chapter 2

• Word of mouth - passing of information and opinions verbally
• Buzz - the amount of word of mouth going on in a market. Includes blogs, articles, and other information about an offering.
• Influencer Marketing - targeting people known to influence others
• Active Influencer - willing to tell others, but more important, others listen and act on their opinion
• Interested - has a greater intrinsic interest in the product category than the average user
• Heavy user - actually uses or consumes the offering regularly, preferable more than the average user
• Loyal - sticks to one brand when it works
• Lead user - willing to try new products and offer feedback
• Social Networking sites - used to create communities.
• Communication medium = also known as social networking sites
• Viral marketing - spread of the company's message through the community
• Social Media - a catchall phrase for the online channels of communication that build communities.
• Behavioral Loyalty - customer buys the product regularly and does not respond to competitors' offerings
• Attitudinal Loyalty - degree to which the customer prefers or likes the brand
• Loyalty Programs - marketing efforts that reward a person or organization for frequent purchases and the consumption of offerings.
• Longevity Effect - lengthen the lifetime of value of customers by increasing their switching costs
• Blocker effect - customers don't pay attention to competitors' messages
• Spreader Effect - customers buy additional products from vendors to which they are loyal.
• Accelerator Effect - customers buy products more frequently in order to move to the next level of their loyalty programs
• Good Performance by a Company - no loyalty program can overcome a company's poor performance.
• Responsiveness by a Company - how well a company can take customer information and alter what they do to satisfy their customers.
• Shared Identity among Participants - The participants are all members of the same group, and they share a common identity. Loyalty programs have names for their loyal customers.
• Clear benefits - loyalty programs should make benefits clear for customers.
• Community development - marketers who can put loyal customers together with other loyal customers are likely to build a community around the common experience of consumption.
• Customer Satisfaction - the goal sought by many businesses.
• Verbal Terrorists - people who use every Internet site possible to bash a company
• Net promoter score - the number of recommenders an offering has - number of complainers.
• HANDLING THE COMPLAINT PROCESS

  • Listen carefully to the complaint
  • Acknowledge the customer's feelings
  • Determine the root cause of the problem
  • Offer a solution
  • Gain agreement on the solution and communicate the process of resolution
  • Follow up
  • Record the complaint and resolution
• Communication Gap - overstating the offering's performance level, thereby creating unrealistic expectations on the part of customers
• Knowledge gap - not understand the customer's expectations or needs, which then leads a company to create a product that disappoints the customer
• Standards gap - setting performance standards that are too low despite what is known about the customer's requirements.
• Delivery Gap - failing to meet the performance standards established for an offering
• FTC - Federal Trade Commission
• Sugging - Selling under the guise; applied to a practice in which a salesperson would pretend to be doing marketing research by interviewing a consumer, and then turn the consumer's answers into reasons to buy.
• Caveat Emptor - let the buyer be aware; it's your own fault if you buy it and it doesn't work.
• CAN-SPAM Act - prohibits the use of e-mail, faxes, and other technology to randomly push a message to a potential consumer.
• Spam - a term for unwanted commercial e-mail similar to junk mail.
• Permission marketing - a term that was created to suggest that marketers should always seek for permission to sell or to offer buyers marketing messages.
• Gramm-Leach-Billey Act of 1999 - requires financial institutions to provide written notice of their privacy policies.
• Privacy policies - statements regarding how a company will use and protect a consumer's private data.