Consumer research is the process or set of processes that links the consumers, customers and end users to the marketer through information – information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve understanding of marketing as a process. Marketing research specifies the information required to address these issues, designs the method for collecting information, manages and implements the data collection process, analyzes the results, and communicates the findings and their implications.

An organization that has as one of its goals “to be the most profitable company in our industry” will have Key Performance Indicators that measure profit and related fiscal measures. “Pretax Profit” and “Shareholder Equity” will be among them. However, “Percent of Profit Contributed to Community Causes” probably will not be one of its Key Performance Indicators. On the other hand, a school is not concerned with making a profit, so its Key Performance Indicators will be different. KPIs like “Graduation Rate” and “Success In Finding Employment After Graduation”, though different, accurately reflect the schools mission and goals.

Customer support is a range of customer services used to assist customers in making cost effective and correct use of a product. It includes assistance in planning, installation, training, troubleshooting, maintenance, upgrading, and disposal of a product. Regarding technology products such as mobile phones, televisions, computers, software products or other electronic or mechanical goods, it is termed technical support.

Successful customer retention starts with the first contact an organization has with a customer and continues throughout the entire lifetime of a relationship. A company’s ability to attract and retain new customers, is not only related to its product or services, but strongly related to the way it services its existing customers and the reputation it creates within and across the marketplace. Customer retention is more than giving the customer what they expect, it’s about exceeding their expectations so that they become loyal advocates for your brand. Creating customer loyalty puts customer value rather than maximizing profits and shareholder value at the center of business strategy. The key differentiation in a competitive environment is often the delivery of a consistently high standard of customer service.

The science of service improvement is a mix of disciplines, which aims to build a culture that is supportive of improvement and uses principles and thinking from psychology and organizational development. The objective is to combine the tools and techniques of quality improvement with effective organizational and leadership development. It draws on a breadth of knowledge and research including technical engineering theories of systems, theories about human relationships and social interactions and complexity theory. There are also the theories that support organizational development, design and adult learning.

Business process improvement is a systematic approach to help an organization optimize its underlying processes to achieve more efficient results. It is the methodology that both Process Redesign and Business Process Re-engineering are based upon. BPI has allegedly been responsible for reducing cost and cycle time by as much as 90% while improving quality by over 60%. Process improvement is an aspect of organizational development (OD) in which a series of actions are taken by a process owner to identify, analyze and improve existing business processes within an organization to meet new goals and objectives, such as increasing profits and performance, reducing costs and accelerating schedules. These actions often follow a specific methodology or strategy to increase the likelihood of successful results. Process improvement may include the restructuring of company training programs to increase their effectiveness. Process improvement is also a method to introduce process changes to improve the quality of a product or service, to better match customer and consumer needs.

In management, business value is an informal term that includes all forms of value that determine the health and well-being of the firm in the long run. Business value expands concept of value of the firm beyond economic value (also known as economic profit, economic value added, and shareholder value) to include other forms of value such as employee value, customer value, supplier value, channel partner value, alliance partner value, managerial value, and societal value. Many of these forms of value are not directly measured in monetary terms. Business value often embraces intangible assets not necessarily attributable to any stakeholder group. Examples include intellectual capital and a firm’s business model. The balanced scorecard methodology is one of the most popular methods for measuring and managing business value.

Customer satisfaction is a term frequently used in marketing. It is a measure of how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation. Customer satisfaction is defined as the number of customers, or percentage of total customers, whose reported experience with a firm, its products, or its services (ratings) exceeds specified satisfaction goals. It is seen as a key performance indicator within business and is often part of a Balanced Scorecard. In a competitive marketplace where businesses compete for customers, customer satisfaction is seen as a key differentiator and increasingly has become a key element of business strategy. Within organizations, customer satisfaction ratings can have powerful effects. They focus employees on the importance of fulfilling customers’ expectations. Furthermore, when these ratings dip, they warn of problems that can affect sales and profitability. These metrics quantify an important dynamic. When a brand has loyal customers, it gains positive word-of-mouth marketing, which is both free and highly effective.