The Influence of Marketing on Consumer Behaviour: Total UK's Carwash Marketing Activity - Coursework Example

My present dissertation is ‘The Influence of Marketing on Consumer Behaviour: A Review of Total UK's Carwash Marketing Activity’. This covers mainly ‘Consumer behavior – how the consumer buys a product, the way he uses it and mode of its disposal’. It also includes post-purchase behavior. Product used by the consumer is of great interest to the marketer; because they know better how best to position their products or better still how could the marketing managers influence consumers to consume more of the same product. Most of the environmental problems are emerging from product disposal or the wastage of resources during the provision of service. This is of particular interest to the Carwash industry.

The Total UK's Carwash market is an important segment of the Transport Industry of UK and its employees play a key role in delivering the services to its customers that goes a long way in enhancing the image of the business. Provision of improved and quality service creates long-lasting positive experiences for the customers – the spirited supply of first-class services of Total UK's Carwash plays an important role in achieving high satisfaction among its valued customers. The motivation of employees, whether professional or not, skilled or unskilled, is a major issue in all service organizations. For the Carwash Market, employee motivation is of major importance. It is a big challenge for the management of the Total UK's Carwash Market to motivate employees to stay on the job, maintain a low attrition level, and offer the efficient, good service, which customers expect from it. If Customers are not satisfied, they will not come back to buy service again, it means less sale and loss of revenues. To understand customers’ needs, managers should first understand key theories of Consumer Behaviour that will help them do a profitable analysis of customer preferences. This is true for every industry including the Carwash market.

In the UK, every modern Carwash facility, whether conveyor zed, in-bay automatic, or self-serve, use soaps and other chemicals made of milder acids and alkalis particularly designed to loosen and eliminate dirt and grime. Carwashes can present retailers with higher margins of equal to or more than 80 percent, but many retailers do not give the carwash the concentration it deserves – possibly because it lies outer to the shop. Consequently, lots of machines aren’t being used to their full potential, with issues such as repairs and insufficient marketing hampering what should be a simple source of generating profit. This is in stark contrast to the previous age when hydrofluoric acid, a hazardous chemical, was the most common cleaning agent used in the industry. Today, there is a strong move in the industry to shift towards environment-friendly cleaning products as demanded by health and environment-conscious customers.

The total UK is one of the leaders in Britain’s oil products retail market, with an annual turnover of more than £4 billion. It operates two refineries – Lindsey, at Killingholme, Lincolnshire, and Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, as well as bitumen and lubricants blending plants and a number of strategically located distribution depots.