A research study submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Business Administration, School of Management

Research studies project report (M.B.A) - Asian Institute of Technology, 1999

Customer migration is recently a vital problem found in chemical industry where there are many potential suppliers in the chemical market. In attacking this problem, the research study was to trace the lost customers, both end-users and dealers, who were reported lost contact from a company for a long time or at least 1 year. The study aims to identify their buying behavior, expectations and perception on the company performance as well as to reveal the causes of leaving or switching supplier. From data gathering, it shows that the customers have high expectations regarding the product quality, product availability, price, delivery service and problem-solving as well as credit term but apart from the quality, the company can not live up to their expectations. Accordingly, the reasons for why they left are mainly focused on high price, product availability and problem-solving. By average, the customer perception toward the company performance is rather acceptable. Thus, it appears that the number of lost customer is less than those who are still doing the business with the company. This group of people was found lost because of less frequency in purchase during the last period. In order to draw the customer retention, the company should focus on the price, not the price reduction but value added or meaningful compensation. Another important issue is product availability to meet the urgent need of the customers, in this regard the distribution system should be brought into the brainstorming session to find the possible solution. Last but not least is the issue on problem- solving that the company should introduce TQM and Re-engineering approach for both incremental and radical changes in the organization.