Know Your Customer, Essay Example

Abstract

This paper is designed as an instrument of brainstorming the target customer profile. As the executive manager, I am expected to have and deliver a clear vision of target customer groups for our new service options. This customer analysis will lay the foundation for the subsequent development of a successful marketing strategy.

Dear Colleagues,

with the recent economic developments, and given the scope of the current economic crisis, it is obvious that we have come to the point, where we need to expand the range of our customer reach. Our products are popular and recognizable, but as the firm that seeks sustained competitive advantage and wants to promote the image of continuous development and growth needs to find a new approach to customers. We have developed a broad range of service options for our customers, but who are they, those whom we want to sell our products and services? One of the most difficult tasks we face is profiling our target customer, but it is also an essential component in our gradual movement to success.

So, what are our customers’ demographic features? Obviously, these are retail firms of various sizes, but most frequently, with no less than 20 employees, which are located all over the country (mostly in large urban territories), which deal with food products and seek to expand their product range. These are also the firms that want to reduce the time they spend to find and purchase food products from the major suppliers. For these reasons, our services will target these customers to help them optimize their purchasing needs. We expect that our marketing and advertising strategies will also help us find prospective customers in rural territories, which are often in need for quality food products. However, our main focus will be on large and small urban retail outlets. We will not work with manufacturing firms but will limit the scope of our marketing strategies to those, which sell our products to other outlets or directly to customers. These customers currently provide us with more than 10% of our general profitability and have reasonable potential for development and growth.

However, because customer profiling requires that “customer characteristics cover a broad range of areas related to size, structure, buying habits, financial impact and the cost to serve the client” (Thull, 2003), we should also decide whether we will target those, who are not included into the list of our current customers but could potentially add to our profitability and competitive advantage. It appears that sometimes, small firms will prefer making smaller purchases instead of purchasing more food products at a time. The reasons of such decisions can be different. Sometimes, small firms will lack optimization mechanisms or will not possess power and resources necessary to reduce their purchasing expenses. Sometimes, smaller firms will find it more convenient to make regular smaller purchases depending on the change in customer demand. We will target firms, which possess potential for such product optimization and product flow improvement. Our services will help them develop a new vision of customer service and reduce their costs and expenses. We will not target new firms, but will instead concentrate on those, which currently work with us or used to be our customers and for some reason or other had to break these business ties.

Thus, our target customer is a medium or a large firm, located in an urban territory, and selling food products either to food stores or directly to ultimate customers. Our target customer either currently works with us or used to work with us in the past. Our target customer does possess sufficient potential for growth and development, and makes (or made) significant contribution to our profitability. This customer profile, however, would be incomplete without understanding the general psychographic of our target customer and its impact on our marketing strategies (Stone & Jacobs, 2001).

To begin with, given the relevance of information technologies in the current market situation, our target customer values the speed and effectiveness of information flows. Our target customer also values innovation and novelty in business and is open to new product and service initiatives proposed by the supplier. The target customer, whom we discuss here, fosters the development of learning culture among its employees and thus makes it possible for us, suppliers, to propose new strategies and services, which would improve its market position. Such target customer is prepared to overcome technical, commercial, and relationship barriers on its way to market success. Our target customer wants to maintain effective reciprocal relationships with the supplier and conditions that are favorable for the development of such relationships.

These, are of course, only the starting points of our customer analysis. Creating a full customer profile is impossible without contacting customers directly and asking them about their unsatisfied product needs. In the process of our marketing research, we will need to involve all company departments in the process of exploring our target customer image. For these purposes, we will have to (a) perform the detailed analysis of our current customer database; (b) identify the most prospective customers; (c) contact those who no longer work with us to determine the reasons of their silence or absence; (d) to develop an effective email survey, which current and former customers will use to help us develop a more detailed profile and to identify, what are the most urgent service needs and requirements we must meet; and (e) to develop new strategies that will improve the product flow and will make former customers return to previous cooperation with our company. We expect that our target customers will use this survey as a chance to develop new or expand the existing business relationships for the sake of our and their profitability. Apart from filling an email survey, which we send to our target customers, the latter will also be willing to participate in video, online, and usual conferences, which we organize to present and promote our service and/ product options. Given that the customers we target are open to everything new, such customers will also view these conferences as a unique chance to improve the quality of their operations.

Generally, we seek to target customers, who are learning and customer-oriented, who have experience working with our company, who have a clear vision of their product and service needs, and who want to maintain productive relationships with us.

Thank you for your attention.

References

Stone, B. & Jacobs, R. (2001). Successful direct marketing methods. McGraw-Hill Professional.

Thull, J. (2003). Mastering the complex sale: How to compete and win when the stakes are high! John Wiley and Sons.