What is more important, a quality product or excellent customer service?

One of the main barriers in pursuing advanced research in the fields related to e-commerce and e-marketing is the ambiguous way of dealing with the concept and definition of E-Marketing. The majority of researchers within the field misuse the term E-Marketing for E-business, E-Commerce and Internet Marketing as the synonym which is incorrect since these terms have different connotations (Eid & El-Gohary,2011). For instance, E-Marketing is wider in scope than Internet Marketing (IM) since it refers not only to digital media such as the Web, e-mail and wireless media, Intranets, Extranets and mobile phones but also includes electronic customer relationship management systems and the management of digital customer data, etc. In contrast with that,      E-commerce and E-business have a wider and broader scope than E-Marketing.

It is difficult to find an accepted definition of E-Commerce (Duffy & Dale,2002), since its definitions vary according to interpretation and use. For example Kim and Moon,1998 define Electronic Commerce (EC) as: “The delivery of information, products and services, or payments via telephone lines, computer networks or any other electronic means” (Kim & Moon,1998). Baourakis defines it as: “The trading of goods and information through the Internet”(Baourakis, Kourgiantakis, & Migdalas,2002) . On the other hand, Chaffey (2007) interpret E-Commerce as a means to exchange information: “All electronically mediated information exchanges between an organization and its external stakeholders”(Chaffey,2006). In addition, according to some scholars, E Commerce can take a variety of forms which include electronic data exchange (EDI), mobile telephone, direct links-up with suppliers, Internet, Intranet, Extranet, electronic catalogue ordering, and e-mail (Quayle,2002).

E-Business as a term is broader than E-Commerce since it does not refer only to buying and selling (as in E-Commerce) but also refers to servicing customers and collaborating with business partners. This is in line with the roots of the concept of E-Business (Chesher, Kaura, & Linton,2003).

Based on the various definitions for E-Commerce and E-Business, mentioned above, the concept of E-Business goes beyond the narrow understanding associated with the term E-Commerce. Within this context, E-Commerce characteristically relates to the process of buying and selling products, services and information through the use of the Internet and/or computer networks (Chaffey,2007; Lesjak and Vehovar,2005; Greenstein and Feinman,2000 and Turban et al.,2004). Moreover, according to Rodgers (Rodgers, Yen, & Chou,2002),  E-Commerce principally focuses on the organisation customers while E-Business expands the connectivity of the organisation to include not only its customers but also the organisation suppliers, employees and business partners.

Based on the above discussion, it is clear that E-Business, E-Marketing, E-Commerce and Internet Marketing are not equivalents or a different wording for the same meaning as observed in the literature, where there is a blurring of the distinction between the terms. These differences and relationship can be illustrated in figure bellow.

Dear Chiranjivi

here is my attempt to answer your important question.

Customer Service & Product Quality: Two Sides of the Same Coin

For a product oriented company  it is  essential to get people excited about it’s product.  They also need to excel in and be praised for our customer service. It is crucial and must be possible to maintain this high level of user satisfaction with both customer service and product quality.

For any organization engaged in manufacturing and /or in the business of supplying the manufactured goods for the intended consumers, both quality of the product offered and the efficiency or quality of the service rendered   are important for attaining  desired revenues and sustainable growth.

Increasingly, firms recognize the value of close relationships with their customers because customer retention in intensifying competition is more and more important.

In today’ s globalizing business environment, Competition keeps  intensifying , consumer behaviour  is changing, requirements for service quality is growing and technologies develop very quickly, customer expectations are increasing, margins are reducing, product life cycles are shortening.

An organization where the management perceives the quality expectations inaccurately, they are bound to fail and the it could be because of any one or all of the following reasons.

•      Inaccurate information from market research and demand analyses.

•      Inaccurately interpreted information about expectations.

•      Non-existent demand analysis.

•      Bad or non-existent upward information from the firm’s interface with its customer to management.

·         Too many organizational  layers which stop or change the pieces of information that may flow upward

·         from those involved in customer contacts.

•      Insufficient relationship focus.

Inadequate services recovery is another major area of concern.

It is critical for organization to understand the importance of service recovery – why people complain, what they expect when they complain, and how to develop effective service recovery strategies for dealing with inevitable service failures.

Bad service could be analysed  and could be attributed to the following Gaps.

•      GAP1: not knowing what customers expect.

•      GAP2: not selecting the right service designs and standards.

•      GAP3: Not delivering to service standards.

•      GAP4: not matching performance promises.

Perceived services quality gap results in:

•      Negatively confirmed quality and a quality problem.

•      Bad word of mouth.

•      A negative impact on corporate or local image.

•      Lost business.

Therefore, for any organization to be successful, both the product quality and the services that at least meet the expectations of its customers, need to be the focus.  

Excellent Customer Service is very essential today. Even if the product is not so great, customers understand that they have not paid for the best product in the market. However the representative from the company should make the customer feel, he/she is not ignored once the product has been purchased. This will go a long way in ensuring better customer satisfaction.

For me excellent customer service and quality product are both important, but as a sales representative you should give good service first to let the customer feel wow and let them back. If you will give good service follow by quality product then everything will be excellent. 

salam

Quality of every product is your gift to your self that return you as soon as you can image

maybe you have weak service but your heart leads you to best

Great Question, I think this is the one most companies are missing out. To the present age, companies are in the race to make better products and to move it off the shelf at the earliest, but does that helps to create a long term relationship between the customer and the manufacturer. The race to create higher sales ratios with higher profit margin is forcing the companies to make their customer "Just a Customer", but in the long run, are they loyal to the brand.

For sustainable business and brand loyalty, firms need to consider their customers as partners of business rather than "Just a Customer", if such culture is implemented by the organization with better product quality, companies could create better profit margin in long run with sustainable market stability.

I believe that the two go hand in hand. You are not doing a service to your customers by selling an inferior product. I make sure that the products that I represent are all of a high quality and are of good value, which gives me the confidence that I am providing my customers with the best possible customer service.

The Product Quality is more important than customer service as customer will buy a good  product no matter from where, how and at what rate he gets it.

The eg will be Products with well Known brand names

The good eg would be UJALA cloth whitener when it arrived in market no one knew of the Product and was not available in all shops . There was one shop in the entire market and my MOM used to go to that particular shop to get it.

Now we can find on any shop shelf.

Vinod Babu.

excelent customer service is more important than product..

excellent customer service is very much important to sell any product either quality or bad.

If the company is having an excellent customer service that invariably mean they are providing quality products/service to customers.