George Panigyrakis, a Marketing Professor of Athens University, was visiting Universidad del Norte during the Primer Encuentro Internacional de Retail & Marcas. This event had as main objective to show the new international tendencies, practices, and concepts about retail businesses. Also, to create a reflection’s time that contributes to the continue developing of the market in Colombia and in the Caribbean Region.
Dr. Panigyrakis’ talk presentation was: “Atmospherics Customer Service and Experience in Retailing”. In the talk presentation, he showed his point of view about the situation of the current environment in retail businesses around the world nowadays.
The commercialization and differentiation are two main points in this globalized world in order to keep you in the market. Moreover, other important point here is that you have to have a sustained competitive advantage, which means you have to satisfy your clients better than the competitor, in all ways, always, to keep him close to you. In this order of ideas, clients need to be important to you and you need to give them products that have a good level of innovation to catch their attention. It cost too much capital effort and time, but it is necessary to be done.
According to Dr. Panigyrakis, personality and other things does not matter, what really matter is the brand, your product brand, shoes brand, pants brands, etc. In that sense, he mentioned that the consumer is the boss because he is who pay the bill but we have to analyze until where is it true. Not if they paid the bill, because it is completely true, but that they are our bosses need to be redefine because is almost the same situation when people usually said that they always have the reason. It is not like that. The consumer has the reason just when it is defined by certain rules that need to be followed in order to offer the best service to them and be satisfied.
In this point, the Marketing Professor of Athens has a fact which said that we do not look for the consumer satisfaction; we have to pursue their loyalty. This is the most important we have to receive from them, from that people who spend time in our store, with our products, with the company, with our brands. The loyal customer associates the store with a high degree of experience, and speaks in favor of it, depending on how the service is, the product and how the store look like. That is why we need to offer the customer a memorable experience, in the positive way. This moment is called “Moment of Truth”, that occurs when a customer make contact with the company and experiences the level of its quality. So, a positive one is a satisfied customer who is going to come back again, and a negative one creates a dissatisfied customer who look elsewhere to get their needs met. It should mean that the most important for you in the world is the customer but it is not. According to Athens University Professor, you have to take care of your customers but it does not mean that they are the most important for you in the world as many other people have said now and then. For he, and it has to be for all people: “the customer need to feel important, but you are the most important in the world. Think about them as if they were your friends, your grandmother, and part of your family”.
Having it into account, we need to do some quantitative and qualitative research in order to develop strategies that make feel important to our customer, achieving our main objective. But we have to analyze something. You can not satisfy consumers if you do not satisfy employees. So, you need to thing first of all that if you want to offer an excellent customer service and to show the best face of the company, you have to be able to have satisfied employees. It means that they need to be happy as part of the company, that they are taken into account when they say something and that they are important for the continuous development and growing of the company.
Additionally, customers nowadays have changed from how they were in the past. Now, with many tools that they have, like internet, where they can obtain information all the time, at time, or through the mass media like T.V., radio, newspapers, journals, etc., the customer is smarter because of the information that they have. Also, the customer is more sensitive to price and, as a cause of all competitors that are in the market, they have became less loyal because they are always looking the better and it does not matter if they have to change the company, the brand, the product they are using, but it depends more on the cultural behavior, like Colombian one.
Furthermore, what is more interesting about it is that customers nowadays buy things that they do not need and that they are not going to use. They key issue here is to know the best way to sell them those things. You need to work on it and it is necessary to develop the right strategies to the right customer in the right moment. But strategies need to be by the hand of the knowledge that you have of the customers. You have to understand them, to know them, to help them, to give them the information they want, to understand they needs, values, and worries, to listen to them with attention, to ask information, and according to that you have to guide them in the way you obtain benefits for the company and also for them, to keep long and happy relations. Remember that, as Dr. Panigyrakis said, the customer is satisfied when their experience is higher to their expectations, and we have to work in order to provide them it.
