It's just business

EDITORIAL POSTLUDE
HERBERT JACK ROTFELD

It’s Just Business

Unfortunately, the study of social issues is often treated as a minor area outside the mainstream of marketing scholarship. Many schools do not offer any courses dedicated to public policy issues or to the analysis of marketing and society; some leading scholars tell doctoral students to not focus research work on social issues until after they have tenure or established a reputation by work in other areas. It’s not as if they consider the consumers’ interests trivial, but like business professionals, some educators see marketing as almost above reproach because they are serving consumers’ needs, at least the needs of targeted consumer segments.
For as long as I’ve been a scholar of business practices, I’ve heard marketing experts (both practitioners and educators) say, ‘‘The marketing concept says that we should _satisfy consumer needs,’ so since we are satisfying consumers, we serve the consumers’ interests.’’ To them it is a tautology. I’ve never encountered a statement of the marketing concept indicating that it can (or should) be driven by altruism, nor has altruism been used as the foundation of a book on business ethics. To the contrary, first and foremost, a firm seeks to satisfy its own needs. Nonetheless, the issues of the times or situations of disservice to consumers too often get overlooked.
What too many fail to acknowledge is that the consumers are more likely at the mercy of the businesses whose rules serve the majority of situations but fail to serve others (Rotfeld 2004a). What interests a consumer ‘‘segment’’ is not necessarily meeting or even understanding the interests of consumers as people (Rotfeld 2004b). Recognizing that customers want good service, many businesses are using upbeat slogans and advertising about the good service they claim to provide. And yet, while seeming to assert a devotion to servicing the consumers’ interests, they have nigh inflexible rules that result in a different outcome.
This is not just an issue of the stores whose blasting stereos and televisions that they think attract young shoppers yet turn away many other customers, nor is it a problem of people outside a target market segment being offended by a business that they’d never patronize. Under the heading of ‘‘doing business,’’ undesirable outcomes proliferate and consumers are abused. Some individual tales are rather telling.
The Perez family lives in Slidell, Louisiana, a town along the Gulf Coast about 35 miles northeast of New Orleans. Last fall, not knowing that hurricane Katrina was on its way to provide an international news event with extensive damage to the area, when the family car had gone in for repairs on Friday they rented a car from a national company that for many years had advertised a desire to ‘‘Try harder’’ to please customers. The evacuation orders came Saturday morning, before any businesses were open, so they were forced to pack the rental car for their escape to central Alabama to stay with some friends, expecting to return in a few days without incident. The world knows what happened next, as the portion of Katrina’s eye passed over Slidell, virtually destroying much of the town and inundating many of the areas with up to 20 feet of water. In the aftermath, roads were closed, the area was flooded, and Slidell was shut down.
They called the car company’s central customer service line on Tuesday, the day originally scheduled to return the car, and asked what to do; it was pretty absurd to expect a return to the now-submerged original location. Customer service indicated that they had not yet decided how they were handling the situation, so they were told to call back ‘‘in a couple of days.’’ What about the additional days of usage? The agent wasn’t sure. Two days later, another customer service agent said to return it that day to avoid additional charges, with the two extra days waived.
It appeared that the company was trying harder for the unfortunate hurricane victims—you’d think the Perez family should be given a reward since they saved the car from being flooded with the rest of the company’s inventory still in Slidell—but initial appearances are sometimes deceiving.
Yet when they actually came to an office to return the car, they were presented with a final invoice for six days rather than four days rental, with an increase from $33.99/day to $159.99/day, plus additional charges for returning the car to a different location. The bill increased from roughly $150 to over $1,558, never mind what they were told over the phone or that the original location was probably under water. An argument followed in which the corporate agents were not very sympathetic, explaining the high bill because they are ‘‘just a business,’’ these are the rules, and Perez did not adhere to the original contract-promised period or drop-off directions.
Since no one in the office offered to make a needed phone call, Perez had to use several hours of personal cell phone minutes to the company’s central customer service office, which finally acquiesced to adjust charges to $332, a higher fee from not waiving the extra two days as previously promised charged at the higher rate, and that amount was charged to Perez’s debit card. About a week later, Perez was finally able to be in touch with the customer service person who made the original promises, and after an hour or more of discussion, the representative agreed to honor the original four-day agreement, without additional charges, stating that the company would refund the difference that they were charged. Of course, it took a week more and additional arguments over the phone to get the additional charges reversed, but therein lies another tale about credit cards, debit cards, and customer rights (a not-uncommon topic for articles in JCA).
Consumers do respond to the corporate social responsibility that they perceive as practices in a business (Mohr and Webb 2005). And yet, while a single customer service agent seemed to care or try harder, the frontline customer contact people hardly tried. They knew about the hurricane and its impact, they expressed personal sympathy, but did not seem to care enough to change business rules.
In an older tale (from Rotfeld 2001), a chain noted for its low-priced electronic equipment, computer supplies, music CDs, and DVDs had an advertising motto of ‘‘I care’’ printed on lapel pins worn by everyone in the store. Zachery had purchased a computer part fromthe store, only to have his office computer person return it, unopened, saying it was the wrong one. Unfortunately, it was not returned to Zachery with the receipt. No problem, or so my friend thought, for a store that cares.
He was just asking for store credit, not a refund, but the clerk was not empowered to accept any return without the receipt. The manager, visible in his loft but not willing to come down and talk to the customer, sent the message, ‘‘Tell him he is out of luck.’’ A little put off by this ‘‘Like, I care?’’ variation on the motto, Zachery informed the clerk that he would take his business elsewhere. The clerk shuffled back upstairs and returned to report, ‘‘The manager said, _too bad.’’’ Apparently, the store was using limited service and strict rules for all returns as a shortsighted device to hold down costs. And maybe the rules are inflexible because they consider all their employees idiots. When Zachery complained to the national offices, he received a form letter that just repeated the clerk’s whine, stating, ‘‘By requiring receipts we are able to hold down prices,’’ as if the details of what Zachery wrote were never read.
Still, what made the bad service all the more galling was that they were running an advertising campaign and having clerks wear lapel pins with the slogan proclaiming that they care about customers, like the car rental company advertised that it tries harder. And in neither case were the employees willing to do what is right.
Employees’ own perceptions of ethics, at least in some retail situations, can sometimes result in them doing the right thing (Dubinsky, Nataraajan, and Huang 2004), that is, if the company trusted the employees enough to do it. The company has rules for the employees, the customers are caught in the businesses’ grip, and not even an internationally known disaster can get people in the office to deal with the customers as people instead of an uncertain mass that must obey their rules.

