It is common practice for service providers, such as cell phone network providers, to utilise relationship marketing strategies in an effort to retain their customers and thereby to increase profitability. Customers with relationship intentions are willing to respond to such efforts while other customers will refrain. Service failures negatively impact relationship marketing efforts and thus complicate service providers’ relationship-building efforts. Therefore, service providers endeavour to restore customers’ post-recovery satisfaction and loyalty through service recovery efforts to retain their customers. However, the influence that customers’ relationship intentions have on this process has not been considered. Previous research on relationship intention in South Africa focussed only on developing a valid and reliable relationship intention measurement scale. For this reason, the primary objective of this study was to determine the influence of relationship intention on customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention following service recovery within the cellular industry. Supporting the primary objective, a model depicting the influence of respondents’ relationships intentions on satisfaction, loyalty and retention following service recovery was developed. Furthermore, a model depicting the interrelationships of the relationship constructive dimensions of the service recovery process uncovered during this study was also developed. Through non-probability convenience sampling of adults 18 years and older (residing in Johannesburg and the surrounding residential suburbs) who have used a cell phone network provider for three years or longer, 605 respondents completed interviewer-administered questionnaires. Demographic and patronage information, together with respondents’ relationship intentions, attitudes towards complaining, customers’ complaint behaviour, expectations of service recovery, perceived service recovery as well as satisfaction, loyalty and retention following service recovery, were obtained. Results indicated that no associations exist between respondents’ levels of relationship intention and their relationship lengths, as well as whether they had contractual agreements with their cell phone network providers. It is therefore recommended that instead of using relationship length or contractual agreements, cell phone network providers should use customers’ relationship intentions to identify customers for relationship marketing purposes. Findings from this study furthermore include that respondents’ relationship intentions influence their propensities to complain, as well as the likelihood that they will voice a complaint regarding dissatisfactory service delivery. It is therefore recommended that cell phone network providers use the opportunity to identify customers with relationship intentions through customers’ complaint behaviour. This study found that respondents’ relationship intentions influence both their expectations of cell phone network providers to take service recovery action, as well as their perceptions of service recovery. Respondents’ relationship intentions also positively influence their satisfaction, loyalty and retention following service recovery. Based on these findings, it is recommended that cell phone network providers should always take corrective action following service failures (such as billing errors in this study), preferably by including at least an acknowledgement, apology, explanation and rectification of the problem as part of the service recovery efforts. Such a combination of service recovery efforts will increase the satisfaction, loyalty and retention of customers with higher relationship intentions. From the results it can be concluded that customers’ relationship intentions influence their behaviour with regard to propensity to complain, voicing, expectations of service recovery action, perceptions of service recovery, as well as satisfaction, loyalty and retention following service recovery, when service failures occur. The proposed model developed from these findings results in the recommendation that cell phone network providers should view the service recovery process as an interrelated process influenced by customers’ relationship intentions. Cell phone network providers should note that customers with higher relationship intentions will attempt to salvage the relationship when service failures occur, which contributes to their satisfaction, loyalty and retention following service recovery. This study contributes to establishing relationship intention theory by confirming the positive influence of customers’ relationship intentions on constructive behaviour when service failures occur. Moreover, practical recommendations concerning cell phone network providers’ response to billing errors are proposed. Future research should address the methodological limitations of this study by using probability sampling, and data should be collected from all South African provinces. Real-time service failures should be considered as opposed to the scenario-based approach used in this study. Important influences on customer behaviour when service failures occur, such as the perceived severity of service failure, service failure type, perceived justice and attributions, should also be considered with regard to their influence on the constructs of this study. Lastly, the antecedents of or differences with regard to customers’ relationship intentions based on personality, generational cohort or population group deserve further attention to establish relationship intention as study field within the domain of relationship marketing. / PhD (Marketing Management), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014.

