¶ … satisfaction scores do not seem necessarily low or high and they illustrate many interesting trends. For example, there are many fluctuations that are evident. One example is that it appears that the overall satisfaction with appliances has slowly decreased from a high of 85 in 2000 to a low of 80 in 2008. It would be interesting to investigate the reasons in which appliances received higher ratings in 2000 than in the rest of the years. The appliances rating in 2000 was actually the highest rating of any of the different categories provided. It could be the case that after 2000, companies began to implement cost cutting strategies that reduced the quality of the appliances; or it could also represent a statistical error or a poor quality data set. However, it would be impossible to determine why the decrease occurred without further investigation. I don't think that companies should ever expect a 100% satisfaction level. In fact, many argue that 100% satisfaction would not be a cost effective strategy (Copernicus, 2010). There are too many factors that can lead to customer dissatisfaction that are out of any organization's control. For example, maybe the customer simply had unrealistic expectations...

It is difficult for companies to protect themselves from such an occurrence and some customers will simply be dissatisfied no matter what the company tries to do. As a customer, I typically will read user reviews to try to research products. However, I am skeptical of the quality of the user reviews. Many of them seem fake or unreliable. Yet some of them seem authentic and thorough and I feel like these give me a better sense of how the product will perform. I also give higher credibility to professional organizations, such as Consumer Reports, because these organizations are typically more professional than user reviews.
Topic 2

The first thing you notice when visiting the page is that it asks for your birthday. The company undoubtedly does this so that they avoid marketing to young children. However, I used a fake birthday and entered the site easily -- as I'm sure children could do as well. On the homepage it states that the minimum age requirements is twelve years old. The famous M&M characters are also displayed prominently on the homepage with a flash banner that displays a rotating series of advertisements (Mars, Inc., 2015). My impression of the advertisements…