Customer benefit

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The customer benefit ( English Customer Value , Customer Utility ) is the benefit actually perceived by a customer with his purchase decision .

The following applies: under competitive conditions, a customer always chooses the provider who offers him the highest benefit he has actually perceived. The customer benefit is therefore one of the central benchmarks in marketing.

Fig. 1: Basic hypothesis for the definition of customer benefit: under competitive conditions, a customer always chooses the provider who offers him the highest customer benefit

Delimitations

Customer satisfaction

The customer satisfaction measures the satisfaction of customers with services already provided. The survey of customer satisfaction is therefore always an ex post analysis. Here, too, it applies that a customer is only satisfied if he has achieved a satisfactory benefit by purchasing a service. The customer benefit is therefore the umbrella term for customer satisfaction. The determination of a customer benefit, on the other hand, can also take place ex ante. This can then make it possible to determine future market success potential. In principle, customer satisfaction and customer benefit can be described using the same influencing variables. The only difference lies in the time of entry, based on the time of purchase of a service.

Customer value

While in the English-speaking world the customer value corresponds to the German-speaking customer benefit, the term " customer value " is used differently here: It describes the value a customer has for a provider.

For the operationalization of customer benefits

In the broadest sense, the customer benefit includes all influencing variables that have a concrete effect on a customer's purchase decision. The following applies: Even subjective perceptions are realities. In detail, the following considerations are connected:

Time of a customer benefit assessment

Fig. 2: Generally valid schematic of a sales process. In typical B2C processes, e.g. B. in retail, supply and delivery phases can shrink to fractions of a second. However, they also exist there.

The customer benefit is determined at the time of a purchase decision. It is therefore a stationary event on the time axis. If purchasing decisions are made by organizations, as is very often the case in the B2B sector, the likely result of the organizational decision must be ascertained. Under certain circumstances, the perceptions of the individual organization members can also be recorded in order to then determine the likely perception of the customer benefit by the organization.

Part worth

Partial benefits are influencing factors on a purchase decision or “criteria”. A customer benefit can be broken down into any number of partial benefits using structures. The following rules apply:

Explicit and implicit influencing variables

Fig. 4: Factors influencing the customer benefit of an industrial wastewater system. ((+): Further sub-criteria are arranged here)

A crucial question is: “How much does a customer know about the consequences at the time of their purchase decision?” Only the theoretical construct of homo oeconomicus has complete knowledge here . In practice this is not possible. Consequently, the customer benefit is recorded using the two main groups of influencing variables:

Product benefits (explicit criteria)

The product benefit includes all influencing variables with which the customer can assess the consequences of his purchase decision. These are z. B. prices, performance data, guarantees, etc. These are the explicit influencing factors of customer benefit. As a rule, they are relevant to the product.

Market position of a provider (implicit criteria)

A customer uses his market position to compensate for knowledge deficits that he has in terms of product benefits. For example with questions of operational reliability, operating costs, service and the like. The market position is the implicit part of the customer benefit. It usually contains company-relevant criteria, such as B. Brand, sales, sales promotion, customer relationships, references and the like. The distribution between product benefits and market position is industry-specific and can in principle be seen as follows:

Fig. 3: The distribution between explicit and implicit factors influencing a customer benefit is industry-specific

Since B2B purchase decision processes are usually made by organizations, the knowledge about the consequences of a purchase decision is usually much higher here than in B2C purchase decision processes that are perceived by individuals. From six influencing factors, it is necessary to methodically support such processes. In the case of prestigious consumer goods, it can happen that the market position of a supplier influences a purchase decision process by up to 90 percent.

More part worth

Customer benefits are recorded in structures over any number of sub-levels. All benefit categories can be incorporated here (basic benefit, additional benefit, etc.). The various influencing variables are thus part benefits B. can be linked to one another via a linear scoring process (see also: utility analysis ). Heeler et al. show that the purchasing decision behavior can be recorded sufficiently reliably using linear scoring procedures. The elements of the scoring process have the following meanings:

  • Criteria or partial benefit: These are the factors influencing a customer benefit. They describe the market needs against which the performance of all providers is measured.
  • Weighting factors describe how important the individual criteria are in a customer's purchase decision process. You use it to describe their purchasing decision behavior. Since the average customer of a target group or a market segment is considered, they practically describe a market that is expressed in this way using constant weighting factors.
  • Degree of fulfillment (or grades or scores) record how well or how poorly a customer's benefit expectations are met. They thus describe the services of the examined providers. Degree of fulfillment can be recorded ordinally or cardinally .

