Essay Sample - Bring Cargo B.V.

Bring Cargo B.V. is one of the largest Nordics logistics service providers. The company is owned by Norwegian Post and offers a wide variety of logistic solutions. Cargo carriage is the core business, but the company has also successfully ventured into products like e-commerce, express carrier for home deliveries, parcel services, thermo-regulated logistics, and marketing (Bring Cargo B.V. 2020). On e-commerce, Bring Cargo B.V. assists other companies in delivering online purchased products from the companies. Thus, companies contract to Bring Cargo B.V. to deliver online purchased products. The express carrier services provide urgent home deliveries. Other than offering parcel and mail delivery services, Bring Cargo B.V. is contracted by different companies to deliver mail advertisements to the right audience within the Nordic countries.

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Bring Cargo B.V. has operations in many countries, including Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium, and the United Kingdom (Bring Cargo B.V. 2020). The logistics service industry is relatively competitive in the Nordic countries. However, Bring Cargo B.V. maintains a high customer base as compared to other logistics service companies. With the mushrooming of many small logistics service companies specifically to assist with the increased use of e-commerce globally, Bring Cargo B.V. has to ensure its customers are satisfied to avoid losing them to the competition. This consultancy paper is an exploration into how Bring Cargo B.V. can increase its customer satisfaction and online awareness by 15% in the target group 20-60 in the upcoming two years.

Project Objective

The aim of this project is to propose how Bring Cargo B.V. can increase its customer satisfaction and online awareness by 15% in the target group 20-60 in the upcoming two years. Currently, Bring Cargo B.V. serves the largest customer base in the Nordic countries. However, over the last three years, there has been a rapid increase in the number of players in the logistic service providers industry. According to Rajkumar, Kavin, Luo and Stentoft (2016), twelve new logistics service providers have been registered in the last three years with their operations in the Nordic countries. With the increase in competition, there is a need for Bring Cargo B.V. to increase its customer satisfaction levels to maintain its market share. Data from the Bring Cargo B.V. group indicate that there has been a slight reduction in the number of orders served by the group in the last two years.

The cause of the slight reduction instead of an increase in orders served may be due to new entrants in the logistics service industry who may be poaching into the Bring Cargo B.V. market share. Bring Cargo B.V. has a strong online presence but has not been aggressive in marketing its brand online as compared to the new mushrooming logistics service provider companies in the Nordic. With the increase in competition from new logistics service companies and the aggressive online brand awareness by the competition, the Bring Cargo B.V. market share is at stake hence there is need to develop ways on how Bring Cargo B.V. can increase its customer satisfaction and online awareness by 15% in the target group 20-60 in the upcoming two years. Through the project, Bring Cargo B.V shall be able to implement the strategies so as to maintain its market share and possibly increase its customer base.

Exploration

In this section, an analysis of the current situation at Bring Cargo B.V. shall be done to establish what has been done so far before suggesting possible solutions. The section shall also provide theoretical frameworks to understand the problem at Bring Cargo B.V.

Situational Analysis

Currently, Bring Cargo B.V. offers six services in six departments, namely e-commerce, express carrier, parcel services, cargo services, thermo-regulated logistics, and mail marketing. All the six departments are interrelated, and there is high coordination in the Bring Cargo B.V. supply and logistics chain to ensure optimization of its resources towards attaining the company goal (Bring Cargo B.V. 2020). The company has a high-level internal networking system that ensures that the next delivery vehicle on the location from any of the departments does the delivery. Since the beginning of the company, Bring Cargo B.V. has offered flexible, reliable, and timely services to its customers. Over 60 percent of its customers are repeat customers, an indication that the customers are satisfied (Bring Cargo B.V. 2020). Bring Cargo B.V. has an online presence, and from its website, one can be able to get a lot of information about the company and pricing of services from the different areas of operation. However, the company has not invested much in online brand awareness.

Theoretical Framework

In the logistics service industry, customer satisfaction is paramount. By definition, customer satisfaction is a measure of how happy customers are with a company’s services. By understanding the level of customer satisfaction, a company can be able to know how best it can change or improve its services (Kaura, Prasad and Sharma, 2015). For most logistics companies, the level of customer service, reliability, and timeliness are the main determinants of customer satisfaction. Logistics service companies thus have to focus much on how to satisfy their customers to avoid losing them to the competition (Ghoumrassi & Tigu, 2017). Understanding customer satisfaction is complex as different models exist to explain the concept of customer satisfaction. The perceived quality model explains that customers are satisfied when they perceive the service given to be of high quality while the customer expectation model posits that customers are satisfied if their expectations are met.

