As customer relationship management (CRM) practices become increasingly sophisticated, there are great benefits but at the same time disadvantages that firms must consider. The aim of this article is to explore the dark side of CRM and to discuss the underlying causes. The article provides insights into understanding the essence of CRM. The misinterpretation of CRM and depletion of customer trust have resulted in customers perceiving themselves as being exploited by firms’ unfair CRM schemes. Further examination of fairness, trust and transparency is needed, as CRM schemes may pose a significant threat if they are over-used or misused. The danger of implementing CRM to lead customers to believe that they are worse off requires more research, especially in favouring certain customers over others. This article includes implications for the development of fairer CRM schemes by correctly conceptualising CRM to suit firms’ individual cases and by incorporating the essence of the good buyer–seller relationship. Indeed, incorporating fairness and trust into CRM will improve the quality of the marketplace. Customers will not feel mistreated and firms will not put themselves at risk of long-term failure. Theoretical contributions lie in the identification of issues related to CRM and differential treatment of/favouritism towards customers, and more importantly, the fact that these arise from two underlying areas, related to (i) the misinterpretation in the conceptualisation of CRM practices and (ii) the ambiguity of what constitutes good firm–customer relationships, which may lead to these negative perceptions.
This section covers developments in the law in respect of IT, data protection and, most significant at present, various debates happening over intellectual property rights and copyright. The latter are key issues in Europe, likely to have a knock-on effect in terms of how businesses operate in that region, as well as how they interact with their customers. A separate theme beginning to emerge is the way in which US standards of privacy and data protection have diverged from those in the rest of the world – but primarily Europe – leading to possible issues there.
Most marketers go through an annual budget-setting round in which they allocate sums of money to a number of different marketing activities. This process is usually undertaken using historic experience of results, combined with last year's budget, to arrive at a decision about how the money should be distributed. The authors have used a new approach to solving the budget-allocation problem, using a decision support system that they have developed using integer linear programme techniques. This article is a case study of one application of this technology in the B -to- C field; it describes the problems that were encountered in getting the right metrics to go into the system, and the ways in which these were overcome. It goes on to show how the optimised outputs differed from business as usual, and the types of scenario outcome that resulted.
The shift to cloud-based contact centre solutions has given database marketing a new dimension. For example, it is now possible to identify a caller even if they hang up before being answered. This article looks at the future of database marketing in conjunction with multi-channel (voice, email, Web chat, instant messaging, video, SMS text and co-browsing) customer communication.
To meet the current and future demands of both domestic and foreign markets, organizations have to be market driven. The aim of this study is to assess the economic performance of wineries specialized in high-quality wines from the Vineyard Valley in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, using geographical indication (GI) as a market orientation strategy. Wines with the ‘Vineyard Valley’ designation of origin, as market orientation, improved economic performance as a result of increased land values; increase of the planted area; improvement of technological standards; rise in tourist flow; acknowledgment through the ‘Vineyard Valley’ designation of origin; increase in consumption; product differentiation and value added; boost in exports; and internationalization. This way, by implementing GI, market-driven organizations can gain access to export markets, increase their export revenues and improve the quality of life of all agents in the agribusiness sector, resulting in greater satisfaction and helping obtain differentiated performance.
This article draws upon the research and consulting carried out by the authors over the past two decades, to produce a straightforward categorisation of the main customer strategies available to companies, and suggests a simple approach to prioritising them.
The digital revolution has led to firms with massive amounts of information. Thus, the storage, collection and appropriate use of such data is a major challenge for firms as they struggle to implement profitable integrated marketing communication strategies. Given this, the goal of our article is to analyze the types of customer-based data that organizations can collect to learn about their customers and determine methods by which the collection of such information can ensure higher data quality for use in Customer Relationship Management (CRM)-based systems. Our work also studies the relative value of each type of data in developing higher quality customer data and superior CRM systems. These data tell managers how to organize their priorities in terms of data learning activities to create the highest quality CRM data so that improved performance can ensue. Our findings show that capturing the results of personalized communications and detailed transactions of customer interactions will yield the highest results and perhaps should be the organization's focus.