Properties of part worth

Partial utilities behave in a compensatory manner to one another. That is, a good performance on one criterion can “compensate” for a poor performance on another criterion. For example, a customer is quite willing to pay a higher (i.e., worse) price in return for better technology or better service. This compensation system applies to the relationships between all criteria.

However, this requirement is not unconditional. There are so-called “must criteria” that prescribe a set level of performance, such as: B. security features, standards and the like. These are so-called "K. O. criteria ", which mean that a provider who does not meet the associated requirements receives an inadequate customer benefit value even with other good performance values.

Data sources

All available data collection methods can be used to collect the input information. If conscious purchase decision processes are analyzed, compositional methods such as market surveys, workshops, data mining, test markets, the use of preliminary analysis results and the like are suitable.

Is it a matter of unconscious purchase decision results, such as B. in retail, decompositional methods can be used, such as conjoint measurement or multidimensional scaling .

Representativeness

With the survey of a customer benefit, a purchase decision process is practically mapped. Since market segments or target groups are also characterized by homogeneous purchase decision processes, customer benefits can be determined for the average customer of a target group. In this context, this means that a market segment or a target group can also be defined using a set of constant weighting factors.

Statements of customer benefit

Under the premises mentioned above, it can be assumed that there is a connection between the relative customer benefit of a provider and the market shares he can achieve. In other words: the more the customer benefit of a supplier differs from that of the competitor, the higher the market share it can achieve. Thus, a precise knowledge of one's own relative customer benefit allows a number of valuable statements:

  • It is a direct indicator of the competitive strength of a provider
  • It leads to reliable statements about future market success potential
  • It allows the plausibility of sales and turnover planning
  • It allows the targeted development of a package of measures to improve one's own competitive strength (a "marketing mix") e.g. B. in the areas
    • Corporate strategy
    • Product policy
    • Pricing policy
    • Communication policy
    • Market development
    • Distribution policy
    • organization

This is precisely why customer benefit is such an important benchmark in marketing.

Conclusion

Fig. 5: A company's success has the two inherently conflicting success categories "market success" and "commercial success"

Corporate planning processes are usually designed in such a way that sales figures must first be determined in order to then determine whether a profit can be made using the in-house processes. The Achilles heel of these planning processes are very often the sales expectations, which cannot always be sufficiently checked for plausibility. Since customers usually cannot be forced to purchase the services of their own company, they have to be convinced to do so through an outstanding customer benefit. That is the real reason why the relative customer benefit of one's own offer is the decisive factor for checking the plausibility of one's own future sales expectations or one's own future market success potential.

literature

  • Werner Kroeber-Riel , Peter Weinberg, Andrea Gröppel-Klein: Consumer behavior . 9th edition. Vahlen, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8006-3557-3 .
  • Klaus Backhaus , Markus Voeth: Industrial goods marketing . 8th edition. Vahlen, 2007, ISBN 978-3-8006-3351-7 .
  • Klaus Backhaus, Bernd Erichson, Wulff Plinke: Multivariate Analysis Methods: An Application-Oriented Introduction (Springer Textbook) . 11th edition. Springer, Berlin, 2006, ISBN 978-3-540-27870-2 .
  • Christian Belz, Thomas Bieger : Customer Value. Customer benefits create company benefits . 2nd Edition. mi-Fachverlag, 2006, ISBN 978-3-636-03081-8 .
  • Heeler, RM, Kearney, MJ, Mehaffey, BJ (1973): Modeling Supermarket Product Selection; JoMR, Vol. X, 2/1973, pp. 34-37
  • Sieck, Hartmut, Goldmann, Andreas: Selling successfully in B2B . 1st edition. Gabler, 2007, ISBN 978-3-8349-0681-6 .
  • Menthe, Thomas, Sieg Manfred: Customer benefits - the key to sales success. 1st edition. Springer Gabler 2018. ISBN 978-3-658-17452-1
  • Menthe, Thomas, Sieg, Manfred: Customer benefits: the basis for sales . 1st edition. Springer Gabler, 2013, ISBN 978-3-8349-3157-3 .
  • Menthe, Thomas, Sieg, Manfred: Customer benefits: the application in sales talks . 1st edition. Springer Gabler, 2013, ISBN 978-3-8349-3620-2 .