Delivery Satisfaction refers to the percentage of customers who were happy with the length of time that they had to wait before they could buy a given product from a store.
Customers that have to wait too long may decide to buy a competitor’s product instead of waiting.
High Lost Sales and long Manufacturing Cycle Times result in long wait times and low Delivery Satisfaction.
The Market Summary Report is a good place to compare how all of the products on the market are performing in terms of Lost Sales and Delivery Satisfaction.
Provided you don’t have any Lost Sales (ie. excess demand), then your Delivery Satisfaction is 100% because all the customers who wanted to buy your bikes were able to purchase them immediately from a store without waiting.
As soon as you have Lost Sales, that means that not only did some people miss out on their bike, but some of the ones that did receive a bike had to wait for it because your factory produces bikes in batches. So there is a delay in manufacturing and delivering those bikes to stores, which becomes a problem once the stores start to run out of stock.
Higher Lost Sales and long Manufacturing Cycle Times mean that more people had to wait longer for their bikes and Delivery Satisfaction drops further. So more of your customers will purchase a competing product instead as Delivery Satisfaction drops.
Some markets (like the Kids Market) are more sensitive to Delivery. If you walk into a store wanting to buy a bike for your kids and you can’t find the bike you are looking for, then another bike from a competitor which is in stock is probably close enough and they are likely to buy that instead. So low Delivery Satisfaction means a lot of your excess demand has probably been redistributed to your competitors.
Other markets like the Road market are less sensitive to Delivery. Customers there are more likely to research and decide they want a specific bike. They are therefore willing to wait longer and are less likely to buy a competing product instead. So these markets are less affected by poor Delivery Satisfaction, although if you have terrible Delivery Satisfaction then your competitors will still pick up some of your sales.
The Customer Preferences section of the Market Research Report tells you how sensitive each market is to Delivery.