University Marketing: Nordstrom Case Study on Customer Excellence

This case study examines Nordstrom's approach to marketing excellence, focusing on its commitment to exceptional customer service and its impact on brand loyalty. The analysis begins by highlighting Nordstrom's customer-centric philosophy, emphasizing strategies like empowering employees, initiating employee competitions, and providing customized online shopping experiences to enhance customer satisfaction. The study then delves into the risks faced by Nordstrom, including dependence on suppliers and the challenges posed by economic downturns and intense competition from retailers such as Lord and Taylor, Bloomingdales, and Macy’s. The case study underscores the importance of corporate social responsibility and value proposition in building brand loyalty and maintaining a competitive edge in the retail industry, referencing relevant academic sources to support its arguments.

Running Head: NORDSTROM CASE STUDY
Nordstrom case study
Name of student
Name of University
Author’s note

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Response to question 1
Providing excellent customer service is a key to gain customer loyalty as well as enhance
brand reputation. Customer satisfaction is considered as first priority by Nordstrom. Nordstrom
should continue to give exceptional customer service and make it a part of its culture in many
ways. Since, the company’s primary motive is to make the customer happy. The company can
motivate them by empowering the employees, initiating competitions for the employees to
encourage them and provide perks and monetary discounts in the purchases (Spector, 2017). The
company should provide customised software for online shopping over their website so that the
customers can design their own product. This way the customer will be more delighted. The
company is serving the customer with an exceptional service, so it should focus more on its
corporate social responsibility for increasing its brand loyalty. The company should also focus on
value proposition for enhancing brand loyalty because it has built amazing name in serving the
customers.
Response to question 2
Nordstrom is a well-established brand in retailing but there are several factors that causes
risks to the company. The company sells merchandises which is designed and manufactured by
other companies. Due to this, Nordstrom is very much dependant on the suppliers. Therefore, it
brings risk related with the supplier product of changing fashion trends because a fashion
industry is very hard to be forecast. Expansion of its store operation during the economic
slowdown is among the biggest risks faced by the company today. Due to the recession, people
are losing job, this is the negative sign for the company because customers will spend less in
buying also the competition in this sector is very intense. The biggest competitors of Nordstrom

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are Lord and Taylor, Bloomingdales, Neiman Marcus, Macy’s and Saks Fifth avenue Von Maur
(Yoder, Visich & Rustambekov, 2016).

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References
Batra, M. M. (2017). Customer experience-an emerging frontier in customer service excellence.
In Competition Forum (Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 198-207). American Society for
Competitiveness.
Brashear-Alejandro, T., Kang, J., & Groza, M. D. (2016). Leveraging loyalty programs to build
customer–company identification. Journal of Business Research, 69(3), 1190-1198.
Spector, R. (2017). The Nordstrom Way to Customer Experience Excellence: Creating a Values-
driven Service Culture. John Wiley & Sons.
Yoder, S., Visich, J. K., & Rustambekov, E. (2016). Lessons learned from international
expansion failures and successes. Business Horizons, 59(2), 233-243.