Marketing CASE - guaranteeing positive reviews of your product. So…what would you do?

M Idriss
You are a product manager for a line of bedroom furniture, and have released for sale the company’s newest collection of beds, dressers, armoires and nightstands. Due to quality and production problems, release of the collection was delayed, with corresponding negative impact on company sales. You remain skeptical of the furniture’s quality, but was under tremendous pressure to authorize the selling of the new furniture. As part of your introductory marketing efforts, a sample bedroom set (bed, dresser and nightstand) will be distributed to 10 women across the country, with the understanding that they will post their reviews on various sites on-line. Obviously, positive reviews would benefit sales.
You’ve just received an email from the shipping and receiving manager. While not part of the normal customer shipping process, she has asked if you’d like her and her team to hand pick, inspect and, if necessary, repair or replace the sample furniture pieces that will be sent to the 10 women. The manager wants to know if you’d like her to ensure the quality of all the pieces, thereby almost guaranteeing positive reviews of your product. So…what would you do?
Dinesh Divekar
Dear friend,
Following is the definition of Marketing Management:
Marketing management is 'the art and science of choosing target markets and getting, keeping, and growing customers through creating, delivering, and communicating superior customer value' (Kotler and Keller, 2008: 5).
In your case, you know very well that the product does not meet the quality standards. In that case, pushing the selected pieces to the market in order to get the better review may fetch the orders initially but then what about thereafter? If you manipulate the good reviews, in the beginning, you will get the future orders. But then there could be dissatisfied customers who also have every authority to write bad reviews. How will you manage those bad reviews? When the bad reviews outnumber good reviews, it will typecast your company and wriggling out of this bad publicity will become very difficult.
Therefore, the best thing is to improve the quality of the product. Marketing is not for conning the customers.
Thanks,
Dinesh Divekar
M Idriss
Dear Dinesh Divekar ,
Thank you for helping me out, I really appreciate your kindness and support, you have mentioned great points.
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