The Role of Marketing (Cambridge (CIE) IGCSE Business): Revision Note

Identifying and satisfying customer needs

• Marketing helps a business identify and satisfy the needs and wants of its customers

  • Identifying customer needs involves finding out about the

    • Variety and quality of goods and services that customers want

    • Prices they are willing to pay

    • Promotional techniques that may persuade them to make repeated purchases

    • Convenience factors, including where and how they want to purchase products

    • After-sales services they anticipate

  • Satisfying these customer needs involves ensuring products are available when and where customers want to buy them, at a suitable price, at the quality expected and with effective customer service

The benefits of identifying customer needs

• Businesses that successfully identify and satisfy customer needs 

  • Will compete more effectively than rival businesses 

  • Will keep up to date with changing tastes and preferences

  • Will attract positive word-of-mouth recommendations and build the brand

Benefits of understanding customer needs

Customer loyalty and relationships

• Customer loyalty is when existing customers buy products from the same business over and over again

• Customer loyalty leads to repeat purchases and a rise in market share. 

• It is much cheaper for a business to try to keep existing customers (for example, with loyalty cards) than trying to gain new customers, as this can involve expensive advertising campaigns

• Building customer relationships involves communicating with customers to encourage them to become loyal to the business and its products

• Good relationships are maintained by

  • Developing close ties with customers and finding out if products/services are continuing to meet their needs 

    • E.g., Using surveys to discover if preferences are changing

  • Using technology to gather important information about customers

• By having strong relationships with the customer, the business can respond appropriately when customers 
  change their expectations of what they want from a good or service