This unit is designed to enhance students’ knowledge and understanding of the consumer’s decision-making process. To gain competitive advantage and maintain market share, organisations understand the importance of seeking answers to questions such as:
● How do we buy products and services?
● What motivates us to seek out a particular product or service?
● What research do we undertake prior to making a decision?
● Do we seek out other people’s opinions through social media and other digital technologies?
● To what extent do other people’s opinions influence our own?
● How do we feel after we have made the purchase?
The answers to these types of questions help marketers to understand the processes behind consumer purchase decisions, which allows organisations to adapt the marketing mix and enhance the customer experience.
Students will learn the underpinning theories and frameworks and will be expected to relate them to real-world examples across a range of organisational contexts.
The knowledge, understanding and skill sets that students gain on successfully completing this unit will enhance their career opportunities, whether they are starting their own business or working for an organisation in a marketing function
Learning Outcomes (LOs)
By the end of this unit, students will be able to:
LO1 Investigate characteristics and influences on consumer decision-making
processes in different organisational contexts
LO2 Apply techniques to enhance the customer experience and develop customer
relationships for marketing purposes
LO3 Evaluate measures and metrics that seek to improve customer experience for a range of products and services
LO4 Devise measures and metrics to improve customer experience within a given
organisational context.
To succeed in this unit, you are required to follow the scenario provided and complete all the required assessment criteria. Your submissions should demonstrate your understanding of how your research links coherently to these aspects of Marketing Insights and Analytics. Any work submitted should include evidence of your research with references (Harvard Referencing).
Assignment Title: Application of Marketing Insight and Analytics to enhance Customer Experience
Submission Format
This submission will be in the form of an individual report that is appropriate and suitable for use at a business meeting. The report must be submitted using a WORD processed document. PDF and other types of files are not accepted.
The recommended length of this submission is 5000 words, although you will not be penalised for exceeding the recommended length.
Where appropriate, additional research must be used and referenced according to the Harvard Referencing format. The work must include a reference list that follows the Harvard referencing format.
Unit Learning Outcomes
LO1 Investigate the characteristics and influences on consumer decision-making
processes in different organisational contexts
LO2 Apply techniques to enhance the customer experience and develop customer
relationships for marketing purposes
LO3 Evaluate measures and metrics that seek to improve customer experience for a
range of products and services
LO4 Devise measures and metrics to improve customer experience within a given
organisational context.
Scenario and Activity
The latest data from the UK automobile market shows that new car prices increased by 4.2% in the year to May 2024, reflecting a steady decline in vehicle price inflation from 5.5% in January. This marked the eighth consecutive month of easing price increases, following a peak of 10.5% in April 2023. The current inflation rate for new cars is the lowest since February 2022.
One key driver of the reduced inflation rate was the continued decline in electric vehicle (EV) prices, which dropped by 3.1% month-over-month in May, the largest decrease in over two years. Supply chain improvements, alongside increasing battery production capacities, have contributed to this price reduction. Despite this slowdown in price inflation, overall car prices remain high due to sustained demand for EVs and hybrids, particularly in the face of the UK’s 2030 ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles.
As a result, leading car manufacturers such as Ford and Volkswagen have made significant investments to manage rising production costs while keeping prices competitive. Ford, for example, announced a £450 million investment in May 2024, primarily aimed at lowering the price of its EV models. This strategy includes expanding local battery production, offering extended warranties, and increasing price transparency through customer-friendly trade-in and financing programs to rival the dominance of Tesla in the EV market. Additionally, these automakers are introducing new customer engagement strategies, including loyalty rewards and enhanced digital purchasing platforms, to capture a larger market share.
Your Role:
Following your recent appointment as an associate marketing manager at PwC UK, you are required to produce a report for the senior management of Ford. The report should critically evaluate the consumer decision-making process in the UK automobile industry across a range of products and services, including why it is essential for marketers to map the path to purchase and understand consumer decision making. Moreover, the report should assess how marketers understand the consumer decision-making process for a range of products and services from different organisations.
In addition, design a detailed customer experience strategy, selecting appropriate techniques to enhance customer experience and maximise marketing opportunities for Ford.
Critically assess the validity, reliability and suitability of methods for monitoring and improving customer experience for different products and services and provide justified recommendations (methods) for improving the customer experience of Ford UK. In pursuit of this, compare and contrast the benefits and limitations of the selected customer experience metrics.
