CHAPTER: 1

INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION

Marketing is the art of creating, satisfying customers by meeting the needs of customers and by
creating value satisfaction for them. As Peter Drucker says “the essence of marketing is that the
entire business has to be seen from the point given of the customer”. However, customers face a
vast array of product and brand choices prices, supplies and to understand the needs and
preferences of the customers it becomes imperative for us to carry out research together
information. We believe that customers estimate which offer will deliver the most value to them
and which will deliver and maximize value, within the bounds of research costs and limited
knowledge, mobility, and income they form an expectation of value and act on it. Whether or not
the offer lives up to the value expectation affects both purchase and repurchase probability. The
purpose of any Marketing research is to provide information at a specific time on customer, trade,
competition and the future brands, so as to enable marketers to formulate successful strategies in
their quest for customers mind share and market share. Whether the buyer is satisfied after
purchase depend on the offers performance in relation to the buyer expectation. In general
satisfaction in a person’s feelings of pleasure or disappointment resulting from comparing a
products perceived performance exceeds the customer is highly satisfied.

The term customer satisfaction was invented by Theodore C. Levitt in a 1960 Harvard Business
Review article entitled "Marketing Myopia" which later expanded into the book, The Marketing
Imagination. Levitt explained in his book that “Industry is a customer satisfying process, not a
goods producing process. The sale merely consummates the courtship. Then the marriage begins".
Eventually, consumer research was funded by the early management consultancies, and from
consultancies came measures of customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and competitive
benchmarking. During this era marketing was uninvolved with consumerism. In 1982, two non-
marketers and Mckinsey consultants, Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, published In Search of
Excellence, a book that propelled the idea of caring for customers and customer satisfaction into a
management religion. Up to this point most marketing ideas had been developed in connection
with selling physical products and marketers were slow to grasp the growth of the rather more
intangible consumerist concept. "Excellent companies are not only better on service, quality,
reliability and finding a niche. They are also better listeners‟' wrote Peters and Waterman. The
fact that these companies are strong on quality, service and the rest comes in large measure from
paying attention to what customers want. The customer is truly in partnership with the effective
companies and vice-versa.

Customer satisfaction has gained importance in the last few years. After liberalization,
privatization and globalization, there is intense competition and the world has become a global
village. All the business activities of an organization have now shifted their attention to the
customer satisfaction than merely selling goods and services at a profit. “ Take it or leave it
attitude” which was the attitude in the past has now transformed into finding out the needs and
wants of the customer and creating products and services that will satisfy the customer which in
turn drive the company to profits. Products are viewed secondary to customer satisfaction. Also,
the product quality now has major emphasis on customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction
measures how well the expectations of a customer concerning a product or service provided by
your company have been met. Customer satisfaction is an abstract concept and involves such
factors as the quality of the product, the quality of the service provided, the atmosphere of the
location where the product or service is purchased, and the price of the product or service.
Businesses often use customer satisfaction surveys to gauge customer satisfaction.

Customer satisfaction cannot be very difficult. After all you either satisfied with the
services you receive or you are not. If you don’t you are not. If it is that easy, then obtaining
people’s opinion about how satisfied they are with relatively straight forward matter-or is it?
Customer satisfaction is a marketing tool and a definite value added benefit. It often perceived by
customers as important as the primary product or service your organization offers. It is seen as a
key performance indicator within business and is often part of a Balanced Scorecard. In a
competitive marketplace where businesses compete for customers, customer satisfaction is seen as
a key differentiator and increasingly has become a key element of business strategy. "Within
organizations, customer satisfaction ratings can have powerful effect. They focus employees on
the importance of fulfilling customers” expectations .Furthermore, when these ratings dip, they
warn of problems that can affect sales and profitability .These metrics quantify an important
dynamic. When a brand has loyal customers, it gains positive word-of-mouth marketing, which is
both free and highly effective. Therefore, it is essential for businesses to effectively manage
customer satisfaction. To be able do this, firms need reliable and representative measures of
satisfaction.
The research helps the marketers to find out the attributes and variable that influence the customers
behavior towards a given product offering and it shapes the attitudes of the customers favorably
towards a specific product, thus by analyzing these undertones the researcher can find out the
levels of customer satisfaction, and the results of the marketing research can help the marketers to
analyze the weak spots in their marketing strategies and –– can reformulate their strategies so that
they can satisfy their customers and maximize their brand loyalty and profitability.

