par
bukayo ekunwe , Business Development Manager , Aktion Energy, Nigeria Subsidiary
Thanks Amrut Desai, for your contribution.It is highly appreciated. Integrity and trustworthiness of a marketing personnel can not and should not be compromised. It leads to repetitive sales, brand loyalty, and ultimately the GOODWILL of the business. This explains why Marketing and Customer Relations are the bane for survival for any business.
par
Amrut Desai , former Managing Director & Country Manager India & SriLanka , Hohenstein India Pvt Ltd-fully owned by Hohenstein Institute GmbH Germany
What roles do trust and integrity of a marketing personnel play in acquiring repetitive customer brand loyalty?
Trust and Integrity are the most important and desirable characteristics not just for Marketing but for the entire organization and its brand value that is “ Brand value” as seen through the eyes of the customer. Customer to be loyal to the brand, expects certain behaviour and values from the brand and the organization behind.
Let us first define trust and integrity. I would like to define first Integrity and then Trust as trust always is the outcome or manifestation of actions with Integrity.
INTEGRITY is a concept of consistency of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations, and outcomes. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or accuracy of one's actions.
The word "integrity" stems from the Latin adjective integer (whole, complete). In this context, integrity is the inner sense of "wholeness" deriving from qualities such as honesty and consistency of character. As such, one may judge that others "have integrity" to the extent that they act according to the values, beliefs and principles they claim to hold.
Integrity of the individual and its importance at the corporate level in creating a culture of integrity assumes great importance. With an individual of integrity, we talk about the character of the person and our trust and belief in this individual.
TRUST:
“ Assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something. A trustworthy person is the one in which confidence is placed ”
Trust is of paramount importance for an individual as well as for an organization. Trust always affects the outcomes in terms of speed and cost. If there is a lack of trust, the speed on the transaction will go down and the cost will go up. In short, trust has a favorable impact on the economics of the relationship; trust pays a dividend in terms of speed and reduced cost. As good marketing is all about creating value for the customer and meeting his or her expectations all the time, at the forefront of this activity for the organization, marketing personnel must have the traits of Integrity and Trust
In an organization and hence in the functioning of a very important function like
“ MARKETING ”, Integrity and Trust play very crucial roles. Establishing a culture of integrity engenders trust and increases efficiency.
Marketing to be effective means that it should achieve the intended financial results and lead to changes in consumer behaviour. The customer chooses to interact with and decides to do business with marketing personnel and their organizations where he/ she experiences behaviour comprising integrity and trustworthiness etc.
The ability of the marketing personnel (and hence their organization’s ) to keep their promises of delivering on time excellent product or service to the customer tilts the balance in their favour where in customer decides to buy the product or service and keeps coming back for more.
When we speak of an organization, we are essentially speaking of a group of personnel manning the organization. Therefore to be able to build organizations that are collaborative, constructive, innovative, transparent, with high employee morale, valued customer loyalty, and strong partnerships, a culture of high Integrity and trustworthiness must pervade through out the organization. Marketing the most important function (along with ability to of a company’s ability to be innovative) that essentially deals with the creation of customers and keeping them satisfied ( towards achieving the life time value of the customer !) , must have personnel that exhibit unquestionable integrity and must be trustworthy for continued achievement of the set revenue targets and sustained growth
Thank you for the opportunity to dwell on this most important subject