Customer Visits: Building a Better Market Focus - Softcover

McQuarrie, Edward F. (Francis)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803946708 ISBN 13: 9780803946705

Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc, 1993

Synopsis

"The sequencing of chapters has been carefully done to bring out and develop the theme. The book moves smoothly from a lucid explanation and illustration of the concept to the analysis of visit data, customer visits vis-a-vis other market research techniques, and the history and future of customer visits.... Customer Visits seeks to motivate the interested reader to conduct visits to customers in a systematic manner. It is a work of its own kind and is a must for all those who want to know or practice more of close customer relationships." --Management and Labour Studies "It is rare that a book lives up to its stated objectives, but Edward F. McQuarrie, whose work has also been published in JPIM has done just that. . . .This book is written for business-to-business product and marketing managers as well as their manufacturing and technology counterparts, but its style and context are applicable to many other disciplines. . . .Its step-by-step approach and empirically generated examples are without equal." --Journal of Production and Innovation Management "Customer Visits describes an important business-to-business market research technique. . . . The philosophy underlying customer visits and the methodology outlined in the book are critical for practitioners, academic field researchers, MBA students, and professors who teach marketing research, business-to-business marketing, or relationship marketing. . . . It provides important details and describes specific procedures. Unlike many handbooks, it is engaging and parsimoniously written. . . . Knowing how to use customer visits will be an important addition to any manager′s or engineer′s toolbox." --Journal of Marketing Research "It is rare that a book lives up to its stated objectives but McQuarrie, whose work has also been published in JPIM, has done just that. . . . Throughout the book McQuarrie supports his teachings (and they are teachings) with specific examples taken from his vast experiences. He not only details, step-by-step, all the points necessary to assure that customer visits maximize the visiting firm′s intelligence, but he also explains why each step needs to be taken and describes alternative paths to take if your information needs cannot be adequately satisfied through the customer visitation process. . . . He also does an excellent job of reinforcing his critical points and summaries. . . . The book reads like an excellent classroom lecture with all the logic, cautions, examples, and benefits one could hope for from such a course. As such it is an excellent tool for new marketers, MBA students, and those firms who market to end consumers through distributors or dealers. . . . Its step-by-step approach and empirically generated examples are without equal. Its application goes beyond just the BTB industry--it is equally valid for any organization that reaches the end user through a second or third party." --The Journal of Product Innovation Management "Edward F. McQuarrie has successfully integrated theory with solid practical experience to create a very informative and useful book. This is ′must reading′ for any business manager who is serious about managing customer feedback and customer satisfaction." --Michael R. Kuhn, Senior Vice President, Burke Marketing Research, Inc. "Edward McQuarrie provides a practical guide for business teams to effectively plan customer visit programs. While the benefits of this exploratory market research tool are spelled out (power of face-to-face contact with customers, observation of customers′ environment), so are the limitations and risks (small samples, interviewer bias). Dr. McQuarrie discusses a procedure for implementing programs that includes setting objectives, selecting a sample of customers, and training visit teams. He illustrates how to optimize customer visits to generate ideas, identify business opportunities, and in general, gain valuable market information." --Anne Morton, Market Research Program Manager, Hewlett-Packard Company "The customer visit program expertly described by Ed McQuarrie in Customer Visits is an important part of implementing two of Marketing Science Institute′s priorities: improving the new product development process and improving the effective use of market information." --H. Paul Root, President, Marketing Science Institute Customer focus. Market driven. Total quality. All new terms, promising a new way of conducting business. But, how do you move an organization to make it more market driven? How do you organize product development so that real user needs are addressed? How do you change hearts and minds so that employees in all parts of the organization take responsibility for customer satisfaction? Drawing on the best practices found at leading technology firms, Customer Visits offers a complete guide to all aspects of planning and executing a customer-visit program--managers and engineers visiting the customer at their place of business. A wealth of specific advice is offered on topics such as the right and wrong kinds of objectives, how many customers to a visit, how to prepare a discussion guide, how to coordinate visits with the sales force, how to build rapport, effective and ineffective questions to ask customers, and traps and pitfalls in the analysis of data from visit programs. Every aspect of the book focuses on the manager who wants to act---now. Managers and engineers engaged in new-product development will discover a wealth of information-invaluable for finding out what customers really want. Executives charged with continuous improvement will discover a practical and cost-effective approach for motivating employees to focus on customer satisfaction. And marketing researchers, scholars, and students will be on the cutting-edge for the 1990s and beyond.

About this title

About the Author

Edward F. McQuarrie is a professor in the Department of Marketing, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University, in California’s Silicon Valley. He received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Cincinnati in 1985 and a B.A. in Psychology and Literature from The Evergreen State College in 1976. His research interests include market research appropriate to technology products, on the one hand, and advertising strategies that call on rhetoric, narrative, and semiotic resources on the other. He has also written the book Customer Visits: Building a Better Market Focus, co-edited the volume Go Figure! New Directions in Advertising Rhetoric, and published articles in the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Advertising, Marketing Theory, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of the Market Research Society, Journal of Advertising Research, and the Journal of Product Innovation Management, among others. For a current list of publications, you can access his profile on scholar.google.com or researchgate.net.

 

He was Associate Dean for Assessment at the Leavey School of Business, 2001-2010, responsible for the assessment of learning outcomes and the evaluation of teaching. He was Associate Dean for Graduate Studies, 1996–2000, responsible for the MBA and Executive MBA programs. Professor McQuarrie began moderating focus groups in 1980 for Burke Marketing Research. He has consulted for a variety of technology firms and has taught seminars on effective customer visits, managing focus group research, marketing research methods, and similar topics for the Management Roundtable, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, Apple Computer, Tektronix, Varian Associates, Cadence Design, and other clients, in England, Germany, and New Zealand as well as the United States.

Edition details

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803946708
• ISBN 13: 9780803946705
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192