Reading 2/2:
Read an article. Answer questions from 1 to 8.
The moment of truth
As you are learning in this course, a consumer's journey to a buying decision has several steps and there are many factors that influence the choices made at each point in the process. P&G.
the world's largest consumer products manufacturer, has explained this as the Moments of Truth. The company started with two, added another, and other marketing experts now believe
there are many more moments that marketers must consider when interacting with consumers. The concept of the Moment of Truth began in the 1980s with Jan Carlzon, president of
Scandinavian Airlines, who said. "Any time a customer comes into contact with a business, however remote, they have an opportunity to form an impression." He believed that if a company
managed that interaction to a positive outcome the company would be successful. In 2005, former P&G CEO A.G. Lafley refocused the concept from customer service to sales, and broke the
process down into two big steps: the first moment (FMOT) when the customer is looking at the product in the store, comparing it to alternatives on the shelf, and the second (SMOT) that
occurs when the customer is using the product at home.
Later, ex-P&G brand manager Pete Blackshaw suggested a third important moment (TMOT) when customers provide feedback about their purchase to the company and to friends and family.
Remember the Star Wars prequels"? Well, in 2011 Google introduced a prequel of sorts to this moment of truth concept with its Zero Moment of Truth-ZMOT. This moment is focused on
the internet research that consumers do before they buy, which is standard practice today for products of all kinds. ZMOT was born from a Google study that found that 50 percent of
shoppers used a search engine for product or brand research. They also learned that for some purchases, consumers were spending more time at the ZMOT stage than FMOT. Convinced.
P&G updated its process to include ZMOT, FMOT, and SMOT. FMOT, SMOT, TMOT, ZMOT-are you keeping up? But wait-recently, marketing firm Eventricity LTD added
<ZMOT (Less than Zero Moment of Truth). This is something that happens in the consumer's life-a stimulus-that motivates him or her to begin doing research, leading to the Zero Moment
A final moment is what one expert calls the Actual Moment of Truth (AMOT) that is focused on the period between when a customer buys a product online until it is received. Developed by
Amit Sharma, formerly of both Walmart and Apple, it is designed to prevent companies from dropping the ball after an order is placed, keeping customers informed about the status of their
order and making suggestions about their future use of the product.
1) In e-commerce, AMOT refers to the period between
A. Product listing and customer review
B. Ordering a product and its arrival
C. Checkout confirmation and payment approval
D. Shipping dispatch and delivery tracking
2) What can be inferred from Jan Carlzon's view?
A. Impressions require a purchase
B. Every contact shapes an impression
C. The idea fits only airlines
D. Only face-to-face contact matters
3) What role does Eventricity LTD play in the development of marketing concepts?
A. It collaborated with Google to launch ZMOT.
B. It introduced the concept of TMOT to replace ZMOT.
d the effectiveness of ZMOT in consumer behavior.
C.
D.
B FUO
term to describe the stimulus before ZMOT.