REFERENCE;

The Journal of Consumer Affairs, Vol. 40, No. 1, 2006
ISSN 0022-0078
Copyright 2006 by The American Council on Consumer Interests
THE JOURNAL OF CONSUMER AFFAIRS



Comment;

For a long years, the consumer interests or needs in marketing are not accepting as a social issue. Lots of education institutes, schools and universities did not offer any courses to the students about that subject because they consider the customer needs are not trivial. However some educators and business professionals understood that it is wrong. And they tried to discover the consumers interests and how to satisfy their needs. To the contrary, they see that firstly the firms seeks to satisfy their own needs. We know the most important point that the customers want good service. There are 2 examples about the firms attitudes to their customers in two different incidents.
First one is the Perz family’s incident; they rented a car for a few days however there becomes a very big natural disaster “Hurricane Katrina” at the place where they rented the car. At that moment they went to another town to pass few days with their friends. But after the hurricane disastered, they could not go back. They communicated with the agent but they said “you have to pay extra fees for the extra days, also you give the car to the another agent so it is charged extra fee for you”. But at that moment we have to know that this firm’s motto was “trying harder” to make the customer happy. Then Perez started to try to solve this problem. He solved it, got the extra money back which he paid. However it took lots of days , time and costet lots of money for Perez’s family.
Second incident is Zachery’s situation, he bought a computer part from a store which has a motto as “Like, ı care?”. That part was a wrong part for Zachery’s office computer, so he wanted to chnge it. However when he went to back to the store, he understood that this store had a strict rules and limited services. The clerks could not make decision witout rules, means rules are not flexible. So the process of changing the part, took lots of time for Zachery. He complained to the national office.
At the both of two cases, the employees were not willing to do what is wright because the rules are strict, inflexible because the firms had not enough trust to their employees. We see that all firms have to give some authority to their employees. Because we know that customers want good and quick services. If we give enough authority to them, it can be a solution for the problems. Firms make some advertisements and mottos about to satisfy the customer needs. However we know that the firms firstly have to describe and satisfy their own needs.

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