service team react to customer queries and concerns more quickly and efficiently, which will boost productivity as well as customer satisfaction. This is whereby the company learns the problems associated with the consumer and try to rectify it. (Baker, 2016) Such as in our case there is a delay of delivery of the product hence by implementing CRM will be able to interact with customers and learn where the problem arises and it will be able to correct.

References

Baker, M. J. (2016). What is marketing? Routledge.

Bolton, L. E. (2015). How does corporate social responsibility affect consumer response to a service failure in buyer-seller relationships? Journal of Retailing, 140-153.

Frow, P. P. (2015). CRM and customer management: Identifying and confronting dark side behaviors. The Dark Side of CRM: Customers, Relationships and Management. obtained from books.google.com.

Hill, N. &. (2017). The handbook of customer satisfaction and loyalty measurement. Routledge.

Hollebeek, L. D. (2015). Exploring Customer Engagement: a multi-stakeholder perspective. In Customer Engagement. Routledge.

Jaakkola, E. &. (2014). The role of customer engagement behavior in value co-creation: a service system perspective. Journal of service research, 247-261.

Juanjuan, O. W. (2018). CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT AND ITS OUTCOMES: THE ROLES OF SERVICE ENVIRONMENT AND BRAND EQUITY. In 2018 Global Marketing Conference at Tokyo. obtained from db.koreascholar.com.

Kenney, C. (2016). Transforming health care: Virginia Mason Medical Center's pursuit of the perfect patient experience. Productivity Press.

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Lemon, K. N. (2016). Understanding customer experience throughout the customer journey. Journal of Marketing, 69-96.

MacLeod, N. (2017). Building safe systems in aviation: A CRM developer's handbook. Routledge.

Pagalday, G. Z. (2018). Efficient development and management of after sale service. Elsevier.

Pansari, A. &. (2017). Customer engagement: the construct, antecedents, and consequence. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 294-311.

Rhee, H. T. (2015). Does hotel attribute importance differ by the hotel? Focusing on hotel star-classifications and customers’ overall ratings. Elsevier.

Sniukas, M. L. (2016). The Art of Opportunity: How to build growth and ventures through strategic innovation and visual thinking. John Wiley & Sons.

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