Estimating Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is essential for firms competing in data-rich environments. Segmentation on the basis of CLV is helpful in customization of products and services by justification of resource allocation. Model-based automated decision making is likely to penetrate various marketing decision-making environments. We are presenting a framework for customer lifetime value-based segmentation. The framework automates two decisions: first, selection of variables; and second creation of optimal segments on the basis of CLV. The framework uses clustering for segmentation and genetic algorithm for optimization.
The main objectives of this article are: first, to present the evolution of collaborative demand planning approaches such as Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment and Demand-Driven Value Networks to Demand Sensing, and second, to identify the benefits that Demand Sensing can generate for the Consumer Goods Organisations (CPG) industry. After synthesising the relative literature on the above collaborative approaches, three case studies are presented to identify the benefits of the Demand Sensing approach. The conclusions of the case studies, as well as the findings of a survey on CPG organisations in the United Kingdom and the United States, are combined in order to design a framework that organises the benefits derived from Demand Sensing into various functional areas.
Cause-related marketing (CRM) benefits brands, consumers and society. In emerging markets where social upliftment is an imperative, CRM could provide an avenue through which those in need receive more support than can be provided by traditional means. Although considerable research on CRM campaigns and consumer responses to them has been undertaken elsewhere, not much has been done in the South African context. This study examines consumer responses to CRM, and in particular, seeks to investigate whether the consumers’ level of involvement with a cause and the way in which the message is framed influence purchase intention. Using factorial ANOVA, the study found that cause involvement significantly influenced purchase intention while message framing did not. There was no interaction between cause involvement and message framing.
The widespread use of mobile phones and the rapid increase in the number of subscribers to this service have prompted marketers to adopt this method in the execution of marketing activities and to adopt the concept of mobile marketing, which has provided marketers with a new innovative means as opposed to the conventional means of communication in buying and selling. This study examines the factors affecting the attitudes of consumers (sample respondents) toward mobile marketing that were identified in a number of factors, namely, the attributes of mobile marketing, the nature of information, excitement and attractiveness and credibility. These factors were adopted in the model of this study and divided into five dimensions. Two groups of hypotheses were developed. The first group contains five hypotheses the nature of information, excitement and attractiveness and credibility, on attitudes of consumers toward mobile marketing. The second group includes two hypotheses that pertain to testing the relationship between the components of the study model through the use of Spearman's correlation coefficient. The data collected in this study were based on designing a questionnaire consisting of 32 questions that was distributed to mobile phone users. A total of 352 questionnaires valid for statistical analysis were obtained. The obtained data were processed via statistical methods appropriate for testing the hypotheses, and the results of the statistical analysis have indicated the validity of the hypothesis and that the attributes of mobile marketing, the nature of information, excitement and attractiveness and credibility do have an effect on consumer attitudes (sample respondents) toward mobile marketing.
This research addresses brand manifestation and its effects on purchase behavior of consumers. The discussion in the study fills an important knowledge gap by investigating the brand–consumer association considering economic, cognitive and relational variables that help consumers analyze the brands’ manifestation. The study proposes five constructs that represent brand attractiveness, availability, awareness, quality and service association that explains how the relative importance of brands differs across purchase situations. On the basis of data from 231 respondents in Mexico, the study proposes an integrated branding perspective, which conceptualizes the co-construct between brand appearance and brand meaning among consumers. Finally, the implications of such an approach for future research and brand management are discussed.
This article reflects on the author's career in database marketing and customer relationship management, explaining what took him into this line of work over 30 years ago and identifying the main changes in client requirements that he has observed.
