Creating customer value in the not-for-profit sector a case study of the British library - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 4 Words: 1187 Downloads: 3 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Marketing Essay Type Analytical essay Did you like this example? CREATING CUSTOMER VALUE IN THE NOT-FOR-PROFIT SECTOR: A CASE STUDY OF THE BRITISH LIBRARY The modern marketing concept can be expressed as: The achievement of corporate goals through meeting and exceeding customer needs and expectations better than the competition (Doyle, 2002; Jobber, 2004; Palmer, 2004). To apply this concept, three conditions should be met (Jobber, 2004). First, company activities should be focused upon providing customer satisfaction. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Creating customer value in the not-for-profit sector: a case study of the British library" essay for you Create order Second, the achievement of customer satisfaction relies on integrated effort. Finally, for integrated effort to come about, management must believe that corporate goals can be achieved through satisfied customers. The marketing department alone is not responsible for the implementation of the concept but all the departments of the company viz. the production, finance, research and development, engineering and other departments should also be. Market orientation involves the following activities: identifying the changing customer needs, identifying accordingly the present and future potential market, and marketing the products and services according to the demands of the market. A market driven company features to be a set of beliefs that puts customerà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s interest first, ability to generate and use information about customers and competitors, and the ability to coordinate resources for customer value creation. According to Shapiro (1998) the terms à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"market and marketing orientationà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ are often used interchangeably. Lambin (2000) states that marketing orientation focuses on marketingà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s functional role in co-ordinating and managing the elements of the marketing mix to make a firm more responsive to meeting the needs of its customers, whereas a market orientation highlights the role of all members of the organisation in developing customer relations and enhancing customer value. Hollensen (2003) defines customer value as the differences between the benefits customers realize from using the product and the costs they incur in finding, acquiring and using it (p. 40. Original emphasis). Market orientation and libraries (British Library) According to Rowley (2001), the information suppliers, including libraries, should know how to apply marketing concepts, approaches and tactics. The marketing or promotional activities are used primarily to encourage the public to utilise the collection of the librarie s. British Library is the national library of the UK. Its collection includes manuscripts, patents, journal titles, maps, newspapers, prints, drawings, music scores, millions of stamps and other philatelic items and a sound archive, with recordings dating from the 19th century, and every publication produced in the UK and Ireland. According to Lanning and Michaels (1988) and Kotler (2003), value creation and delivery sequence comprise the following three stages: Choose the value à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" segment the market, select appropriate market target(s), and developing the offerings value positioning Provide the value determine of the various elements of the marketing mix to deliver the value positioning Communicate the value à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬Å" communicate the offer to the target markets This process in the specific context of the British Library: Choosing the value Five different market sectors for the BL were identifiedà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â‚¬ researchers, business users, education (schools), the general public and the UK library network (both public and higher education libraries). For each of the five sectors, research into awareness of the British Library among target customers was implemented, and a specific strategy for each target sector was prepared. Interbrand, a brand consultancy, undertook extensive research programmes on perception among internal and external stakeholders of the British Library. It was found as the results of this research that three key organisational values were deemed to be incorporated innovation, relevance and pride. Based on this result, the mission of the BL was articulated in terms of helping people advance knowledge to enrich lives. And five core competences of the BL were identified by which this mission was to be achieved : open, consultative management staff who feel valued and recognised an empowered, flexible and diverse workforce non-hierarchical, agile decision making strong performance measurement BL moved to demand- driven strategy and focused on the targeted market sectors. à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"World class collections and value added servicesà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ which is the value proposition of British Library and skilled and expertise staff provided a competitive advantage. The British Library adopted electronic communications as the new strategy and thus its website offers online catalogues, information and exhibitions, and changes to the Document Supply Service at Boston Spa have enabled digital delivery of research material on a far greater scale. Providing the value The BL Annual Report (British Library, 2004c) gives an indication of the scale of activities and their usage for each of the target market sectors. Researchers Over, 400,000 visits are made to the BL each year by members of the research community. Even more use the remote information supply service. The customer alerting services offer access to over 20 million articles from academic journals and conferences. Business users Key targets were identified as high research and development oriented industries, professional services, creative industries publishing industries, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). 80% of the highest spending UKà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢s RD companies use BL services. Education In 2003, 8173 children and their teachers took part in workshops based at St. Pancras and visits to the learning pages of the BL website increased fourfold. It provides 2000 pages of online material to enable learners to develop investigative and creative research skills in support of the National Curriculum for schools. Libraries Links with the UK library network promote collaboration between institutions at both regional and local levels. Touring exhibitions and online resources help to improve access to BL material across the country, as befitting the librarys national remit. The BL also supports digitisation projects with the aim of reuniting material of regional importance that has been dispersed around the country. General public The BL stages many public events and also free exhibitions both real and virtual. It publishes books, audio CDs and interactive CD-ROMs targeted to both general and specialised markets. Communicating the value The previous logo was traditional, even old-fashioned. In order to communicate the key values of the organisation to the business and professional audience, a new identity system was needed to be created. The theme of à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‹Å"advancing knowledgeà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã¢â€ž ¢ became the focus for external communications to develop consistency of approach. Marketing communications, at each of the targeted market sectors, demonstrated the organisations value proposition; i.e., the key theme was adding value underlying all of the BL communications activities. The future Combining both market-oriented and resource based approaches, the BL is constantly seeking to maintain and enhance its value proposition to its identified customer segments in a dynamic information marketplace. A key task is capitalising on the resources of the BL, which can be classified as both tangible and intangible. The BL is actively developing its digital capabilities, so that as much of the collections as possible is available on the world-wide-web, with the ultimate goal being for the entire BL collection to be available online on demand. Conclusion Two of Days (1994a) features of market orientation the development of a set of beliefs that puts the customers interests first, and the coordinated application of interfunctional resources are being developed and implemented through the process of value creation and delivery (Kotler, 2003) outlined in this paper. Public sectors and not for profit organisations will have to adopt marketing concept to remain competitive in turbulent market places.