NEED FOR THE STUDY

Customer satisfaction survey is a systematic process for collecting consumer data, analyzing this
data to make it into actionable information, driving the results throughout an organization and
implementing satisfaction survey is a management information system that continuously captures
the voice of the customer through the assessment of performance from the customer’s point of
view. Customer satisfaction depends upon the performance relative to expectations. A key premise
in the customer satisfaction is understanding the needs and meeting or exceeding the expectations
of customers. Furthermore strategies to improve quality and external customer service, internal
customer satisfaction is a much neglected component of quality improvement.to this end, it is
important to emphasize that total customer satisfaction can be attained only if all employees
devoted to external customer satisfaction can work together and assist each other to achieve
common goal. So, it is suggested to adopt customer oriented approach to keep the internal
customer satisfied and motivated. So customer satisfaction are gaining a lot of importance in the
present day. Customer satisfaction is the buzzword used by the people for the success of the
organization in the present days. Due to the increase of heavy completion in every product line it
become difficult for the companies to retain the customers for longer time. So retain the customer
for longer time the marketer has to do only one things i.e. customer satisfaction. If customer is
fully satisfied by the product it not only rub the organization successfully but also fetch many
benefits for the company. They are less process sensitive and they remain customer for longer
period. They buy addition products overtimes as the company introduces related produce related
products or improved. Every company is conducting survey on customer satisfaction level on their
products. To make the products up to the satisfaction level of customers.

From the days of industrial revolution when goods and services were produced to the present day,
the emphasis has shifted from the producers to the consumer and his needs, and with the consumer
becoming more involved, in the marketing process there is greater need for information regarding
the consumer needs. Preferences and making them satisfied of the products & services, has led to
a constant but increasing need to conduct marketing research. This research is an insight into the
mind of the consumer, with the help of which the organizations will become aware of their pitfalls
and in turn can also make improvements in the product regarding the level of satisfaction of the
consumers towards their offerings in the market place. The basic need of this project is to know
the “Satisfaction” amongst the respondents, with regard to “LIFESTYLE” services and its
products.

OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

The study was done primarily with the following objective.

• To study the “Customer Satisfaction” amongst the users of “lifestyle” products.

• To study the “Satisfaction” level of “Lifestyle” customers with regard to services offered
by Lifestyle.
• To make suggestions for improvement of their products & their services from the
customer’s point of view based on this research to fulfill customer’s needs.
• To know the customers feed back towards the redresses of grievances by lifestyle.
• To find out the quality of service in terms of transmission coverage, clarity in the reception
and connectivity of the various services that are being offered by Lifestyle.

• To know why people buy products from Lifestyle store.

• To understand the competitive environment in which the company is operating and is

desired to meet the customer need and satisfaction.
SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The main scope of the study is limited to Mangaluru city.

*This study will help us to understand customers, preference and their needs.
*Scope of the study of the customer expectation will dictate the level of service and quality of
products that they get. Customer expectation is aligned with the demand level in the market.

METHODOLOGY

Research in common pursuance refers to a search for knowledge in a scientific and systematic way
for pursuant information on a specified topic. Defining the objective is the most important part of
any study process. Once the objective is identified that next step is to collect the data which is
relevance to the problem identified and analyze the collected data in order to find out the hidden
reasons for the problem .Proper defining of problem is must for proceeding further with the
research process. The type of the study to be carried out, the questions raised, the sampling
procedure to be followed, and the data to be collected, all depends on a correct understanding of
the problem, the research job can be simplified and completed with the minimum cost, effort and
data. There are two types of data namely.

 Primary Data
 Secondary Data

 PRIMARY DATA

Primary data is original in nature and is collected first hand.

Collection of primary data

Methods of collecting primary data.

• Interview Method
• Questionnaire
 • INTERVIEW METHOD

The interview method of collecting data involves presentation of oral, verbal stimuli
and reply in terms of oral-verbal responses. This method can be used through personal interview
and, if possible, through telephone interview.

Personal Interview

The method of collecting information through personal interview is usually carried out in a
structured way. As such we call this interview as structured interviews. Such interviews involve
the use of a set of predetermined questions and of highly standardized techniques of recording.

 QUESTIONNAIRE

The researcher and the respondents do come in contact with each other if this
method of survey is adopted. Questionnaires are mailed to the respondents with a request to return
after completing the same. It is the most extensively used method in various economic and business
surveys & research. Questionnaire to be used must be prepared very carefully so that it may prove
to be effective in collecting the relevant information.

 SECONDARY DATA

It is the data already existing, which has gone through some standard analysis.

 Newspaper and In house journals.

 Press releases of the company.
 Brochures and detailed descriptive leaflets.
 Magazines like Business World, Outlook, Auto India, etc.
These are the sources from which secondary data is has been gathered. Most of the
information presented in this report was extracted from the above data sources.
LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

• The present research is restricted to Mangaluru city only.

• The sample size taken is only 60 and as such is very small as compared to the universe,
this is due to the constraints of time and effort, and as such may not be enough to generalize
to the entire population, however it is presumed that the sample represents the universe.
• Respondents might have responded with the actual feelings of facts while giving responses
to the questionnaire.
• Time being a limiting factor was not sufficient to gather opinions from majority of the
respondents, who form part of the universal sample.

• The result of the study may not be applicable over period of time.