Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wollongong, 2002. / Typescript. Bibliographical references: leaf 343-373.

M.Phil. / The issue of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) within organisations has gained importance over the last five years, and the trend is set to continue with new CRM software vendors entering the market regularly. For a business, it is cheaper to retain existing customers than to acquire new ones, therefore increased customer loyalty and interaction is important. The value that electronic CRM (eCRM) allows is that it increases customer interaction, by eliminating physical intervention and subsequent errors. The Internet has allowed this interaction to become more sophisticated, with service information instantly available to both the customer and the business. The number of channels for interaction has also increased. Specifically, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) need low cost eCRM solutions that adapt to their business models and IT structures. The South African SME is limited by certain budgeting, resource and time constraints, and the owner of the SME cannot always devote time in search of a suitable eCRM solution for his business. The multitudes of vendors, offering various levels of functionality with increased focus on the SME sector, allow the SME many choices. However, companies selecting eCRM software vendors often lack an objective basis due to a lack of alternative information sources. Vendors making unsubstantiated and incorrect claims about the functionality of their software, further complicate the problem. From an SME point of view, the functionality and cost criteria of the eCRM solution is the most important. However, the minimum functionality criteria that vendors’ software packages must adhere to, in order to be considered an eCRM suite are: Customer Analysis; Marketing Automation; Sales Automation; Customer Service and Support; and Web-centricity. The research problem lies therein that South African SME owners or managers are unsure which functionalities are available, and which to deem important when considering eCRM solutions for their businesses. The objective of this study is to formulate a matrix of functionality that eCRM solutions must adhere to in order to be successfully implemented by the SME. This matrix is not prescriptive, but will guide SME management by identifying criteria and functionality that the solution needs to contain. The aim is to help SMEs select the right software, not to select the software for them.

Ph.D. (Communication Studies) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

Please read the abstract (Synopsis) in the section, 00front of this document / Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Marketing Management / MCom / Unrestricted

In today’s competitive arena, organisations need strategically to shift their focus from primarily concentrating on new customer acquisitions and rather to realise the importance of improving customer defections, thus looking at strategically retaining the existing customer base. Customer retention to all intents and purposes reflects the core of any service offering organisation and drives the competitiveness and viability of the business. Customer retention is a concern for all sector organisations including the medical aid schemes industry. It has been proven that retaining customers is less costly than attracting new ones and through a satisfied customer a business can elevate its competitiveness in the market. The significance of the study hinges on the importance of each business having comprehensive knowledge of why customers remain loyal patrons or why they choose to defect. It is important to note that the financial resources and time the business expends on improving service to the customer become futile if not matched by the high performance of the internal business units’ strategies. Having an understanding of customer movement will assist the organisation in properly addressing such issues and employing strategic processes that will enable the business to improve its retention strategies and curb defections. The primary objective of the current study was to investigate the impact internal service quality and customer relationship management have on customer retention. The study employed the SERVQUAL model as a measuring tool in establishing the relationship. The study investigated how customer retention (the dependent variable) is influenced by the different elements of internal service quality, namely assurance, empathy, service reliability, responsiveness, tangibles and elationship management, which represented the independent variables. The sample comprised eighty-one (81) out of a possible 130 AA Medical Scheme participants through the organisation’s four national offices. The empirical results showed that of all the variables relationship management, responsiveness and the tangibles have a positive impact on customer retention in medical aid schemes.

