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Chapter 14

Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty, and Empowerment

The marketing concept, described in Chapter 1 "What Is Marketing?", reminds us that the customer
should be at the center of a firm’s activities and that the company that thrives is the one that serves
customers’ needs better than the competition. Yet often it is the customer who is most adept at
serving the customer’s needs. Consumers being able to take control of the marketing activities aimed
at them is what customer empowerment is about. Today, technology is making it more possible
for the customer to do exactly that. In a recent survey, the chief marketing officers of 250 top
companies were asked about the key factors that influence the performance of their companies. The
officers’ response? A company’s ability to interact and respond to its customers as well as empower
them. [1]

Research shows that customer empowerment is a function of three things: creating feedback
channels that are easy and widely available, asking for and encouraging feedback about products,
and enabling customers to participate in the design of products. In Chapter 5 "Market Segmenting,
Targeting, and Positioning", we discussed how customers can participate in the design of products,
or offerings. In this chapter, we focus on those ubiquitous feedback channels, as well as strategies to
solicit and encourage feedback.

Take JCPenney, for example. You might think that a company as large as JCPenney would be unable
to give customers the ability to create their own types of shopping experiences—that standardizing