Finally, using range of appropriate measures and metrics, provide justified recommendations to improve the customer experience at Ford UK.
Note:
(Students are required to consider the case presented for the assignment)
LEARNING OUTCOMES AND ASSESSMENT CRITERIA
Pass Merit Distinction
LO1 Investigate characteristics and influences on consumer decision-making processes in different organisational contexts
LO1 and LO2
D1 Critically evaluate the consumer decision- making process to develop a strategic customer experience.
P1 Examine the stages of the consumer decision- making journey for products and services from different organisations.
P2 Discuss why it is important for marketers to map a path to purchase and understand consumer decision making. M1 Evaluate how marketers understand the consumer decision- making process for a range of products and services from different organisations.
LO2 Apply techniques to enhance the customer experience and develop customer relationships for marketing purposes
P3 Design a customer experience strategy, selecting appropriate techniques to enhance customer experience to meet marketing opportunities. M2 Design a detailed customer experience strategy, selecting appropriate techniques to enhance customer experience to maximise marketing opportunities.
LO3 Evaluate measures and metrics that seek to improve customer experiences for a range of products and services
D2 Justify recommendations for improving customer experience.
P4 Evaluate methods for monitoring and improving the customer experience for different products and services.
P5 Compare and contrast the benefits and limitations of customer experience metrics. M3 Critically assess the validity, reliability and suitability of methods for improving customer experience.
LO4 Devise measures and metrics to improve customer experience within a given organisational context.
1. D3 Justify the use of a range of appropriate measures and metrics to improve the customer experience in a chosen organisation.
P6 Recommend ways to improve customer experience in a chosen organisation, using measures and metrics. M4 Make recommendations for improvements to customer experience in a chosen organisation, using a range of measures and metrics.
Achievement of a Pass grade
A student must have satisfied all the Pass criteria for the learning outcomes, showing coverage of the unit content and therefore attainment at Level 4 or 5 of the national framework.
Achievement of a Merit grade
A student must have satisfied all the Merit criteria (as well as the Pass criteria) through high performance in each learning outcome.
Achievement of a Distinction grade
A student must have satisfied all the Distinction criteria (as well as the Pass and Merit criteria), and these define outstanding performance across the unit as a whole.
ALL GRADES ARE PROVISIONAL UNTIL INTERNALLY VERIFIED AND UNTIL EXTERNALLY CERTIFIED BY EDEXCEL.
THIS MEANS THAT A GRADE CAN BE CHANGED AT ANY POINT UNTIL EDEXCEL CERTIFIES IT
As per Pearson policy, you are only allowed two submissions per module. One for final submission and another one for referral. Failure to achieve a grade pass after a second submission will result in you having to repeat the module in the next term.
Any re-submission or late submission (unless authorised due to mitigating circumstances) will be capped at a PASS grade only.
Specification of Assessment
• Present your work in one business report style which should include a cover page, table of contents, introduction, conclusion, reference list, foot or end notes and appendices if any
• Include the reference code of this assignment on your assignment submission front page.
• Sign the Learner’s Statement of authenticity in the cover page. Failure to do so will result in the submission being declined.
• Ensure the following information is in the footer on every page:
o Your name
o The production date of your submission
o The code number of your assignment brief
o The page number (Each page must be numbered at the bottom right-hand side)
• Spell-check the document and make sure there are no grammatical errors as it may result in the submission being declined.
• Complete all the tasks in a Holistic manner as set in the brief and without separating the assessment criteria to avoid a potential referral.
• Create your own titles and sub-headings to structure the work without copying the assessment criteria verbatim.
• Produce clear specific reasoning and arguments in support of your answers.
• Submit your work in a single WORD processed document of not more than 5000 words for all learning Outcomes. This word limit is only for guidelines and is not applied to grading. PDF and other types of files are not accepted.
• You must include a bibliography at the end to show where your information was sourced. Failure to do so may result in the submission being declined
• Your sources must be identified using the Harvard referencing system. The words used in your bibliography will not be included in your word count.
• You must use Arial, size 12, 1.5 line spacing and black to format the text.
To access any feedback (formative/summative) you will have to access Moodle and open your assignment. You will have to click on the blue comment box in the righthand side and the feedback will appear within the text. You might have to click on the blue bubbles to see the feedback.
If an extension is necessary for a valid reason, requests must be made in writing using a course work extension request form to the head of department. Please note that the lecturers do not have the authority to extend the coursework deadlines and therefore do not ask them to award a coursework extension.
