Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains xi, 180 p.; also includes graphics (some col.). Includes bibliographical references (p. 117-137). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center

Este estudo buscou compreender o canal de marketing usado para distribuição de servidores de microinformática do tipo x86 que, segundo institutos de pesquisas como o IDC (2009), responderão pela maioria absoluta de todos os servidores vendidos no país. Dentro da categoria de servidores x86, foram explorados os que estão em fases de crescimento e maturidade no ciclo de vida, devido aos potenciais de venda e de agregação de serviços ao cliente final. Para tanto, foram entrevistados doze membros deste canal, incluindo o fabricante dos produtos, três atacadistas, quatro varejistas e quatro clientes finais. Estes foram questionados sobre suas funções no canal de marketing analisado, avaliação de capacitação técnica para venda e prestação de serviços ao cliente, além dos papéis dos clientes e suas expectativas quando ao serviço ao cliente prestado. Percebeu-se que deficiência na capacitação e falta de estruturação nos varejistas pode ser um fator crítico para o canal de marketing, podendo comprometer a imagem dos produtos vendidos, o entendimento das necessidades e a prestação de serviços ao cliente e, de certa forma, o resultado de todos os outros membros do canal. / The intent of this study was to understand the marketing channel used to distribute x86 servers which, according to research institutes such as IDC (2009), will account for the majority of the servers sold in Brazil. Within the x86 category only products in growth or maturing lifecycle were considered in the investigation. These were selected due to potential of sales and customer services aggregation to the final purchasing customers. To accomplish that, twelve members of this channel were interviewed, including the product manufacturer, three wholesalers, four retailers and four final customers. They were asked about their function in the studied marketing channel, about their technical capability to sell and to serve customers, in addition to understanding the customer roles and their expectations on the performed service. The results found that reseller deficiency in technical skills and poor structure definition may be a critical factor for the marketing channel. This possibly compromises the image of sold products, the understanding of customer needs, customer services delivered and, in a certain way, the results for the other channel members.

Este estudo buscou compreender o canal de marketing usado para distribuição de servidores de microinformática do tipo x86 que, segundo institutos de pesquisas como o IDC (2009), responderão pela maioria absoluta de todos os servidores vendidos no país. Dentro da categoria de servidores x86, foram explorados os que estão em fases de crescimento e maturidade no ciclo de vida, devido aos potenciais de venda e de agregação de serviços ao cliente final. Para tanto, foram entrevistados doze membros deste canal, incluindo o fabricante dos produtos, três atacadistas, quatro varejistas e quatro clientes finais. Estes foram questionados sobre suas funções no canal de marketing analisado, avaliação de capacitação técnica para venda e prestação de serviços ao cliente, além dos papéis dos clientes e suas expectativas quando ao serviço ao cliente prestado. Percebeu-se que deficiência na capacitação e falta de estruturação nos varejistas pode ser um fator crítico para o canal de marketing, podendo comprometer a imagem dos produtos vendidos, o entendimento das necessidades e a prestação de serviços ao cliente e, de certa forma, o resultado de todos os outros membros do canal. / The intent of this study was to understand the marketing channel used to distribute x86 servers which, according to research institutes such as IDC (2009), will account for the majority of the servers sold in Brazil. Within the x86 category only products in growth or maturing lifecycle were considered in the investigation. These were selected due to potential of sales and customer services aggregation to the final purchasing customers. To accomplish that, twelve members of this channel were interviewed, including the product manufacturer, three wholesalers, four retailers and four final customers. They were asked about their function in the studied marketing channel, about their technical capability to sell and to serve customers, in addition to understanding the customer roles and their expectations on the performed service. The results found that reseller deficiency in technical skills and poor structure definition may be a critical factor for the marketing channel. This possibly compromises the image of sold products, the understanding of customer needs, customer services delivered and, in a certain way, the results for the other channel members.

Thesis (MTech(Business Administration)--Cape Technikon, Cape Town, 2001 / During the last decade, commercial banking competition has intensified for a variety of reasons. With shareholders requirements to satisfY and, at the same time to provide ''value for money" to i!s clients, banks restructured themselves to serve niche market segments, increase critical mass by growing volume business or a combination of both. With the change in political dispensation, the urgency for banks to evolve intensified for the following prime reasons: I. The increased number offoreign banks ~ntering the South African market and cherry-picking the commercial banks' best clients and employees. This was facilitated by the foreign banks low cost of entry and low overhead cost structure coupled with cheaper availability of offshore funding for South African businesses. 2. Increased emigration rates reducin6 the availability ofskilled and trained bank employees. 3. The stagnation ofthe economic emironment resulting in low organic growth of the business client base from the traditional white o\\ned segment. 4. The largely neglected black business segment which became politically. if not economically. attractive to the local banks. Against this background. commercial ban:,s strategies changed involving restructuring the internal organisation to refocus the banking industr.. efforts in achieving its profit objectives. satisfYing and keeping its clients and attracting new clients. primarily, from the local competitor banks.