Service delivery is critical to the customer’s perception of value and is core to the success of an organisation. Excellent customer service incorporates the critical aspects of: expedient service delivery; open and honest communication; individual, personalised service; engendering customer loyalty; problem-solving; under-promising and over-delivering; meeting and exceeding expectations; efficient use of infrastructure, systems and procedures to facilitate efficient operations and, in particular, effective use of knowledge management with a focus on customer lifecycle care (Kingstone, 2004, 2005; Zarbock, 2006). Best-practice organisations now use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programmes that are customer-centric based in order to ensure excellent customer service delivery. Recently, organisations such as Tesco and Nordstrom have adopted customer-centric CRM successfully, providing concrete proof that this CRM model is sustainable and that it produces the highly lucrative win-win benefits which organisations seek (Beasty, 2005; Hallberg, 2001:19; Gratehouse, 2002; Rowe, 2002). 5 Glossary • Continuous improvement: an approach to improving performance which assumes more and smaller incremental improvement steps (Pycraft, Singh, Phihlela, Slack, Chambers, Harland, Harrison, & Johnston, 2002); • Connectivity: the ability to communicate with another system or piece of hardware or software, or with an internet site (Encarta World English Dictionary); • Customer-centric: the use of every touch-point to stimulate interest, close business, satisfy a need or demonstrate commitment to the customer relationship (Gianforte, 2005); • Customer expectations: the customer's perception of the quality of service (LeBoeuf, 1991) and value (Thompson, 2004); • Customer Experience Management: managing customer interactions to build brand equity and long-term profitability (Thompson, 2006a); • Customer lifecycle care: to ensure that every touch-point fulfils its value-potential, regardless of whether the interaction happens in marketing, sales or customer service (Gianforte, 2005); • Customer loyalty: customer’s attitudes and behaviour relating to their perception of value at every touch-point where they feel welcome, important and valued (Thompson, 2004); • Customer Relationship.

Successful economies are dependent on successful industries.The present study explores how business success could be improved in three selected industries, namely the motorcar, high-technology and food manufacturing industries. These industries are vital to growing the economy of countries. The present study made a significant contribution towords identifying a theoretical model to improve the business success of the motorcar, high technology amd the food manufacturing industries. The study showed that various combinations of product launching stategies (distribution channel development, product image, third-party agreements, pricing, e-business, and e-saving), as well as organisational variables (TQM and market culture) are important agreements to achieve increased sales growth and CRM effectiveness.

Previous research has demonstrated that customer orientation has a positive effect on business outcomes. Although scholars have provided different explanations for such a relationship, there is still a lack of clear understanding of what leads to such a relationship. In addition, there are only a few studies discussing the boundary conditions of customer orientation- business performance linkage. Drawing on the organizational information processing theory, I propose that inter-functional coordination mediates the relationship between customer orientation and success in marketing new products. A randomly sample of 97 new product development projects across 6 Sino-overseas joint ventures involving 150 car models in the China automobile industry was used to test my hypotheses. The results support my proposed mediating hypothesis. In addition, I demonstrate that the relationship between customer orientation and inter-functional coordination is further strengthened when a new product development strategy is local-oriented rather than when it is import-oriented because of the level of modification affecting the level of staff participation. Furthermore, compared with longer shared team tenure teams, it was found that teams of shorter tenure inter-functional coordination are more likely to trigger success in marketing new product relationship. On the basis of these findings, I discuss their implications for practice and future research.

This thesis is about public relations as an occupation and a business. The study is focused on investigating the nature of the expertise utilised in public relations, ways in which it is exploited commercially, and the consequences such practices have for the occupational group and its economic existence. The theoretical framework for this thesis combines insights from the sociology of the professions, studies of cultural/creative professions, Bourdieu's approach to the study of cultural practices, and critical examination of professional services, such as management consultancy. In empirical terms, the thesis combines a range of data and analytical approaches. The key part of the thesis is a model of public relations expertise derived from an analysis of participant observation of professional training. Its component parts are identified as: picture of the world; conceptual frame; and working knowledge, which in turn is composed of problems, tools and truths. The thesis also offers a narrative analysis of competition case studies, a particular genre of practitionars accounts of their own work, leading to the conclusion that their role is to show practitioners how to make sense of the immediate experience of work within a more abstract and ordered professional framework. A range of secondary data on the industry and the labour force are reanalysed to show how expertise is transformed into a commodity that can be priced and sold. The transformation involves an understanding of demand and supply dynamics for PR services. Finally, through the analysis of routine practices, the thesis draws attention to the occupation's "split personality" - two coexisting yet contradictory ways in which practitioners think about public relations - and pursues it at the level of the group's strategies designed to counteract the weaknessess resulting from this unsettled identity.

published_or_final_version / Housing Management / Master / Master of Housing Management