Customer relationship marketing

Abstract

Customer relationship marketing has become an interesting choice of strategy for companies in today’s competitive markets. Different positioning strategies like price and product quality are easy to imitate, eluding the importance of sustainable competitive advantage. The customers need to be attracted and bonded towards the store through relationships. The paper discusses several factors affecting relationship marketing and the advantages with this strategy. Through the theory part the reader will gain a strong impression of what relationship marketing is all about, and the different factors affecting this phenomenon. Several fundamental issues in relationship marketing will be discussed; loyalty building, committed consumers, building bonds with the consumers, loyalty programs and the advantages of implementing a customer relationship strategy. Through discussions with Kjetil Løken, marketing manager of G-sport, and different interesting theoretical findings, a problem definition has been identified. The problem definition focus on which factors that affects the relationships with the consumers, and their importance in building loyalty, satisfaction and commitment. The research is also creating a picture of the different segments in the market, and their attitude towards relationship building and loyalty, as well as discussing the importance of the importance of salespeople, and their impact on the customers shopping experience. A survey was conducted with 160 random respondents, mostly student and fulltime employees between 20 and 30 years old. They answered a questionnaire posted on the internet, through Visual Partners server. Though several significant analysis using methods; regression, ANOVA, correlation matrix, factor and cluster analysis, the respondent’s attitudes was investigated into depth creating an interesting picture of customer behavior and attitudes. Findings show that it’s very difficult to build loyalty towards the store, but by implementing the strategy effectively, futuristic growth for the company will be a fact. In the sport store industry, most of the relationship building is in the hands of the frontline staff and their conduct towards the consumers.