Thesis (MTech (Business Administration))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2006 / This study aims to explore the impact of self-service technologies (SSTs) on the behaviour of Chinese banking customers. The research has two purposes: (l) To determine how perceived risk impacts on the use of SSTs for customers with a high and a low technology readiness index (TRI) and (2) To understand the types of perceived risks within the banking industry and which component of risk dominates customer's propensity to use SSTs. The research focuses on the retail bank SSTs services for the reason that the banking industry has the longest development history in SSTs. The research was conducted using a questionnaire containing two service scenarios (bank information search, fund/money transfer) and was distributed to 372 bank customers, of which a valid sample of 307 respondents was analyzed. The test results indicate the effect of perceived risk does exist. High perceived risk influences high TRI customers to lower their propensity to use the SSTs in the funds transfer and money transfer service scenario, whereas customers with low TRI will tend to lower their propensity to use SSTs in the funds transfer, money transfer and other services. Psychological risk was also identified as the dominant influential risk factor among the respondents. The results support the research hypotheses and highlight the importance for companies to manage perceived risk in this technological era.

Thesis (MTech (Marketing))--Peninsula Technikon, 2001 / Companies operating in the service industry must take note of three important marketing tasks. The first of these tasks is that companies should realise that they must provide the market with a variety of products. Businesses should therefore furnish the market with a diversified product range. Secondly, customers expect from the business sector to provide them with a quality service that even exceeds their own expectations. Thirdly, to ensure its survival in a competitive environment, the company should improve the productivity of its employees e.g. by improving the level of customer service provided to customers. Kotler (1997: 488) argues that such an improvement in productivity levels of employees can be achieved through employees working more skillfully, increasing the quantity of service by surrendering some quality, industrialising the service, inventing new-product solutions, designing more effective services, presenting customers with the incentive to substitute their own labour for company labour, or using technology to save time and money. Keeping these facts in mind and taking into consideration that tourists have been arriving in South Africa from all over the world for decades, it is of great importance for visitors to South Africa to receive customer service of the highest quality. A tourist travelling in the Republic of South Africa will most probably make use of a local travel agency if they should be in need of any further travel related services. A travel agent representing a particular travel agency, will not be engaged in the sale of travel related services only to tourists, but also to any other consumer interested in making use of the Travel Agencies' services. The Association of Travel Agents' (ASATA) code of conduct stresses that "ach travel agent engaged in the sale of travel-related services direct to consumers shall maintain the highest standard of service possible, complying with all statutory requirements, including those applicable to travel agents and with all provisions of this code" (Business Practices Committee Consumer Code For Travel Agencies, 1994: 5). This thesis is an analysis of the "marketing concept", with specific reference to customer service. It focuses on the top management in the travel agency industry and will be concerned with the degree to which top management is marketing orientated and the influence their marketing-orientated outlook will have on the performance of the travel agency. With marketing being defined as: "the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organisational goals", it must be emphasized that marketing can be seen as, amongst others, the anticipation and satisfaction of customer needs (Boshoff & Terblanche, 2000: 4). This research study would also include a study of the travel agency's level of customer service, which will have a direct reflection on top management's marketing outlook as well as the travel agency's level of performance.

Thesis (MTech (Public Relations Management))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2011. / This research investigates the application of the quality management systems at a computer contact centre in Cape Town. It examines the issues around brand switching from the products supported by the computer customer contact centre to those manufactured by competitors. Its main interest is to interrogate the reasons customers give to call centre agents when they decide to switch brands. It also hopes to find out whether call agents understand the interrelation between quality management, brand loyalty and customer satisfaction. Furthermore, the project uses employee responses to ascertain whether the concept of quality management is synonymous with customer satisfaction and whether employee fulfilment leads to innovation and customer satisfaction. To address the main concerns of this project, Deming's model of quality management is used as the main conceptual framework. The key concepts underlying this model are visionary leadership, internal and external cooperation, learning/training, process management, continuous improvement, employee fulfilment and customer satisfaction. To find out the reasons that customers give to call centre agents when they decide to switch brands and also to respond to sub research questions, a quantitative research method was selected. A questionnaire was administered to 100 employees out of a 300 population. Although the customers' voices would have added value to the research project, the researcher decided to concentrate on employees because of the following reasons: 1) the interaction with customer begins and ends with agents, therefore agents are always aware of the reasons why customers switch brands; 2) the customers are in excess of 100,000,000 and selecting a representative sample for a mini thesis was not very feasible, given that the thesis is constrained by time and volume.

