CUSTOMER VALUE

[Word limit: max 4000 words (excluding appendices)]

 

 

Your client is your own company (or in case you are currently not working, a company that you are familiar with).

 

Recently the CEO of your (or chosen) company attended a business seminar where everyone agreed that “only very few companies understand well what customer value is and how it can be produced and delivered profitably”.

 

The CEO decided to appoint a marketing consultant to help him/her answer this question for his/her company.

 

You are required to take the role of the marketing consultant and develop a report (maximum 4000 words) to help the CEO understand what customer value is and how it can be produced and delivered profitably.

 

You are expected to do the following:

 

1. Critically discuss how different authors, researchers, consultants or practitioners define what customer value is.
2. Describe how customer value is perceived, produced and delivered in your (or chosen) company. You may want to consider the whole company or one of its SBUs or indeed any of the core products/services that the company produces and delivers to customers.
3. Conclude by recommending changes your (or chosen) company should make in order to become more effective in producing and delivering customer value that provides competitive advantage and is profitable.
4. Finally, you are expected to provide a two-page description of your (or chosen) company that includes a Porter’s five forces analysis of the company. This does not count within the above word limit.

 

 

Submission deadline: end Session 16

 

Important notice:

• The CEO will not accept any report that is based on less than FIVE (5) references from fully refereed journals and TWO (2) references from practitioners’ journals, magazines or internet based white papers/reports.
• Appendices can be used to include detailed diagrams and any measures of customer value. Appendices and references sections do not count towards the overall word count.
• Maintain full anonymity of the company in the report by adopting a fictitious name (real name to be communicated only to the professor via individual email).
• Porter’s five forces analysis will be expected and if not delivered then a 20% penalty will be applied.

 

 

GUIDELINES FOR REPORT WRITING

 

A written report is used to present the analysis, discussion and recommendations for a given question, problem situation or case study. A report is a formal document that follows a specific style and structure. In real business life reports are used to support the decision making process within organizations. In such cases where alternative courses of actions compete for a share of the company’s resources, a well-documented and structured report may be your only means for attracting the attention of the decision-maker. Bear in mind that decision makers have limited time to spend on each report and therefore an easy to follow structure, clarity of the report and relevance to the problem situation have paramount importance.

 

The accepted style for report writing is outlined below.

 

Report Format

 

The main difference between a report and an essay is the layout. Reports are designed to be easily and quickly absorbed by the reader. So, they are laid out schematically and everything is headed, sub-headed, numbered and labelled. This helps you to develop a logical structure and the readers to make sense of the material you present to them.

 

1. Title page: should reflect the content of the report; use two or three lines if necessary.
2. Executive summary: this is a very important part of the report. It should include a brief summary of each main section of the report and a clear statement of the purpose of the report (objectives) and a summary of the conclusions and recommendations.
3. Contents: this is a list of the main sections of the report, headings and sub-headings, and the pages on which the reader can find them.
4. Introduction: this part of the report provides background information to the work that the report discusses. It includes details such as why the work was done, what the problem was, who authorized the work and what similar work has been done in the past within the organization. Clear aims and objectives are paramount. Beware that aims lead to objectives and objectives lead to research questions which when taken together with the conceptual framework allow you to list the types of information you need in order to make a decision.
5. Method: this part of the report outlines the methodology used. Here you need to show awareness of the various methods available to you. You need to justify the choice of one method or conceptual framework and give details of the information base used, how it was collected and whether it contains information gaps that might affect the conclusions. For example if you try to assess the service quality of an organization you will need to show awareness of the different ways in which service quality can be measured, what are the problems of each technique, which one did you decide to use and why, what problems have you faced whilst applying the technique, how did you overcome these problems and how information inaccessible to you might affect your conclusions and recommendations. Furthermore, some authors have suggested that service quality should be assessed both from the point of view of the customers and the company since it is gaps in their perceptions that give rise to a poor quality of service. However, different segments of the customer base of this company may perceive service quality in different terms. You may not be able to reach every customer segment of this company. Therefore this might affect the conclusion and implications of your project. A detailed appendix may be used to clarify some of the issues here.
6. Analysis and interpretation: this is the main and longest body of the report so will need to be divided up. Here you need to classify parts of the discussion and devise appropriate headings and subheadings. Your discussion should be navigated by the research questions you stated in the introduction section.
7. Conclusions: this part of the report provides a clear account of the conclusions. Your discussion here should be navigated by the objectives of your project. It often involves repeating statements that have appeared elsewhere in the report but this part involves synthesis rather than more analysis.
8. Recommendations: this part provides a higher level of synthesis and creative thinking since it reflects your ability to relate your conclusions to the overall aim of the project e.g. to improve the service quality of an organization. Recommendations refer to future actions and should be grounded to the findings of your study. You are not allowed to make general recommendations that you cannot justify on the basis of the information you collected, analyzed and interpreted in the report.
9. List of references: this part provides a list of sources (e.g. books, journal papers, reports, Internet addresses, magazines, lecture notes etc.) that you have consulted to produce your report.
10. Appendices: this part often includes information in the form of tables, chars, illustrations etc., that is not essential for the first reading of the report but that it supports points raised and actions taken in the report and its undertaking. Be careful in making the choice of what to include in the report and what to put in an appendix. If, for example, a table or diagram illustrated the results it may be more ‘reader friendly’ to include it near to the text that it supports rather than in an appendix.

 

 

Overall a report reflects your ability for creative/critical analysis and synthesis. Move from aim to objectives to research questions, make use of a relevant method/conceptual framework and ground your analysis and interpretation to the research questions in order to show your analytical skills. Move from research questions to objectives to the main aim and relate your conclusions and recommendation to the objectives and aim of your project respectively in order to provide evidence of your ability for synthesis i.e. bringing together relevant information to make sound recommendations for the problem in question.

 

ASSESSMENT CRITERIA FOR THIS REPORT AND WEIGHTS

 

 

Executive summary Clarity of overall aim Clear key results and conclusions Clear recommendations	10%
Introduction States clearly aim and objectives Provides assumptions made Outlines structure of the report	5%
Methodology Describes clearly the methods used to collect the data Extra marks for interviews/research within the company	10%
Analysis/interpretation Critical discussion of the topic with insights from your company Organization of the discussion and alignment with stated aim and objectives Using learned marketing/business concepts to support opinion	40%
Conclusions and recommendations Synthesis of key results Clear managerial recommendations/suggestions	20%
Structure/presentation Correct use of references (with text and at the end) Easy to follow Use of subheading for signposting Good quality tables/figures/diagrams	15%