B2C – Should a Flowershop Provide Courses? Essay
Introduction
The successful business development depends consistently on the business to customer relationships. If the company manages to develop positive business to customer relationships, customers are likely to stay loyal to the company and its brand. On the other hand, if the company fails to develop positive business to customer relationships, the risk of the failure increases substantially. In this regard, it is possible to refer to the case of the flowershop, which attempts to attract customers offering them courses, during which they can learn more information on flowers and other products and services offered by the flowershop. In such a way, the flowershop intends attract customers and to develop positive business to customer relationships that can help the company to increase the customer loyalty and to increase sale rates of the company. However, the provision of courses for customers by the flowershop raises a number of questions concerning benefits and positive effects of such decision.
Problem formulation
Should a flowershop provide courses? Would the provision of courses attract customers to the flowershop? Would benefits of courses provided by the flowershop outweigh their costs?
Discussion
The theory of planned behaviour stands on the ground that the primary drivers of the business growth are the marketing analysis and understanding of customers’ needs and prediction of their behaviour. Therefore customers’behaviour within the target market does matter for the flowershop, while the behaviour of customer in other markets is irrelevant to the business development and business to customer relationships.
In such a context, the flowershop training courses can be helpful because they are likely to create the positive attitude of customers to the flowershop and attract them because they learn more about flowers and, thus, grow interested in purchasing flowers and accessories.
In this regard, the theory of reasoned action is relevant to the theory of planned behaviour, but the theory of reasoned action focuses not on the behaviour proper but on the behaviour intentions. However, such difference between the two theories is substantial and makes the theory of reasoned action inapplicable to the business to customer relationships. At any rate, this theory is less effective compared to the theory of planned behaviour because latter focuses on the behaviour of customers but not on the intention of the behaviour. The intention of behaviour can be carried or not, while the behaviour is what defines the customer choices and decisions. Therefore, the company like a flowershop should apply the theory of planned behaviour, while the theory of reasoned action cannot provide the company with the full scope of the customer behaviour. Instead, the company will just try to guess what intentions of the customers are, instead of focusing on the behaviour of customers proper.
Nevertheless, it is important to find out whether the theory of planned behaviour is really more efficient in terms of finding out the business to customer relationships, namely the effect of courses provided by the flowershop on the customer loyalty, or probably the theory of reasoned action is more effective in the assessment of possible effects of the courses being provided by the flowershop.
In this regard, the analysis of the application of both theories to the flowershop’s courses and how they may affect the customer behaviour is needed. For this purpose, managers of the flowershop can conduct interviews and questionnaires as well as they can organize the work of focus groups to conduct the qualitative study. The qualitative study will help to find out whether the intention of behaviour does matter in the course of the customer decision making, namely whether the intention to attend training courses and return to the flowershop to purchase new products will result in the specific action or not. In other words, it is necessary to find out whether the intention of behaviour leads to the specific behaviour patterns or not. On conducting such analysis, the company will be able to find out whether the intention of customers to attend training courses and to return to buy new products from the flowershop will result in the target behaviour pattern and they will return to the shop and buy new products over and over again.
In fact, the application of both theories and aforementioned methods can lead to different results. Hypothetically the higher effectiveness of either theory will be proved. However, the study may lead to quite a controversial outcome, when both theories may be relevant and effective under certain conditions. For instance, if the behaviour of customers is not fully shaped, their intention may be very significant and the decision of the flowershop to launch courses for customers can contribute to customers’ taking the decision to use the new service offered by the flowershop. Alternatively, if the customer behaviour is fully shaped, i.e. customers consider themselves being proficient in flowers, their planting and selection, they may not need such courses and their initial intention to attend courses, which they may have under the impact of the emotional appeal, may not actually lead to the target behaviour pattern. To put it more precisely, at first, customers may become interested in the offer of the new service, training courses for customers, made by the flowershop. The company may appeal to emotions of the target customer group. At first, customers may feel interested in the offer and they may have the intention to attend the courses. However, on a profound reflection, they may take the contrary decision and refuse from the courses because they understand that they are already proficient and do not need any additional training to learn more about flowers, planting and their selection.
Nevertheless, the brief analysis of the flowershop’s target market and the customer behaviour makes it possible to presuppose that the study will prove the relevance of the theory of planned behaviour and its higher effectiveness compared to the theory of reasoned action. The company should study attitudes of customers to its new service and to its products and, then take a decision on whether to introduce the courses or not. In fact, customers of the flowershop are diverse. Even though virtually all of them like flowers, not many customers do have the proficient knowledge and skills in the field of planting or selection of flowers. Moreover, even the information on flowers the customers have is often superficial and insufficient to make the right choice of flowers. Therefore, the company should better focus on the attitudes of customers to plan their behaviour, instead of focusing on their intentions, which may not always lead to the decision to choose the target behaviour pattern.
Conclusion
Thus, the problem of the flowershop to provide courses for customers or not should be carefully studied and analyzed in details. In fact, the introduction of courses for customers may be effective but the company should forecast the behaviour of customers and their response to the introduction of the courses. The company may refer to the theory of planned behaviour and to the theory of reasoned action. In fact, both theories help to forecast the customer behaviour but, if the theory of planned behaviour focuses on the customer behaviour proper, then the theory of reasoned action focuses on intentions of customers. The study should analyze which theory is more relevant and effective. After that the company may decide which theory to use to make the final decision on the introduction of the courses for customers.
Perspectives
In fact, the application of the theory of planned behaviour seems to be more reasonable because this theory allows focusing on the specific behaviour of customers and analyze it in details. Thus, the company can uncover the business to customer relationships and find out effects of the courses on customers. In this regard, the suggested methods of the study, such as interviews, questionnaires and focus groups are effective and worth implementing because they help to understand better customers’ intentions, expectations and behaviour. The company should come prepared to possible challenges that may arise in the course of the study, such as controversial results, which put both theories on the equal ground, for instance. In such a situation, the company should conduct analysis and focus on broader scope to take into consideration not only the customer behaviour but also other factors that may influence their decisions.