M.Comm. / The animal health industry in South Africa is static and products are of a generic nature. Most of the international players are represented in South Africa. The fact that there are so many players in the market leads to severe competition. In this study the possible application of relationship marketing in the animal health industry was investigated. Sanvet, one of the leading companies in the industry was used for the study. The company was established in September 1994 through an amalgamation of the animal health divisions of Agrihold and Premier Pharmaceuticals. In relationship marketing the focus moves from a short-term transactional approach to long-term relationship marketing. Relationship marketing is the integration of marketing, quality and customer service. The provision of quality customer service involves an understanding of what the customer buys and determines how additional value can be added to the product or service being offered. Quality is the link between what a customer expects and the customers perception of what is being offered. The four P's model is very limited and in relationship marketing three additional elements are being used. The elements are people, processes and the provision of customer service. Customer service creates a clearly differentiated and superior value proposition, and is the central focus of all the other elements. Through the acknowledgement of the contribution of people to getting and keeping customers, within the overall marketing mix, the company's competitive performance will be substantially enhanced. People can be categorised into the following groups based on their role in the company: contractors, modifiers, influencers and isolators. Although the human element is very important in customer service, no amount of energy from personnel can counter poor performance due to unsatisfactory processes. In relationship marketing not only the relationship with the target markets is being addressed but also the relationship with the intemal markets, referral markets, supplier markets, employee markets and influence markets. The employees of the company are the core of an internal marketing plan. Employees are seen as internal customers and jobs as internal products. The ideal form of marketing is to get customers to do the marketing on your behalf. Referral markets within the industry must be identified and marketing activities directed at them. The traditional adversarial relationship between suppliers and their customer must change to a new form of relationship based on co-operation. The competition between companies in their effort to attract suitably motivated and trained employees is increasing. Suitable employees are becoming very scarce resources. Companies must focus their marketing activities to ensure that they and the company are first choice for a potential employee. Financial markets, regulatory markets, the government and shareholders form the influence markets and marketing activities should be addressed to these markets to ensure a long-term relationship. This study was limited to investigating the relationship with the internal markets, referral markets and supplier markets. It was found that relationship marketing can be applied in the animal health industry. The recommendations in this study can be used to draw up a complete relationship marketing strategy for Sanvet.

M.Comm. / In summary, e-commerce will absolutely change the way in which many company decisionmakers and business leaders think, as their companies compete in an online virtual world of business: a real-time, highly competitive marketplace. Companies will be required to rethink their core business processes and then create new strategies for performing e- businesses (Fellenstein & Wood, 2000:105). Forehand (2001:22), who is managing partner and CEO of Accenture, formerly known as Andersen Consulting, has the following views on succeeding in the New Marketplace: • "The New Economy pioneers have unearthed a few truths about how to win in the new marketplace. Speed is the new mantra. Change is the only constant. Content carries a premium. Consumers have perfect information. Brands signal trust. Value drives loyalty. And so on. These are quite important considerations, because when you take a step back and think about it, the way we conduct business really has been radically altered. Forever. • It's not easy to keep an organisation thriving as each new technology change surfaces. (And we've barely tapped the awesome potential for mobile commerce through wireless technology.) Success requires a sense of urgency across the entire organisation. It requires deep cultural change. It requires different and new relationships with customers, employees, alliance partners and even competitors. The end result is often significant business transformation that gets to a company's core business model. • Leading companies will put the customer at the centre of everything they do. Think about the implications of that to your business model. About a year ago we conducted research in the area of customer relationship management (CRM), which concluded that superior customer capabilities could account for 50 percent of the difference in return on sales between low and high performing companies. Those companies that can effectively put the customer at the centre of their business add tens of millions of dollars to the bottom line. • Leading companies will put technology on the personal agenda of every senior executive. Information technology has clearly progressed beyond the early days when it was relegated to the back office. But leaders of tomorrow will look at technology as much more than an enabler of business strategy. Technology will become a creator of business strategy. • Leading companies will apply the same rigour to human performance that they do to all areas of the business. There is an enormous challenge in getting the human element of an organisation equipped to operate in an increasingly digital world. Part of that challenge is finding and keeping talent. And the other is maximizing an individual's performance. Ensuring that people have the right skills, knowledge and behaviours is quickly becoming a company's biggest gating factor to future success. Not technology, not financial capital: human capital. • Leading companies will operate at speed. This is about an emerging leadership style that enables companies to be responsive to a dynamically changing marketplace. Leadership used to be structured and hierarchical. But now leadership requires quick wits, quick decisions, judgement calls, guts and passion. To operate at speed, companies will create internal environments that support and promote constant innovation. Success can often breed complacency, which dampens a company's sense of urgency and its ability to capitalise quickly on good ideas. The winners of tomorrow will realise the power of innovation and bring a start-up mentality inside". The above extract highlights various factors, which will become clearer as one progress through the dissertation. At the end, if one returns to this section, it is hoped that the new insight gained into the online world of the Internet will become apparent. This dissertation considers research into the various business models for Internet-based start-ups, the expectations of the customer, how to satisfy these expectations by means of customer service and how to build customer loyalty. Also considered are what relationships, if any, exist between a successful business model and customer loyalty. More emphasis will be placed on business-toconsumer as opposed to business-to-business transactions and models throughout the dissertation. The research method used in this dissertation is that of a literature study. A literature survey is conducted of the various business models used, customer expectations, customer service and the building of customer loyalty by Internet organisations. The collected information is described, interpreted and evaluated on a qualitative basis to address the purpose and the objectives of the study. With the above as background, this study proposes a business model and identifies factors that build customer loyalty, which will make a contribution towards guiding start-up ventures in strategically directing their business into a globally competitive and customer-focused world. The important findings that were identified in this study are: • Design a business model based on the following components — people, innovation, focus, speed, equity, technology, size, metrics, strategic vision and leadership. (These are the prime levers that today's Internet start-ups use to compete against the incumbent world of business.) • Carry out regular market research to establish exactly what it is that your customers expect from your web site. Constantly innovate, and by meeting or exceeding customer expectations, the customer expectation gap will be narrowed, which will lead to increased customer satisfaction, with a higher likelihood of customer retention. • Establish relationships with your customers and provide them with a unique online experience by utilising technology in such a way that every customer interaction is kept simple and saves the customer time and money. Providing this kind of customer service will build customer loyalty and enhance the company's brand name.