Customer retention has been shown by academic researchers to be more profitable than customer acquisition. However, its implementation in the business environment has not been so successful. One of the reasons for this is that customer retention can be achieved in several ways (i.e. loyalty programs, affinity cards and switching costs) and that the translation from the concept of “retaining customers” to the actions and strategies to retain them is not always easy. One of the most attractive strategies to ensure that customers remain within the organisation is through cross-selling and up-selling. In short, the objective is to increase the number (or the value) of the products that a customer buys from a company to make it more difficult for him/her to leave. Whilst academic research has deeply investigated the concepts of loyalty, retention programs and trust, amongst others, cross-selling has not received the same level of attention. Moreover, existing research on cross-selling has been focused on products rather than on services. Finally, this research has mostly been conceptual in nature, with limited attempts to model or design practical cross-selling and up-selling strategies. In order for crossselling and up-selling to be effective retention strategies, they need to be tailored to the needs of the customer. The offer must be adequate in terms of the target (who is going to buy the product), the content (what is going to be purchased) and a time (when is the right moment to offer the new product). This thesis investigates customer retention and cross-selling and up-selling from a practical point of view in the financial services industry. Firstly, it assesses the importance of the concepts of customer retention and cross-selling and up-selling through several interviews conducted with financial services providers (insurance companies, building societies and independent financial industry bodies). Having established the relevance of these concepts in the industry, the next step developed and applied a framework to design cross-selling and up-selling strategies. This framework, named the “Who-What-When” framework, was applied to the transactional and customer data bases of two financial services providers (a Spanish insurance company and a UK building society). The “Who-What-When” method ii begins by segmenting the customer base in order to understand the characteristics and potential of each customer. It then, moves to modelling purchase propensity models, understanding the relationships between products in order to determine what product should be offered to each segment, according to their characteristics and their consumption history. Finally, it analyses the time sequence of the purchases in order to determine the right time (when the purchase is more likely to occur) to approach each customer, bearing in mind how they behave and the maturity of the products already held. The contribution of this thesis is twofold. From an academic point of view, the research demonstrates the importance of customer retention and cross-selling in the financial services industry, being both recognised as key strategic and tactical approaches for the future of the industry. Secondly, from a practical point of view, it contributes by developing an analytical framework to discover and design crossselling and up-selling strategies, aimed at retaining customers. This is achieved through the ‘Who-What-When’ framework which takes into account customer characteristics, consumption patterns and acquisition sequence to model cross-selling activities. Therefore, it refutes the traditional approach that ‘one size fits all’, advocating tailored strategies. Finally, this research highlights, from the empirical analysis, how repurchase decision is highly influenced by the length of the relationship with the provider and the type of products already purchased. Understanding these factors is key to successfully retaining customers via crossselling.

The purpose of the study is to analyze whether perceived customer service directly related to customer satisfaction regarding the National Alcohol & Liquor Factory (NALF) customers in Addis Ababa. The findings of the study indicated that five service quality dimensions were positively related to overall service quality and are indeed drivers of service quality which in turn has an impact on customer satisfaction. The study findings also indicated that all the standardized coefficients relating the service quality dimensions to overall service quality and to customer satisfaction have the expected positive sign and are statistically significant.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how e-business might be integrated into a strategical framework. The strategical framework was based on the Nilsson and Rapp (2005) strategical framework, and e-business strategies were mainly based on customer relationship management strategies that are used in e-commerce companies. We selected Gröndals Apotek, Nu3 and Apotek Hjärtat as our sample, semi-structured interviews as our method and we found that given the external factors in the business environment, retaining and extending online marketing strategies could be integrated into the corporate strategy without taking into consideration of the firm-size. In addition, we found that e-business acquisition strategies such as SEM and blogs were more useful for different firm-sizes in order to create strategic congruence of integrating e-business into the corporate strategy. Lastly, online customer service and pricing were two features that could be appropriate features in the integrated online marketing strategies that aim’s in displaying the competitive advantage.

This thesis focuses on the internal problems for companies changing customer service system and how to best avoid these problems and make the implementation of the new system as efficient as possible. The reason for focusing on the customer service systems was since more and more companies are transcending to e-commerce and having some form of customer service is common. As the technology is changing so does the requirements for the system and thereby companies are in need for constant change. The problem area is wide and the results can be applied to almost any company undergoing changes of customer service systems. In order to find the internal problems and how to avoid these to efficiently implement the new system, interviews were carried out with companies that had undergone some form of change in their customer service. Theoretical studies were also carried out in order to confirm the interviews. The results of the study were that companies need to involve the affected employees and work with employee involvement. Doing otherwise would in many cases make the employees resistant to change. Furthermore, the IT changes being carried out need to have a more humanistic perspective rather than technological perspective, as the case was. The main finding was that there was a clear connection between the level of employee involvement and the level of efficiency when changing to a new system. In addition, educating employees on the new system and information sharing about the system already before start would create efficient implementation.

The main object of this thesis is to summarize legal regulation about package tour in czech legal order, define and describe subject of this contractual relationship, define contracting parties and individual rights and duties that are being established at the beginning or during this contractual relationship. Basic concepts linked to the package tour contract as well as the role of travel agency in the whole process are being analysed in this thesis. I also focused on the most important changes connected with passing of the New Civil Code when individual provisions are examined and their significance is explained. Similarly as a legal ground of this contractual type the directive 90/314 EEC is also being examined. Finally, this thesis evaluates whether implementation of this directive to czech legal order has been done correctly and whether czech laws comply with the basic rules this directive is based on. The thesis is composed of nine chapters, each of them dedicated to individual issue. In the introduction I define basic objective of this thesis. The following chapter focuses on the basic definiton, purpose, basic concepts and character of this contractual relationship. In the third most comprehensive chapter I analyse concrete requirements of package tour contract, individual rights and duties...

