The economic situation and the improved technology weaken the bond be-tween banks and their customers. To adapt to the changing behavior of customers banks engage in Social Media with the aim to strengthen their relationship. However, Social Media may not have the expected effect on the banks’ customers. The purpose of this thesis is to answer whether interaction through Facebook can improve the relationship between Handelsbanken and its customers and whether the employees’ and the customers’ perceived value of interacting through Facebook is equal.  The theoretical framework focus on how to build relationships with customers, how to add customer value and what encourages consumers to engage in word-of-mouth. The concept of Social Media is explained and a description of Facebook is provided. The last section in the theoretical framework discusses the implementation of Facebook into the organization of Handelsbanken. A qualitative study was conducted through interviews with employees and customers of Handelsbanken. During the study it was revealed that both the customers and the employees had low awareness of Handelsbanken’s presence on Facebook. The content on the Facebook page does not encourage interaction or add value to the customers. The main problems for succeeding with the Facebook page are absence of marketing and no customer need for interacting on Facebook with their bank. In addition, it was revealed that implementing a centrally moderated communication tool to a decentralized organization is not successful.

This graduation theses are oriented to service management analyse and customer relations in a selected firm with emphasis on finding properly recommendation for prospective expansion of the company. My suggestions in improving the quality of provided services or more precisely increases competitive advantage in firm BOHEMIA MACHINE Ltd.

The diploma thesis „The Study of During the Contract in Company“ focuses on the analysis of order processing in the company, from accepting the order to expedition of the final product. The aim of the thesis is to observe and analyse the order processing in the company based on theoretical knowledge and determine weak spots in this process. The thesis contains specific proposals on how to eliminate these weak spots and improve this process.

Small business enterprises (SBEs) are major contributors to national job creation and employment, but small businesses face a myriad of challenges which lead to their failure before 5 years of operation. Some small business owners lack the skills to create strategies that will lead to long term business survival. Porter'€™s 5 forces competition was used as the conceptual framework for this multiple case study. The purpose of the study was to explore the strategies Nigerian SBEs use to sustain their first 5 years of operation. Semistructured interviews served to collect data from the chief executive officers of 2 SBEs in the maritime industry in Lagos, Nigeria. Data analysis entailed the use of qualitative analysis to capture and organize data and identify emerging themes. Some emerging themes included the securing of the necessary finances, the ability to respond to the effects of government policy, and providing excellent customer service. The implications of this study for social change include the mitigation of the negative effects of business failure on the people of the host community. Small business owners and leaders, partners of small business owners, and policymakers might benefit from this research by deploying the findings to appropriate business domains.

Bakgrund I takt med en ökad digitalisering sker handel idag inte endast i fysiska butiker. Fler och fler klädföretag använder idag e-handel som försäljningskanal för att sälja sina produkter, samtidigt som efterfrågan från konsumenter är i ständig förändring. Trycket på att tillgodose kundernas behov och skapa kundnöjdhet sätter press på företagsledningar att använda flera kanaler, känt som multikanalförsäljning. Som följd har begreppet multichannel customer management vuxit fram som lyfter vikten av att utvärdera sina kanaler för att i sin tur kunna allokera resurser till respektive kanal. Syfte Syftet med studien är att inom klädbranschen undersöka hur ett antal nyckelfaktorer påverkar kundnöjdheten inom fysiska försäljningskanaler respektive e-handelskanaler. Vidare ämnar studien förklara vilka av nyckelfaktorerna företag för respektive försäljningskanal bör fokusera på i syfte att uppnå kundnöjdhet och i sin tur kundlojalitet. Genomförande Med ett realistiskt perspektiv, en deduktiv ansats och en kvantitativ metod har 8 hypoteser tagits fram utifrån befintlig forskning. Den empiriska undersökningen bestod av en enkät som delades ut på Linköpings universitet och besvarades av 224 studenter inom Generation Y. Vidare användes programmet SPSS för att genomföra en statistisk analys av insamlad primärdata. Slutsats För att uppnå kundnöjdhet och i sin tur kundlojalitet visar studiens resultat att företag, för sin fysiska försäljningskanal, bör fokusera på faktorerna service, tillgänglighet, tid och säkerhet. Studiens resultat visar även att företag för sin e-handelskanal bör fokusera på produktgaranti, tid och säkerhet för att uppnå kundnöjdhet och kundlojalitet. / Background: Companies today are, due to an increased digitization, forced to use more than traditional stores to reach out to their customers. More and more retailers are now using online stores to meet an even broader market and to attain customer satisfaction. Using more than one channel has become known as multichannel retailing, from which a concept known as multichannel customer management has started to grow. The concept says that as the number of channels used increase, companies need to evaluate their channels in order to allocate resources to each one. Purpose: The purpose with the study is to examine how a couple of key factors, in the apparel industry, affect customer satisfaction in traditional and online channels. The study aims to explain which one of these factors each channel should focus on to achieve customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. Completion: With a realistic perspective, deductive approach and quantitative method 8 hypothesis have been tested. The empirical study was conducted by handing out a survey on Linköping University and in total 224 respondents within Generation Y answered. To analyze the collected data, the statistical software SPSS was used. Conclusion: In order to accomplish customer satisfaction and customer loyalty the study shows that companies, for their traditional stores, should focus on service, accessibility, time and safety. The results of the study shows that companies, for their online stores, should focus on product guarantee, time and safety.

