Characteristics of goods and services; customer service and service offerings Introduction In any business, competition exists as customers tend to buy goods or services from a company they feel has the best services or goods at a good price; compounded with excellent customer care. In order to attract an optimum number of customers, companies have to engage in high end socially responsible marketing while at the same time ensuring that their products are the best for customer satisfaction. A combination of these two provides a formula for success that gets more customers and keeps them for a long time through sustainable product adjustments to match society’s dynamic wants. Therefore a company that succeeds in winning the confidence of society as responsible and provides the best customer services will equally succeed in business, since society gets to approve it as a company of choice. Not many companies manage to maintain a socially responsible competition, implying that those that get to do it well will have a leading advantage over the rest. Stakeholders Stakeholders are extremely instrumental for an organization’s success because these are the parties that have the company’s interests at heart. Both internal and external stakeholders are important at an equal level and a balance in attention given to them ought to be struck for best performance. External stakeholders who include customers, suppliers, lenders and even the wider society indeed have an influence on an organization’s production of goods and services. On the other hand, the internal stakeholders like employees, directors and stock holders are essential in implementing the organizations’ objectives. To achieve this, organizations need to bring both the internal and external stakeholders together in such a way that they can share in the effort of maximizing the bottom line of the company. Organizational Structure The essence of an organizational structure is to have the best arrangement that drives organizations to their overall objectives and expectations. Exclusive focus may not be the best approach for an organization that aims at standing out as best. Flatter organizations will tend to be focused on and more responsive to the customer and the process while hierarchical structures focus more on the product. A pure adoption of either focus is not healthy in the long term for some firms especially those whose business domains tend to be oriented to one side. For example a company that manufactures goods cannot afford to focus solely on the customer and ignore the product functions. On the other hand, a company that is oriented towards service production ought to maintain a reasonable sensitivity towards the customer. Outsourcing There is an increasing need for organizations to focus on their core business, meaning that other supportive functions of the business will have to be handled by other parties. This ensures that costs are cut down while efficiency is boosted as a result of concentrating on the business itself. Drivers for outsourcing include focus on core competencies, skill gaps, economies of scale, diversion of internal energy to higher priority tasks, fixed costs, and reduction of internal risk. In order for outsourcing to be effective, certain factors must be present. However this outsourcing must be done carefully by ensuring that only functions that don’t relate to the core business in any way are outsourced. Otherwise, a disconnection can result between an organization and its product processes which can have a complicated impact on the marketin