This thesis is located within the field of Information Systems implementation. More specifically it focuses within Information Systems at the issues associated with implementation of business proves-based change. There is much evidence, both theoretical and empirical, to suggest that there are a high percentage of Information Systems and Business Process implementation failures (Meredith 1981, Lucas 1981, Walsham 1993, Land et al 1989). The aim of this thesis is twofold. Firstly to analyse the reasons behind the failures in process-based change implementations and secondly to provide a solution that will enable companies to overcome some of the problems and thus reduce the number of these failures. This research is based on a joint project between IBM PSS and the University if Plymouth. The research focuses specifically on the implementation of process-based change occurring in IBM Product Support Services (PSS). PSS is primarily responsible for the maintenance of IBM and non-IBM hardware and software and the selling of services associated with them. In order to understand what happens during implementation the researcher participated in three action research projects. All three projects were part of an IBM world-wide Business Process Re-engineering project called Customer Relationship Management. To ensure the validity of this action research process the researcher has closely followed the guidance compiled by Eden and Huxham. This research will present a framework that has been developed to improve the management of implementation projects. The framework is based on a synthesis of theoretical evidence and empirical findings. The empirical findings have been developed from investigating the reasons for failure in the three action research projects. All findings were analysed using the ‘Grounded Theory’ approach. The framework consists of five dominant themes, which are senior management commitment, analysis of problem situation, project planning and management, proves focus and user involvement. In the researchers view the problem of unsuccessful implementation is a complex one which may only begin to be improved when all the themes are addressed together as a whole. In order to test the themes of the framework a process for application was required. The process developed for using the framework involves applying a focus group at project initiation and questionnaires throughout the course of the project. The purpose of the focus group is to understand the themes of the themes of the framework within the context of the particular problem situation being investigated. The questionnaire is used to audit each theme of the framework to identify potential areas of implementation weakness. T-test analysis is carries out on the questionnaire results to measure whether any changes between questionnaires results are statistically significant. The framework was successfully applied to a fourth project. The T-test results indicated that applying the framework to the project throughout the course of the implementation had significantly improved the implementation. The originality of this research is in the framework and its application. This thesis will describe the history of implementation successes and failures at IBM, survey appropriate implementation theory and describe the synthesis and testing of the framework.

Since 2004, several small hotel chains have introduced guest loyalty programs in order to give their guests "big chain perks" while keeping a boutique identity. Recent studies have raised concerns that loyalty programs do not create brand loyalty. By looking at Kimpton Hotel's recently introduced program, Kimpton InTouch, this study examines the potential for operationalizing guest loyalty programs in a small boutique hotel chain setting. The study utilizes guest information gathered through customer surveys and reviews guest visits and spending patterns to see if there is any indication that loyal behavior exists amongst members of the Kimpton InTouch. This study demonstrates that frequent stay programs serve as a valuable asset in a hotel's ability to nurture a relationship with its membership and increase the overall awareness of its brand in the marketplace.

M. Tech. (Office management and Technology) Vaal University of Technology| / Telework can be defined as a flexible work arrangement, where selected employees work at home one or more days per week or at a site near home, instead of physically travelling to a central workplace. Telework has progressed globally, especially during the past decade to a work option that has an impact on commerce and industry in a most beneficial manner. This flexible work arrangement emerged in organisations because of the development of information and communication technology (ICT) that forms the key component of the teleworkers equipage. This investigation focussed on telework aspects, such as the effects on the environment, quality of life and economic effects. It is evident that telework generates significant benefits to the corporate environments, improves work and personal life experiences for human resources, improves environmental and social circumstances and has resulted in a significant paradigm shift in the corporate arena. The investigation also identified barriers that constrain managers from implementing telework. The investigation furthermore determined how South Africa, in particular, might benefit socioeconomically Inferential conclusions indicate that telework could counteract many of South Africa's transport and related socio-economic problems that pose detrimental consequences for the environment and other resources, as is the case in many other countries.

This aim of our scientific article is analysing how aviation industries can improve their customer’s satisfaction based on Kano Model. In fact, we noted in this article that there is no interaction found between « attractive » and « one dimensional » attributes. That’s why the Kano model shows us that it’s important to achieve the performance of « must be » attributes before achieving a best performance possible in « one-dimensional » attributes or « attractive » ones. We are going to introduce a solution to improve the Kano model regarding to the aviation industry.