A gestão de clientes é um processo que envolve a tomada de decisões estratégicas, que influenciam a composição do portfólio de clientes da companhia, e operacionais, que afetam o relacionamento dos clientes com a empresa no dia a dia. O framework sugerido nesta tese propicia a integração dessas duas perspectivas, permitindo aos gestores alocarem melhor os recursos de marketing, por possibilitarem (a) o incremento da eficiência da carteira de clientes, a partir da sua otimização, e (b) a identificação dos clientes mais propensos a gerarem lucros futuros, com base na modelagem de customer lifetime value (CLV) desenvolvida. A abordagem de otimização do portfólio de clientes foi elaborada para auxiliar os gestores a definirem os segmentos que devem ser alvo dos investimentos de marketing e tem como objetivo indicar a composição da carteira de clientes que proporcionará a rentabilidade, a diversificação do risco e a lucratividade desejadas pelos acionistas. A abordagem sugerida é uma adaptação para o marketing da teoria financeira do portfólio. Foram incluídas restrições específicas para a área de gestão de clientes que asseguram a exequibilidade dos portfólios recomendados, tanto em relação à necessidade de aquisição de clientes ou de redução da participação dos segmentos na carteira, quanto em relação à manutenção da lucratividade da empresa. Ademais, foram incorporadas opções de estimação do retorno, tais como a inclusão da tendência à série com base na modelagem SUR, além de serem avaliadas a utilização de duas proxies para o risco, a variância e o Conditional Value at Risk. De acordo com o framework de gestão de clientes proposto, a implementação das decisões estratégicas é viabilizada a partir da integração da análise dos resultados obtidos pela otimização com a avaliação proporcionada pelo modelo de CLV sugerido. Este, além de englobar a evolução do comportamento do cliente ao longo do relacionamento da empresa, considera o retorno e a matriz de probabilidade de troca de segmento de maneira individualizada. A heterogeneidade da matriz de Markov foi alcançada a partir da combinação convexa da matriz de transição geral com a matriz personalizada de cada cliente, possibilitando, assim, a priorização de clientes pertencentes a um mesmo segmento. O framework sugerido foi aplicado na base de clientes de uma grande empresa que atua nacionalmente na indústria de serviços financeiros. Após a constatação de que os segmentos podem gerar diferentes retornos e representar distintos níveis de risco para a companhia, foi feita a comparação dos resultados dos portfólios recomendados com o realizado. Os portfólios sugeridos desempenharam melhor de maneira consistente em termos de lucratividade e de eficiência, medida a partir do sharpe ratio. Em relação ao modelo de CLV, os resultados foram comparados com os obtidos a partir do modelo de Pfeifer & Carraway (2000), utilizado como ponto de partida para o seu desenvolvimento. As modificações incorporadas, além de possibilitarem a individualização por cliente, aumentaram a precisão da previsão dos valores individuais e a qualidade do ordenamento, mantendo a capacidade de avaliação do valor da base. Para resumir, foi proposto um framework de gestão de clientes que inclui a avaliação do risco, possibilitando aos gestores uma visão holística do negócio e particular de cada cliente. / Customer management is a process that involves strategic decision-making, which influence the composition of the customer portfolio, and operational decision making, which affect the relationship of each customer with the company. The proposed framework provides the integration of the strategic and operational perspectives, empowering managers to better allocate marketing resources as it enables (a) the increase of the efficiency of the customer portfolio, through its optimization, and (b) the identification of the customers that are more likely to bring profit in the future, through the customer lifetime value (CLV) model developed. The customer portfolio optimization method was built to help managers to define the customer segments that should be the target of their marketing investments. Its purpose is to indicate the customer portfolio composition that will provide the return, profitability and risk diversification desired by shareholders. The suggested approach is an adaptation to marketing of financial portfolio theory. In this way, customer management specific constrains were included to ensure the applicability of the recommended portfolios in terms of either the necessity of acquiring new customers or reducing the importance of a given segment in the portfolio as well as in terms of maintaining the company’s profitability. Furthermore, options of estimating return were incorporated such as the inclusion of the trend in the time series based SUR modeling as well as the optimizations were evaluated considering two proxies for risk, variance and Conditional Value at Risk. According to the proposed framework, the implementation of the strategic decisions concerning the changes needed in the customer portfolio become possible through the integration of the results of the optimization with the estimation of the value of each customer provided by the CLV model developed. In this model, besides accounting for the evolution of the customer behavior throughout the duration of his relationship with the company, we also consider, for each customer, his individual return and his individual transition matrix. The heterogeneity of the Markov matrix was reached with a convex combination of the general transition matrix and the personalized matrix of each customer. It, therefore, enables managers to priorize customers of the same segment. The suggested framework was applied to the customer database of a large national company from the financial services industry. Once evidenced that the customer segments can generate different returns and can have different levels of risk for the company, we compared the results of the recommended with the current. The portfolios suggested by the optimization performed consistently better in terms of profitability and efficiency, measured through sharpe ratio. Concerning the CLV model developed, we compared the results with Pfeifer & Carraway (2000) model, which was used as the start point for our model. The improvements implemented not only allowed the estimation of CLV at the individual level, but also increased the precision of the predictions for the customer lifetime values and for the customer ranking, maintaining the quality of the customer equity forecast. To sum up, our proposed framework which includes risk assessment enables marketing managers to have a holistic vision of their customer portfolio and to drilldown into a particular vision of each customer.