But it is not easy work. Before doing it we are obligated to understand the trends that are managing businesses nowadays. We need to focus strategies in order to go to the same way because we can not take different ones. It is not acceptable. We develop strategies combining, as was mentioned by the Professor: Unique sales proposition, unique experience proposition and unique entertainment proposition. Our companies need to be flexible to changes or they are destined to die. This are the two types of companies we have in the market and we do not want to be next to die. So, working to keep customer loyalty is essential.
But be careful, it does not mean you do not have to look for new ones. You always have to look for new ones but without letting alone to those you have now. Athens’ Prof. said that firms spend to much money in looking new customers and almost nothing in order to retain the ones they already have. That is why we need to have in mind both kinds of customers and always be looking for new strategies that satisfied their experiences to avoid mistakes. As Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson (the 245th richest person according to Forbes’ 2008 list of billionaires) has said: “Mistakes are inevitable, dissatisfied customers are not”.
We need to work hard in order to give customers what they want and how they want it, following certain guides. Dr. Panigyrakis showed us that tendencies have to be followed, and that we are obligated to pay attention to new concepts and practices about retail businesses around the world to not make mistakes in the international area. He invited us to a reflect time and to work hard for the progress of Colombia and the Caribbean Region.
As philosopher Anacarsis said: “The intelligent ones deliberate and the fools decide”. Do not let them decide and take advantage of your knowledge to lead Colombia and the Region to be betters.
Para el Profesor Jagdeep S. Chhokar, del Indian Institute of Managment, existe un liderazgo intercultural en un mundo globalizado, por lo que las diferentes variables de un país hacen del liderazgo un proceso que se desarrolla de diversas maneras al traspasar las fronteras. En general, el enfoque en variables culturales tan relevantes como la religión, el lenguaje, la historia y los sistemas políticos le dan al liderazgo la característica idónea dentro de cada entorno.
Es por ello que se puede decir que los aspectos más fundamentales para este proceso son, dependiendo del país de origen, los siguientes: 
In the documentary, Moore shows that the principal reason to do what he did was that in those countries, where he was opening new plants of General Motors, workers were paid much less (Moore, 1989) than in Flint, United States. In that sense, the principal reason was: More money could be made in those countries where labor was cheaper, and it was the strategy that Mr. Smith started up regardless of the devastating effects of structural unemployment on the town. The decision of closing down these factories ultimately left roughly 50% (Moore, 1989) of Flint’s population on government support. The majority of the population was unable to obtain new jobs. 
As a consequence, Flint citizens had to face the cruel reality of a “zero-sum” economy. It left them in a state of grave economic strife, particularly due to the drastic decrease in the availability of jobs. Moreover, many former factory technicians were under qualified for other jobs, so they could not work in other factories or any other kind of employment. The effects of this mass unemployment on families and the city was a poor quality of life and a rising violence (Moore, 1989) and crime rate. General Motors was a key contributor to the town socially, economically, that is why many of the residents were closely linked to the company and the parades and other festivities that it provided them to keep the locals loyal. But now, it was so devastating, they were facing difficulties as a result of the orders of Mr. Smith. Once known as “Vehicle City”, Flint City has become a ghost of its former self. Over a quarter of the population, including nearly 38% (WSWS, 2005) of children fewer than 18, live below the poverty line. The official unemployment rate stands at 12%. Both of these figures understate the devastation that has overcome the city in the past two decades. 
¿Por qué no unirse a la lucha por un mundo mejor? McDonald’s es una empresa en la cual no confío, por las incontables protestas a nivel mundial que se han presentado en torno a ella, por los mitos que tiene, por una infinidad de cosas y ámbitos dentro de los cuales el que más me molesta es el uso que se le da a la población infantil en las propagandas McDonald’s para atraer más clientes.
Sólo nos resta a nosotros tomar la decisión. ¿Será que McDonald’s es la cadena de restaurantes que quiero que mi familia mañana más tarde, a la vuelta de unos cuantos años, visite? No sé que piensen las personas que lean este ensayo, sólo expreso mi punto de vista crítico, pero en lo que concierne a mi no creo que McDonald’s sea una buena elección. 