Customer Behavior: Customer Empowerment and Savar Building Collapse

This essay delves into the multifaceted aspects of customer empowerment in today's business landscape, emphasizing the pivotal role customers play in organizational success. It reviews diverse perspectives on customer empowerment, highlighting the importance of understanding customer psychology and valuing their opinions. The essay contrasts traditional and neo-classical views of customer empowerment, exploring the shift of power from producers to consumers. Furthermore, it examines the Savar building collapse in Bangladesh, analyzing the ethical implications and the psychological impact on workers and consumers. The essay discusses the role of global brands, government indifference, and the pursuit of timely order fulfillment as contributing factors to the disaster, ultimately questioning the ethical considerations in prioritizing profits over human lives. Desklib provides similar solved assignments and past papers for students.

Running head: CUSTOMER BEHAVIOR
Customer Behavior
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Part 1
Introduction
This paper is designed put light on the different aspects of the customer empowerment in
the modern world. The customers have been the focal point of every organization so they have
always wanted to put more focus on meeting the requirement of the customers (Camacho, De
Jong and Stremersch 2014). The different visions of customer empowerment from different
angles will be reviewed so the readers can understand the importance of the customers in this
modern challenging business environment (Craig and Campbell 2012).
Literature review
This part will be comprised on the literature review on the article that has been provided.
Customer empowerment has been on the focus of all the people who have been included in the
dealing of customers at different times. The psychology of the customers will be given the most
importance so that their opinions will be valued the most in every aspect. The traditional or the
liberal humanistic view says that the customers should be empowered to make their own choices
and they should not be forced to do anything (Goetsch and Davis 2014). Another important view
in this regard can be highlighted that power is often transferred from one to another because
power transition and empowerment. The traditional overview of the customer empowerment
suggests that the power has shifted towards the customers that were in the hand of the producers
till date. The consumers are given more power to choose what they like and the control is in their
hands as well (Goetsch and Davis 2014). The irony lies in the fact that the empowerment of the
consumers has seen a huge rise in the latest years.

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The product-push has been very much redesigned to make a new innovative relationship
between the supply and demand chains (Di Stefano Gambardella and Verona 2012). This will be
dominated by the empowerment of the customers indeed. The consumption-pull strategy will be
reinvented as well. The consumer is the utmost necessity for performing better in the market
economy (Sandu et al. 2014). The new form of the political economy suggests that the customers
have gained more power over the producers indeed. The consumers have gained the more power
and this has resulted in the choice of the customers and they will be able to exercise their free
will indeed. The neo-classical view of the customer empowerment says that the customers are
very much aware of their demands and they know how they can utilize their demands from the
producers (Mak 2012). The individual buyers and customers should be given the freedom to
choose their products. On arguing this, it can be said that the producers are quite reliable most of
the times. They know very well what things have to be delivered to the customers.
Foucalult has established his views about the customer empowerment. His views have
been discussed in this article as well (Cova and Cova 2012). The facts of the essential interests,
enduring desires and several others have been discarded by Foucault at a single go. Market
economy has been seen as a social construction and Foucault has expressed his views that power
has been the effective source that has been generated from the core of the societal values and
norms. The customers also must have some power by which they can exert their influence on the
producers as well (Cova and Cova 2012).
Part 2
This part describes the various issues regarding the Savar building collapse in
Bangladesh. This took place in the year 2013 at the Savar Upazila at the country capital of Dhaka

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(Manik Yardley and Dhaka 2013), More than 100 people had died with the number of rescued
people crossed 2500. The building comprised of clothing factories, several banks, apartments
and many shops indeed. This is why it is considered to be one of the most devastating accidents
in the country. The senior officials of the Government said that the upper portion of the building
had built without the permission from the authority. Almost 500 people were being engaged
there. The incident could be described just like an earthquake. The temperature was so high that
the workers who were under the debris had to drink their own urine indeed. Some causes have
been showcased in order to understand the root of the problem. One of them is this building was
initially built by Sohel Rana for the commercial use but in turn it was being used on industrial
basis (Miller 2012).
Question 1
In this article many words have been used to depict this incident. The workers were
outraged when they faced such extreme calamity. This was not caused due to any terrorist attack
or the natural calamity. The building had collapsed completely out of the bad construction of the
building. The building had been completed but the poor construction had caused this accident
(Miller 2012). The misfortune is that the global brands like H&M, Walmart and many others had
contributed to this building of Rana Plaza. The consumers who can be the most important in this
regard are the labors who used to work in this building. The special word or the vocabularies that
can be highlighted are structural failure, garment-factory, Sohel Rana, fast fashion, Bangladesh
National party and others (Manik Yardley and Dhaka 2013),
This incident had spread a complete negative energy among the workers and the
consumers. Many new floors had been built in the building without the proper permission. The