This article addresses how an organization's customer relationship management (CRM) process affects customer equity drivers and, in turn, organizational performance. By raising a three-staged model including CRM processes, customer equity drivers and organizational performance, the authors assert that customer equity drivers mediate between CRM processes and organizational performance. The empirical analysis is based on a composite survey structure that gathers data from different types of informants according to the variables. The findings indicate that the expansion process has a positive relationship with all customer equity drivers. However, the acquisition process significantly influences both perceived value equity and brand equity, whereas the retention process significantly influences relationship equity only. In addition, the study shows that all customer equity drivers influence the organizational performance, given the existing customers. The relationship equity among the customer equity drivers has the strongest effect on performance.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been an important issue in business management since decades. The study proposes a research model from a strategic management perspective. On the foundation of social identity theory and resource-based perspective in developing this argument, the article theorizes CSR as a resource-generating activity by creating support networks, relationships and management of perceptions in the form of social and reputational capital. This article develops propositions for strategic use of CSR activities by creating social and reputational capita that ultimately leads to profitability. Theoretical and practical implications of the proposed model have been discussed.
Against a backdrop of growing popularity of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems globally, this study empirically examines CRM awareness, perceptions and extent of CRM technology adoption among organizations in an emerging market – Saudi Arabia. It also examines the specific uses of analytical CRM and the perceived benefits of CRM technology among adopting organizations. Data for the empirical analysis come from 118 responses provided by key informants to a structured self-administered survey. The empirical results show a reasonably high level of CRM awareness and a relatively high CRM technology adoption rate, particularly among large organizations. Contrary to expectations, however, service organizations are no more likely to adopt CRM technologies than their non-service counterparts. The results also show that adopting organizations mainly use the customer analytics capabilities of CRM technologies to obtain insights about current customers and for customer value assessment and information tracking. Analytics relating to potential and past customers and to customer cost determination are relatively less prevalent. Finally, CRM technology-adopting organizations report the greatest implementation benefits in improved customer insight and employee productivity. With a few exceptions, the findings endure irrespective of organization size, industry sector and CRM technology duration in the organization. Implications of the results are outlined and discussed.
Many small online retailers and new entrants to the online retail sector are keen to practice data mining and consumer-centric marketing in their businesses yet technically lack the necessary knowledge and expertise to do so. In this article a case study of using data mining techniques in customer-centric business intelligence for an online retailer is presented. The main purpose of this analysis is to help the business better understand its customers and therefore conduct customer-centric marketing more effectively. On the basis of the Recency, Frequency, and Monetary model, customers of the business have been segmented into various meaningful groups using the k-means clustering algorithm and decision tree induction, and the main characteristics of the consumers in each segment have been clearly identified. Accordingly a set of recommendations is further provided to the business on consumer-centric marketing. SAS Enterprise Guide and SAS Enterprise Miner are used in the present study.
As sports marketing is an important business activity for sport organizations, precise marketing actions must be developed frequently. This study considers the business-to-business side of sports marketing. Marketing managers should consider features of each specific corporation for development of appropriate marketing actions. This article suggests a decision support system for generating a proposal and marketing mix for each corporation as sponsor or advertiser based on a case-based reasoning approach. Past marketing plans, customer information and past proposals are valuable documents containing marketing knowledge and experiences. Marketing managers develop and execute marketing plans and proposals. Therefore, understanding how to systematically keep the past marketing and sales histories in an information system, provide a mechanism to efficiently retrieve the most suitable plans or proposals, and facilitate adaptation is very necessary and beneficial to sports marketing managers.
Online shopping continues to attract investment from retailers. Online shopping websites offer discounts and promotions to attract online shoppers. Online retailing is in nascent stages of growth in India. The research examines influence of deal proneness on Indian consumers’ online shopping behaviour. The results indicate that Indian consumers are not influenced by deals, offers or other promotional tools being used by online retailers. Promotions may not be necessarily viewed by consumers as an important attribute while purchasing products or services online. The instrumental aspects of online shopping websites need to be strengthened to motivate consumers to shop online.
This article discusses some selected findings related to the dynamic changes of the monthly consumption of prepaid users. The findings are derived from the analysis of data collected from a life network. The discussed results provide interesting aspects that must be considered when designing and implementing promotions and offers, therefore they are fundamental to understand the user profile in its deepest details. The article focuses on practical figures and quantified relationships, and gives hints for the application field of each discussed finding.