Knowing what to sell, when to sell, and to whom to sell is essential buyer behavior insight to allocate scarce marketing resources efficiently and effectively. Applying the theory of relationship marketing (Morgan and Hunt 1994), this study seeks to investigate the link between commitment and trust and firm adoption of radically innovative information technology (IT). The construct of radical innovation is operationalized through the use of cloud computing. A review of the vast scholarly literature on radical innovation diffusion and adoption, and modeling techniques used to analyze buyer behavior is followed by empirical estimation of each of the radical innovation adoption questions of purchase timing, brand choice, and purchase amount. Then, the inefficiencies in the independent model process are highlighted, suggesting the need for an integrated model. Next, an integrated model is developed to link the purchase timing, brand choice, and purchase amount decisions. The essay concludes with insight for marketing practitioners on the strength of the factors of commitment and trust on adoption of radical innovation, an improved methodology for the business-to-business marketing literature, and potential further research paths.

Knowing what to sell, when to sell, and to whom to sell is essential buyer behavior insight to allocate scarce marketing resources efficiently and effectively. Applying the theory of relationship marketing (Morgan and Hunt 1994), this study seeks to investigate the link between commitment and trust and firm adoption of radically innovative information technology (IT). The construct of radical innovation is operationalized through the use of cloud computing. A review of the vast scholarly literature on radical innovation diffusion and adoption, and modeling techniques used to analyze buyer behavior is followed by empirical estimation of each of the radical innovation adoption questions of purchase timing, brand choice, and purchase amount. Then, the inefficiencies in the independent model process are highlighted, suggesting the need for an integrated model. Next, an integrated model is developed to link the purchase timing, brand choice, and purchase amount decisions. The essay concludes with insight for marketing practitioners on the strength of the factors of commitment and trust on adoption of radical innovation, an improved methodology for the business-to-business marketing literature, and potential further research paths.

