BMW’S ROAD TO HIGHER CUSTOMER SATISFACTION: JUST TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK!
Customer satisfaction and loyalty are critical elements in any successful marketing strategy, but they are essential when the product is purchased only once every few years. It was, therefore, of great concern to luxury automakers like Acura, Audi, and BMW when in 2014 their customer satisfaction scores all dropped below the average for the entire automobile industry.34 For years these companies had been gathering and using external primary data from their own surveys, and also relying on secondary data from sources like the American Consumer Satisfaction Index, yet satisfaction was falling. Assuming the luxury automakers were listening and responding to the data they received from existing research, it appeared the old modes of research were missing key insights. Management had a new research deliverable learn how we can improve customer satisfaction and a new research question what specific product attributes or service components are not satisfying our customers?
Questions for Consideration
1. Assuming BMW wants to learn more about what customers value in a luxury driving experience, and then make decisions based on that research, what kind(s) of market research would you recommend that might improve BMW’s understanding?
2. BMW is facing the classic quality- quantity -cost trade-off; when it seeks higher-quality information (represented by more questions), fewer responses are received or research costs are higher. Since BMW’s executives all have 25 to 30 years of experience in the automotive market, what would be the advantages and disadvantages of trusting their own experience versus spending more on market research?
3. When problems develop, like what BMW is experiencing in its research data gathering, a new, often technological solution is developed to address the issue. What might be some innovative ways to approach gaining both statistical significance (through higher response rate) and deeper context (through open-ended qualitative data)?
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