market research, make training and policy changes, tailor its service to customer needs and preferences, and develop good relationships with customers, respectively.
Issue and Opportunity Identification
Huffman Trucking needs to ensure that it provides uniqueness of service, "the imaginative services that will play a role in our economy in the future," so that it can deliver better service and solutions than its competitors can provide " (Kerin, Hartley, Berkowitz, & Rudelius, 2006, Chap. 12, p. 8). Not only is the quality of service at issue for Huffman, however; but also the quality of its relationships with its customers. The company has not taken the time to develop customer relationships or to base its marketing efforts on such relationships; thus, it is finding it difficult to obtain adequate market share, and "The hallmark of developing and maintaining effective customer relationships is today called relationship marketing, linking the organization to its individual customers, employees, suppliers, and other partners for their mutual long-term benefits" (Kerin, Hartley, Berkowitz, & Rudelius, 2006, Chap. 1, p. 42).
Stakeholder Perspectives/Ethical Dilemmas
Huffman must consider stakeholder perspectives as well as any potential ethical dilemmas that could arise because of conflicting perspectives. Customers, for example, want individually tailored solutions that demonstrate the company's concern with their respective problems. Employees, on the other hand, want to work in a motivational workplace where they are empowered to deliver good customer service and not just instructed to do so. Huffman executives are interested primarily in customer retention and loyalty. These differing perspectives have the same underlying motivation-serving the customer well-but because customers' ideas of good service may differ from that of employees or of management, conflicts are possible unless Huffman finds ...