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construction materials that had been used in order to build this building were not at all up to the
mark. Sohel rana himself was a member of the Jubo League that was the youth section of the
Awami league, the ruling political party in Bangladesh. This had created a complete outrageous
reaction among the common people. The clothing brands had provided low-cost clothing
materials (Manik Yardley and Dhaka 2013), This was even annoying for the customers as well.
The workers had returned to their work the next day when Sohel Rana had declared the building
to be safe. However, the fate that came upon was very unfortunate and the families of the
deceased have protested against this incident.
Question 2
The specialized vocabulary include the words like Upazila Nirbahi Officer, Rajdhani
Unnayan Katripakkha, Sheikh hasina, Sohel Rana, Bangaldesh Nationalist Party, Stern Center
for Business and Human Rights, Spectrum factory collapse, Bangladesh Garments
Manufacturers and Exporters Association, International Search and Rescue Advisory Group and
other words. This large stock of vocabulary has helped to understand the entire scenario and the
things that are quite deeply associated with the accident. The government bodies were supposed
to help in the investigation but it has been found the entire group was included in this corruption
process. It was found the protesting workers had filled the road of Dhaka, Chittagong, Gazipur
and other places. They had made their aim at the several commercial buildings and vehicles. The
enraged crowd was completely out of hand indeed (Manik Yardley and Dhaka 2013), This has
been tagged as the worst industrial accident in Bangladesh. They protested about their work
safety environment, rise in the pay scale and other things. This is why the condition had begun to
deteriorate (Reinecke and Donaghey 2015).

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Question 3
The psychology that has been deployed in this scenario of the Savar building collapse is
the fact that the government has been indifferent. Sohel Rana has been an influential in this case
since he has been one of the leaders of the Jubo league (Reinecke and Donaghey 2015). The
psychology that worked behind it is the fact that they had to complete their orders to deliver it to
the clients just on time. This is why the government and the building authorities had joined hands
to save their sides. This psychology that had been deployed in this regard cannot be supported
since this is the question of lives of numerous human beings (Reinecke and Donaghey 2015).

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References
Camacho, N., De Jong, M. and Stremersch, S., 2014. The effect of customer empowerment on
adherence to expert advice. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 31(3), pp.293-308.
Cova, B. and Cova, V., 2012. On the road to prosumption: marketing discourse and the
development of consumer competencies. Consumption Markets & Culture, 15(2), pp.149-168.
Craig, T. and Campbell, D., 2012. Organisations and the business environment. Routledge.
Di Stefano, G., Gambardella, A. and Verona, G., 2012. Technology push and demand pull
perspectives in innovation studies: Current findings and future research directions. Research
Policy, 41(8), pp.1283-1295.
Goetsch, D.L. and Davis, S.B., 2014. Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: pearson.
Mak, V., 2012. The Myth of the'Empowered Consumer': Lessons from Financial Literacy
Studies. Zeitschrift für Europäisches Unternehmens-und Verbraucherrecht, 1(4), pp.254-263.
Manik, J.A., Yardley, J. and DHAKA, B., 2013. Building collapse in Bangladesh leaves scores
dead. The New York Times, 24.
Miller, D., 2012. Last nightshift in Savar: The story of the spectrum sweater factory collapse.
McNidder and Grace Limited.
Reinecke, J. and Donaghey, J., 2015. After Rana Plaza: Building coalitional power for labour
rights between unions and (consumption-based) social movement
organisations. Organization, 22(5), pp.720-740.

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Sandu, I.S., Ryzhenkova, N.E., Veselovsky, M.Y. and Solovyov, A.Y., 2014. Economic aspects
of innovation-oriented market economy formation. Life Science Journal, 11(12), p.242.