Customer Empowerment And Savar Building Collapse: A Review

Literature review

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.

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).

Overview of the Savar building collapse

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 (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 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).

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).

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.

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.