Rising customer expectations

Expectations have risen among customers in line with a general increase in the wealth of developed countries over the latter half of the twentieth century. This increase in expectations has many causes, including  

These expectations have led to customers not only aspiring to more desirable products, they are also demanding much better levels of service to be associated with those products. 

Businesses are also expecting more from their suppliers. Suppliers need to pay increasing attention to the service aspects of their dealings with industrial customers. This is especially true when the customer has implemented more customer-centric management systems such as just-in-time (Chapter 6). 

---

In the new world of ever-developing technology and techniques, organizations must consider how to deal with the issues of increased competition, rising customer expectations, and increase in product variety. This chapter will discuss about various production systems, production planning in the apparel industry, supply chain and inventory management and various tools to improve the productivity in the apparel industry. 

The marketing perspective the impact of rising customer expectations and the information revolution. 

Satisfied customers are increasingly hard to find. This has been caused by widespread changes that are affecting the world we live in. Two of the major changes are rising customer expectations and the information revolution (Doyle, 2000). We expand on these below. Sir Terry Leahy, Chief executive of Tesco pic, talks of harnessing customer power (2005) ... 

Rising societal expectations for corporate responsibility have created a new class of socially-responsible investors, customers, and employees and, more generally, a broader public awareness of human health and ecological risks. 

Today s competitive landscape has not changed significantly over recent years [10]. Many of the pressures on recycled products seem to be related to changes in customer expectations, which require rapid changes and persistent pressure to achieve the necessary sales quotas [11]. Customer expectations, rising buyer power and fierce competition are all factors in the trading of recycled products. 

Catalyst chemists, like others, live and work in a competitive world. Competitors may react to new plants, or process improvements, in various ways, and it usually helps to look at the situation from their standpoint, and visualize dangers. In particular, if additional capacity can only be filled at the expense of a competitor s market, his standard costs will rise, and he may be expected to react vigorously, by talking to customers, offering them benefits or security of supply and price, or price cutting. On the other hand, if the new capacity merely provides for market growth that no one else has the plant to supply, then there may be no adverse reaction. 

In the grass roots approach to developing the sales budget, each salesman should be advised of the prospective outlook for his customer industries. It is superfluous to present salesmen with data of future economic conditions couched in broad general terms, such as that the gross national product will increase by 2%, consumer income will rise by 1%, etc. Such information is difficult for the salesman to relate to his sales. For instance, the man who is selling alkyd resins is interested in the outlook of the paint industry, so that revelant information should be supplied as follows Industrial paint sales are expected to rise by 10%, trade paints by 2%, etc. With such data supplied by Market Research, for each important customer industry, the salesman is able to in-... 

South Africa s Richards Bay Coal Terminal, the world s biggest coal-export facility. Global trade in coal increased from 498 Mt in 1990 to 917 Mt in 2007. Coal exports are expected to continue to rise, and, therefore, the importance of ocean transport will increase. Ocean transport of coal requires a system of (1) transportation from the mine to the port (2) coal-handling facilities at the export port (3) ocean carrier networks with adequate number and size of ships, contractual obligations, management of the fleet, and route decisions (4) coal-handling facilities at the importing port and (5) transportation from the port to the customer. 

Competition is becoming fiercer and fiercer. Products and services are interchangeable. The division of labor with competence partners is on the rise. The trend to the virtual enterprise continues. Networks of independent enterprises are being formed. Your customers - including the experienced Internet buyers still expect reliable deadline commitments and fast, punctual deliveries at reasonable prices. 

---