A gestão de clientes é um processo que envolve a tomada de decisões estratégicas, que influenciam a composição do portfólio de clientes da companhia, e operacionais, que afetam o relacionamento dos clientes com a empresa no dia a dia. O framework sugerido nesta tese propicia a integração dessas duas perspectivas, permitindo aos gestores alocarem melhor os recursos de marketing, por possibilitarem (a) o incremento da eficiência da carteira de clientes, a partir da sua otimização, e (b) a identificação dos clientes mais propensos a gerarem lucros futuros, com base na modelagem de customer lifetime value (CLV) desenvolvida. A abordagem de otimização do portfólio de clientes foi elaborada para auxiliar os gestores a definirem os segmentos que devem ser alvo dos investimentos de marketing e tem como objetivo indicar a composição da carteira de clientes que proporcionará a rentabilidade, a diversificação do risco e a lucratividade desejadas pelos acionistas. A abordagem sugerida é uma adaptação para o marketing da teoria financeira do portfólio. Foram incluídas restrições específicas para a área de gestão de clientes que asseguram a exequibilidade dos portfólios recomendados, tanto em relação à necessidade de aquisição de clientes ou de redução da participação dos segmentos na carteira, quanto em relação à manutenção da lucratividade da empresa. Ademais, foram incorporadas opções de estimação do retorno, tais como a inclusão da tendência à série com base na modelagem SUR, além de serem avaliadas a utilização de duas proxies para o risco, a variância e o Conditional Value at Risk. De acordo com o framework de gestão de clientes proposto, a implementação das decisões estratégicas é viabilizada a partir da integração da análise dos resultados obtidos pela otimização com a avaliação proporcionada pelo modelo de CLV sugerido. Este, além de englobar a evolução do comportamento do cliente ao longo do relacionamento da empresa, considera o retorno e a matriz de probabilidade de troca de segmento de maneira individualizada. A heterogeneidade da matriz de Markov foi alcançada a partir da combinação convexa da matriz de transição geral com a matriz personalizada de cada cliente, possibilitando, assim, a priorização de clientes pertencentes a um mesmo segmento. O framework sugerido foi aplicado na base de clientes de uma grande empresa que atua nacionalmente na indústria de serviços financeiros. Após a constatação de que os segmentos podem gerar diferentes retornos e representar distintos níveis de risco para a companhia, foi feita a comparação dos resultados dos portfólios recomendados com o realizado. Os portfólios sugeridos desempenharam melhor de maneira consistente em termos de lucratividade e de eficiência, medida a partir do sharpe ratio. Em relação ao modelo de CLV, os resultados foram comparados com os obtidos a partir do modelo de Pfeifer & Carraway (2000), utilizado como ponto de partida para o seu desenvolvimento. As modificações incorporadas, além de possibilitarem a individualização por cliente, aumentaram a precisão da previsão dos valores individuais e a qualidade do ordenamento, mantendo a capacidade de avaliação do valor da base. Para resumir, foi proposto um framework de gestão de clientes que inclui a avaliação do risco, possibilitando aos gestores uma visão holística do negócio e particular de cada cliente. / Customer management is a process that involves strategic decision-making, which influence the composition of the customer portfolio, and operational decision making, which affect the relationship of each customer with the company. The proposed framework provides the integration of the strategic and operational perspectives, empowering managers to better allocate marketing resources as it enables (a) the increase of the efficiency of the customer portfolio, through its optimization, and (b) the identification of the customers that are more likely to bring profit in the future, through the customer lifetime value (CLV) model developed. The customer portfolio optimization method was built to help managers to define the customer segments that should be the target of their marketing investments. Its purpose is to indicate the customer portfolio composition that will provide the return, profitability and risk diversification desired by shareholders. The suggested approach is an adaptation to marketing of financial portfolio theory. In this way, customer management specific constrains were included to ensure the applicability of the recommended portfolios in terms of either the necessity of acquiring new customers or reducing the importance of a given segment in the portfolio as well as in terms of maintaining the company’s profitability. Furthermore, options of estimating return were incorporated such as the inclusion of the trend in the time series based SUR modeling as well as the optimizations were evaluated considering two proxies for risk, variance and Conditional Value at Risk. According to the proposed framework, the implementation of the strategic decisions concerning the changes needed in the customer portfolio become possible through the integration of the results of the optimization with the estimation of the value of each customer provided by the CLV model developed. In this model, besides accounting for the evolution of the customer behavior throughout the duration of his relationship with the company, we also consider, for each customer, his individual return and his individual transition matrix. The heterogeneity of the Markov matrix was reached with a convex combination of the general transition matrix and the personalized matrix of each customer. It, therefore, enables managers to priorize customers of the same segment. The suggested framework was applied to the customer database of a large national company from the financial services industry. Once evidenced that the customer segments can generate different returns and can have different levels of risk for the company, we compared the results of the recommended with the current. The portfolios suggested by the optimization performed consistently better in terms of profitability and efficiency, measured through sharpe ratio. Concerning the CLV model developed, we compared the results with Pfeifer & Carraway (2000) model, which was used as the start point for our model. The improvements implemented not only allowed the estimation of CLV at the individual level, but also increased the precision of the predictions for the customer lifetime values and for the customer ranking, maintaining the quality of the customer equity forecast. To sum up, our proposed framework which includes risk assessment enables marketing managers to have a holistic vision of their customer portfolio and to drilldown into a particular vision of each customer.

