Marketing Case - Consumer Satisfaction

Marketing merely reflects the needs and wants of consumers.

Marketing is about identifying and meeting social needs "Meeting needs profitably5." In order for organisations to create value and satisfaction for customers, they need information and comprehend consumer needs and wants7. Nowadays, the rapid growth in information technology, combined with the relatively low cost of data storage in business has resulted in a corresponding increase in availability of consumer data6. Marketers have identified different marketing concepts such as holistic marketing where "everything matters" including good corporate citizenship (company values and ethics). It's about getting to know your customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself5.

Consumer satisfaction has been conceded as an emotional response rather than cognitive2. In my opinion customers are becoming less brand loyal therefore identifying the needs and wants of consumers and marketing to them may not be enough to be successful and profitable business. Good marketing is about getting the right emotional response from your target audience. People do buy products to fulfil a rational need (i.e. FMCG goods) but when they have an emotional need to fulfil; brands need to get them to love a product by creating an emotional connection. This is apparent when Apple launched the new iPhone4. One of the main features was "FaceTime" or video calling1. This is not a new function in relation to its competitors but when they launched this new product they played on the emotions of the consumer. The advertisements showed FaceTime examples of: a travelling businessman seeing his wife, soldier abroad seeing first sonogram of his baby and a couple communicating through sign language. This 2 minute commercial warmed the hearts of their consumers and even if this didn't create new customers (which it did!) the viewers