Organisations are increasingly under pressure to meet financial and other objectives in dynamic and competitive markets, that are being driven more by services than by products. Marketing as a function needs to become more accountable with respect to the marketing investments that are made and the returns generated from these programmes, and hence to increase shareholder value. Intangible assets are comprising a growing proportion of this shareholder value, to the extent that 75% of the value of the organisation is currently made up of intangibles such as Human Equity, Brand Equity and Customer Equity. Thus the marketer needs to build the marketing-based intangible assets of Brand Equity, the inherent value of the brand, and Customer Equity, the sum of the lifetime values to the organisation of its current and future customers. To be able to monitor and manage marketing’s contribution, these assets need to be measured, and the effectiveness of marketing programmes needs to be determined ideally in financial terms, e.g. ROMI – Return on Marketing Investment. The purpose of this research study was to develop and test a framework of Customer Equity in the financial services sector, to guide marketing spend so that shareholder value is built by leveraging the marketing intangibles. Consequently, the objectives were to develop a model of Customer Equity, to calculate Customer Lifetime Value of customers in a segment, to determine the value drivers and the elasticity relation of Customer Equity, and finally to provide guidelines to organisations to improve their Customer Equity. The first area of research was in the field of Marketing metrics, the set of measures that helps organisations to understand their marketing performance. The recommendation for organisations is to develop a marketing dashboard, or range of key marketing indicators, which would include short-term performance measures, e.g. market share or customer satisfaction, as well as long-term planning measures, e.g. Brand Equity and Customer Lifetime Value. Brand Equity was then reviewed as a valuable intangible asset. Various models have been developed to explain the different sources, components and outcomes of ii Brand Equity, as it is a multidimensional construct. The measurement and valuation of Brand Equity was also researched, and its link to shareholder value. Customer Equity, an alternative market-based intangible asset that can be a driver of shareholder value, was also reviewed. The conclusion from a review of the models is that there are two schools: the Blattberg, Gupta and colleagues school, which tends to focus on internal analysis as typically used in direct marketing applications; and the Rust and colleagues school, which tends to focus externally on the customer and the competition. Both schools have something to contribute: the internal school, on accurate understanding of Customer Lifetime Value, and the external school, on the relative importance of the drivers of Customer Equity. This research also makes a contribution to the Brand Equity / Customer Equity debate, analysing similarities and differences, and developing a model to explain the trade-off between the two concepts. A combination of the two schools was used to develop a model of Customer Equity, including supply side inputs (for accurate CLTV calculations) and demand side inputs (for determining drivers and their elasticities). Using input from the databases of a financial institution, Customer Lifetime Value and Customer Equity for customers in the SME market sector were calculated. A convenience sample of 251 SME’s was interviewed on the demand side using a structured questionnaire, to develop data on the drivers of their importance and the relative performance of banks. A statistical model was then developed, using Principal Components Regression (PCR) analysis, to determine the drivers of Customer Equity, the factors influencing these and the relative sensitivities. A key contribution of this research was the development of the Probability of Defection as a measure of the dependent variable in the multiple regression. The model was tested by determining the ROI of two marketing programmes from the financial institution, to guide their marketing spend. Finally, a Customer Equity Management Process was developed to assist organisations in implementing a Customer Equity focus. / Prof. Chris Jooste