The perceived value model of customer satisfaction holds' that customers feel satisfied by services given when they perceive the value of the service to meet the cost incurred to acquire the services. There are also other customer-based aspects that explain customer satisfaction. Customer loyalty is a result of customer satisfaction, while customer complaints are a result of customer dissatisfaction (Teresa & Evangelos, 2015). Since Bring Cargo B.V. provides logistic services, the concept of customer satisfaction in the context of logistics services is viewed from the angle of perceived quality and customers' expectations.

The logistics service industry is rapidly expanding with the increase of globalization and the advent of e-commerce. Today, the increase in the use of online trading and transactions has led to an increase in demand for currier and logistics service providers to deliver goods purchased to any destination across the globe (Islam, Rahman and Hollebeek, 2018). Logistics companies, therefore, have to invest a lot in online visibility and awareness to ensure that customers are aware of the brand any moment they need currier services to or from the Nordic countries. Online awareness is more than just the services a company offers to the customers but also encompasses building awareness around the company’s values, name, culture, and logo so that customers and potential customers can develop the need to use and reuse the company’s services. A strong online awareness is associated with the instant association with a brand by customers and prospects, and it is also an important precursor to the concept of brand value (Kelley & Alden, 2016). The branding theory is relevant in the context of online awareness as it explains the building of awareness around the products, services, values, name, culture, and logo. A strong online awareness is associated with an instant association with a brand by customers and prospects.

Proposed solution and Justification

Creation of a proactive customer service team that actively engage customers to get feedback on the quality of service offered. The customer service team can also engage customers for repeat jobs and referrals to new customers. A proactive customer service team shall improve not only customer satisfaction but also increase the company business.

The received customer complaints and compliments to be analyzed by the research and development team to establish the opportunity to improve the quality of service to ensure customer satisfaction. According to Fernie and Sparks (2018), there is always an opportunity behind a customer complaint.

Since customers are individual in nature, there is a need to personalize the services offered to each individual customer but in line with reliability and timeliness. Individualized service ensures that individual customers are satisfied.

There is a need to develop multichannel customer support to ensure customers' needs are addressed in real-time. Bring Cargo B.V can use develop support channels that utilize the social media platforms for the social media channels are globally used by a mass audience.

To improve the online presence, Bring Cargo B.V can further develop its website to be more interactive with customers and to allow real-time communication over the site.

Bring Cargo B.V can use advertise offers and discounts on social media platforms. According to Agnihotri, Dingus, Hu and Krush (2016), advertising to mass markets on offers and discounts, the Bring Cargo B.V. brand awareness shall improve.

Bring Cargo B.V can also utilize online social media influencers to advertise the brand, products, and values to reach a mass target.

Methodology

The project shall adopt a qualitative descriptive survey design. A survey is the preferred study methodology for this study since it allows the collection of first-hand information from a sample to describe a population that may be large to study (Flick, 2015). Data on how Bring Cargo B.V. can increase its customer satisfaction and online awareness by 15% in the target group 20-60 in the upcoming two years shall be collected from Bring Cargo B.V. employees and customers. A simple random sampling method shall be used to establish a sample of 200 individuals to participate in the study. The participants shall be stratified into two groups – 100 Bring Cargo B.V. employees, and 100 Bring Cargo B.V. customers. A structured questionnaire shall be developed and tested for validity and reliability before being used for the project. The questionnaire shall be mailed to the respondents, and respondents will fill and return it within three days. Data collected from the returned questionnaire shall be checked for completeness and analyzed using computer-based statistical tools.

References

Agnihotri, R., Dingus, R., Hu, M. Y., & Krush, M. T. (2016). Social media: Influencing customer satisfaction in B2B sales. Industrial Marketing Management, 53, 172-180.

Bring Cargo B.V. (2020).

https://www.bring.nl/Fernie, J., & Sparks, L. (Eds.). (2018). Logistics and retail management: emerging issues and new challenges in the retail supply chain. Kogan page publishers.

Flick, U. (2015). Introducing research methodology: A beginner's guide to doing a research project. Sage.

Ghoumrassi, A., & Tigu, G. (2017). The impact of the logistics management in customer satisfaction. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Business Excellence (Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 292-301). Sciendo.

Islam, J. U., Rahman, Z., & Hollebeek, L. D. (2018). Consumer engagement in online brand communities: A solicitation of congruity theory. Internet Research.

Kaura, V., Prasad, C. S. D., & Sharma, S. (2015). Service quality, service convenience, price and fairness, customer loyalty, and the mediating role of customer satisfaction. International Journal of Bank Marketing. 4(1), 8.