The completed form must be accompanied by evidence such as a medical certificate in the event of you being sick.
Any act of plagiarism and collusion will be seriously dealt with according to the regulations and MRC Malpractice policy
Plagiarism occurs when a student misrepresents any work submitted as his/her own work, the work of any other person or of any institution. Examples of forms of plagiarism include:
• the verbatim (word for word) copying of another’s work without appropriate and correctly presented acknowledgement.
• the close paraphrasing of another’s work by simply changing a few words or altering the order of presentation, without appropriate and correctly presented acknowledgement.
• unacknowledged quotation of phrases from another’s work;
• The deliberate and detailed presentation of another’s concept as one’s own.
All types of work submitted by students are covered by this definition, including, written work, diagrams, designs, engineering drawings and pictures.
Collusion occurs when, unless with official approval (e.g., in the case of group projects), two or more students consciously collaborate in the preparation and production of work which is ultimately submitted by each in an identical, or substantially similar, form and/or is represented by each to be the product of his or her individual efforts.
All submissions for assessment must be submitted on Moodle to generate a Turnitin Report on similarity to detect potential plagiarism and collusion.
The maximum Turnitin score admissible is 15% but a submission can be classified as plagiarism and/or collusion with a lower score depending on the size of the submission and size of the text highlighted.
Assignments with plagiarism/ad or collusion will be automatically referred for reworking and resubmission. Please check the MRC Assessment policy as well as MRC Malpractice policy for details of the potential penalties as a procedure.
Including pictures of text (apart from the cover page or table of content) or pictures of any other type of information (diagram for example) without a citation and a Harvard Reference could be deemed to be an attempt of malpractice and could trigger an automatic referral as well as a malpractice procedure.
Any student might be called to seat through a viva with the lecturer to confirm any parts of the submission through an interview which will then form part of the summative assessment.
AI tools have proliferated and become more common and as a result, their usage for research has increased which prompted change of government policies in this matter.
Overall, it remains too easy for students to misunderstand how they can use Generative Artificial Intelligence tools and unintentionally breach academic integrity guidelines.
Research of information and the writing of academic work must always be performed by the student, and while it is acceptable to use an AI tool to start a research process, it is not allowed to use it to write a submission in your place.
The important part is to understand that the best way to produce a work is to research it through traditional methods (books articles, websites, journals).
Yet, AI tools could be used to help with the research but only as a starting point. Having found information, thanks to an AI tool, about a topic you are writing about, you should then research it using these traditional methods and include the references and citations based on these resources in your work.
Once you have the correct information, you need to write the assignment yourself, using an AI tool to do this for you is never allowed. The usage of paraphrasing tools might be appropriate to find alternative to some words and short sentences, but not or a whole paragraph/page/ work.
The same way Mont Rose College is using a similarity detection system, an AI detection tool is embedded in our systems and every submission you make will go through both of them.
Submissions for assessment that consist of large substantially unmodified output from Artificial Intelligence software may be considered as a very poor academic practice as it does not represent the student’s own work.
To this effect, the limit on AI detection has been set at 50%. If a submission is over that allowance, the submission could be rejected and awarded a Referral and/or the student called to seat through a viva with the lecturer to confirm any parts of the submission through an interview which will then form part of the summative assessment.
In cases where an individual persistently exhibits poor academic practice through inappropriate use of Artificial Intelligence tools, such as a lack of evidencing their use of the tools, they may be referred to the academic misconduct procedures and the range of the potential penalties
Textbooks
NEUMEIER, M. (2016) The Brand Flip, why customers now run companies and how to profit from it. Harlow: Pearson.
SHIFFMAN, L. and WISENBLIT, J. (2019) Consumer Behavior. 12th Ed. London: Prentice Hall.
SOLOMON, M. (2020) Consumer Behavior, Buying, Having and Being. 13th Ed. Harlow: Pearson.
SORENSEN, H. (2017) Inside the Mind of the Shopper. Harlow: Pearson.
SWINSCOE, A. (2016) How to Wow: 68 Effortless Ways to Make Every Customer Experience Effortless. London: FT Press
Websites
www.greatideasforteachingmarketing.com
Great Ideas for Teaching Marketing Consumer behaviour (General reference)
www.marketing-tutor.com
Marketing Tutor Marketing topics (General reference)
www.mckinsey.com McKinsey & Company Our Insights
The Consumer Decision, Journey/Developing a Customer. Experience Vision (General reference)