03-19-2007, 12:08 PM
Quote:The good news is that the ultimate drivers of customer choice tend to fall logically into two categories: cost and risk. Cost-oriented factors include convenience, ease of doing business and product support.
Risk-oriented factors involve trust, confidence and the strength of relationships. It sounds straightforward enough. However, in many of Asia's industry sectors, customer knowledge as a discipline has a long way to develop. Therefore, a number of sources of risk and cost to customers tend to be overlooked.
In fact, most companies never attend to such costs, but they are real. Managers who give thought to ways to cut these interaction costs will likely uncover innovative ways of raising customers' gain.
For instance, in the customer's mind, cost is a lot more than the sales price of a product. In reality, customers incur costs while transacting or interacting with the seller, and also while integrating the product sold into their own products or operations. Products themselves, even when they are very good, rarely provide all the benefits that customers are seeking...
full article: http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/r86y...Game.xhtml