A questão da produtividade das atividades de marketing é um antigo debate da disciplina, porém ganhou destaque nos anos 1990 a partir de uma conjuntura que propiciou questionamentos sobre a eficácia e eficiência dos departamentos de marketing das empresas. Argumentou-se que o marketing deveria ir além das métricas tradicionais e explicitar as consequências de marketing para todos os stakeholders. Nesse sentido, os conceitos de customer equity e customer lifetime value têm se mostrado promissores em fazer a conexão marketing-finanças a partir de uma série de estudos iniciados nos anos 1990. Desde então foram elaboradas inúmeras modelagens a fim de mensurar a contribuição das ações de marketing empiricamente. De fato, evidências apontam para uma real contribuição de marketing dentro da empresa, seja pelo valor da marca, da clientela, da satisfação, lealdade entre outros. No entanto, a diversidade de modelos pode significar um entrave na padronização de cálculo e não existem pesquisas que estudem o impacto do modelo escolhido nos resultados da estimação nem sua implicação para tomada de decisão. A presente tese visou investigar até que ponto existe modelo dependência na estimação do customer equity e customer lifetime value, já que os resultados impactam diretamente na estratégia a ser utilizada pela gerência e, consequentemente, no desempenho da empresa A partir da classificação dos modelos foram comparados aqueles chamados de determinísticos, um grupo de modelos com características semelhantes e implementação simplificada. Os resultados indicam que, no caso da utilização do customer equity para avaliação financeira da empresa a estimação apresenta grande variabilidade, o que indica modelo dependência e a necessidade de aprofundamento metodológico, principalmente em negócios com alta heterogeneidade de margens e retenções. O ciclo de vida do cliente, por sua vez apresenta modelo dependência no que diz respeito a estratégia gerencial para maximizar o mesmo, sendo a seguinte: nos modelos de projeção infinita a retenção de clientes apresenta “prêmio” crescente no ciclo de vida esperado, enquanto que margens de contribuição tem peso maior em ambientes com retenção menor que 50% aproximadamente. Modelos com projeção finita, no entanto, não apresentam essa característica, sendo a retenção sempre a causar maior impacto marginal no valor do ciclo de vida esperado. Esses resultados fornecem evidências para concluirmos que existe modelo dependência na estimação de tais métricas. / The marketing productivity is an old debate in the field and has gained substantial attention since 1990’s as a product of a context that raised questions about the real contribution of marketing, its efficiency and efficacy. Managers argued that marketing should demonstrate its effects beyond traditional metrics and making them available to all business’ stakeholders. In this sense, customer equity and customer lifetime value has been used to make the connection between marketing and finance by 1990’s until now. In fact, research has shown that marketing contributes to firm value by elevating brand equity, customer loyalty and satisfaction, customer equity, among others. However, the large number of customer equity and customer lifetime models can be a difficulty on finding standard methodology, and there are no studies that compare model’s impact on results. This study aims to investigate the dependency of the models in estimating customer equity and customer lifetime value and its consequence on strategy adoption by managers. Starting from a classification proposal, a group of deterministic models were chosen to be compared. Results show that using customer equity for valuation purposes is model dependent, since models present great estimation variability, especially in a heterogeneous context. Customer lifetime value does produce divergent strategies and has model dependency as well: on models of infinite projection retention rates have increasing effect on expected customer lifetime values, but margins are preferred until a retention threshold of fifty percent. This does not occur within a model with finite projection, which retention rates has always more impact than margins. The sum of this results offer evidence that, indeed, model dependency on estimating customer equity and customer lifetime value exists.