Chapter 14: Consumer Relations

I. Consumer Relations Objectives
Building sales is the primary consumers relations objective. A satisfied customer may return, an unhappy customer may not.
• Keeping old customers.
• Attracting new customers
• Marketing new items or services
• Expecting complaint handling
• Reducing costs
II. Consumer-Generated Media
• Consumer-generated media: encompasses the millions of consumers-generated comments,opinions and personal experiences posted in publicly available online sources on a wide range of issues, topics, product and brands.
• CGM is also reffered to as “online consumer word mouth” that originated from a variety of sources:
1. blogs
2. message board andforums
3. public disscussions
4. discussions and forums on large e-mail portals
5. Online opinion/review sites and services
6. online feedback/complaint sites
III. Office of the Ombudsperson
• Research indicates that only a handful of dissatisfied customers will ever complain.
• But there are many with the same complains that who never say anything.
• The term ombudsman originally described a government official appointed to investigate complaints about abuses commited by public officials.
• In most companies the office of the ombudsperson office investigates complaints made against the company an dits managers.
• The ombudperson office monitors the difficulties customers are having with products.
IV. The consumer Movement
• Kennedy proposed that consumers have their own bill of rights, containing four basic principles:
i. The right to safety
ii. The right to be informed
iii. The right to choose
iv. The right to be heard.
V. Federal consumer Agenda
• Today a massive gov bureaucracy attempts to protect the consumer against abuse: more then 900 different programs administrated by more than 400 federal entities.
• Key aggencies include the :
1. Justice Departement
2. Fedearl Trade Commission
3. Securities and exchange Comission
4. Food and Drug Administration
5. consumer Product Safety Commission
6. Office of Consumer Affairs
VI. Consumer Activists on the internet
• The consumerist movement has attracted a host of activists in recent years.
• It most significant activity is to keep companies honnest has occured in the interner.
• The best known testing group is Cosumers Union that was founded in 1936 to test products across a wide spectrum of industries.
VII. Business Gets the Message:
• Few campanies can afford to shirk thier responsabilities to consumer.
• Consumer relations divisions have sprung up, either as separate entities or as part of public relations departement.
• In many companies, consumer relations began as a way to handle complaints, an area to which all unanswerable complaints were saints.