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Critically Evaluate the Extent to Which Customer Relationship Management Strategy and Processes Can Achieve Effective Customer Intimacy for the Mutual Benefit of Both the Organisation and the Customer, Making Reference

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1) Introduction

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has become a main focus for businesses with today’s markets becoming more saturated and competitive.

‘Customer Relationship Management is the ultimate challenge for marketing experts in any business. A successful company will use customer information wisely to build relationships with their customers, on the level that together they will work together towards a long-term relationship.’ (Xu et al. 2002)

High customer Intimacy can be produced from these processes and strategy. ‘Customer intimacy is an essential factor in the Customer Relationship Management value chain’ (Buttle, 2004). This marketing strategy consists of a business using ways to get close to clients …show more content…

In addition, to further improve customer intimacy, a company can target a customer and send offers for the products they buy most through email or by post all of which strengthens this bond between customer and company. Here we see a table which shows us the ladder of customer loyalty. With an increase in customer intimacy, a business can take prospecting purchaser and convey them into a loyal customer (Christopher at al, 1998).

2.2) The Cooperative Membership Card

The company to demonstrate is The Co-operative Food. Retail chains are at the fore-front for advances in technology and are competing for ways in which to understand their customers and use the strategies to improve customer intimacy. The purchasing behavior in food retail is the most repetitive of all (Manas, 2011), so to get this customer intimacy correct has never been more important. The Co-operative Food (Co-op) uses their loyalty strategy by having membership scheme available to all colleagues and customers. This card acts as most retail cards do in that they collect a customer’s information which is then fed to the company’s data base. There is a number of ways in which this card creates an improvement in customer intimacy. First of all, unlike all of the other schemes available, twice a year the Co-op gives a share of its profits through the post to all of the members of the scheme. ‘You can enjoy your share of the profits along with exclusive member discounts and offers’

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