Question

FOUR (4) types of bonds can tie a customer to an organisation. how Marriott use of these bonds improves the customer retention rate in the organisation?

Answer 1

These 4 bonds will tie a customer to a an organization:

1. Financial Bonds:
Financial bonds ties customers through financial incentives. Financial incentives can be through purchases with lower price or larger volume with lower price.
Example- Customers performing larger volume purchases could be encouraged with lower price; Customers purchasing regularly can be given discounts for each purchases.

2. Social Bonds:
Social bond ties customers with societal views. Through this customers are viewed important and considered as important person from whom the views to improve the sales are obtained.
Such bonds are so common that we see in daily life as in Teacher-student, Manager-Subordinate, and so on.
Example- Memberships cards could be provided to customers and could also be given discounts according to the memberships (Bronze/Silver/Gold Memberships cards)

3. Customization Bonds:
Customization bonds are those through which the customer's needs are heard and product/service is customized accordingly.
Example- Dell laptops are produced with customization according to the customer's needs. Dell mass-produces customized laptops and are provided to customers when ordered.

4. Structural Bonds:
Structural bonds are extention to customization bonds. Here the needs of the customer are known and services/products are provided with additional benefits of solving the problem of cutsomers.
Example- Amazon has one-to-one communication system that helps Vendors/Sellers/Customers to communicate with Amazon through the help page links provided separately for Vendors/Sellers/Customers
Here it is noted that structural bonds are extension of customization bonds because mostly structural bonds deals with B2B approach which increases customer satisfaction as a whole.

These 4 bonds when followed by a company will tie a customer to an organization. And through these bonds, a company could marginally increase customer satisfaction and inturn increases the customer retention rate in the organization.