Companies in today's global and competitive business environment have realised that it is crucial for them to enhance their relationship with important customers in order to achieve and sustain a competitive advantage. Account management has therefore received increasing attention during the last decades. Nonetheless, it seems as if the information requirements in combination with account management have so far been neglected in this discussion. / The aim of the review of contemporary theory thus is to investigate which information requirements are essential for account management, including its underlying concepts of key account management, strategic account management and global account management, and may lead to a competitive advantage. Consequently, the core questions are what kind of information is required, and how such information should be structured in an information system for account management to achieve a competitive advantage. Additionally, the terms and definitions of various researchers with respect to key account management, strategic account management and global account management as well as their interrelationship are discussed in detail within this review of the contemporary theory. / Analyses have shown that multinational corporations have recognised that only a limited number of key customers are vitally important to achieve a competitive advantage in their businesses. Since this small number of customers is of such importance to the overall business performance, a successful business relationship with these customers is highly significant. In order to achieve a successful business relationship essential information about the individual customers has to be gathered. Information management and knowledge management are prerequisites for accumulating and using data concerning important customers. Specifying and obtaining the right information can be seen as a filter that sieves the information needed for account management from the vast amount of data available from knowledge management. Furthermore, this review of contemporary theory will argue that a specific information system is an indispensable tool involved in achieving a competitive advantage in account management. / Moreover, the review of literature has visualised that only a limited amount of material has been published about how to obtain and use the right information requirements effectively for account management. Therefore, it has to be investigated to which extent the combination between the specified information requirements and account management leads to a competitive advantage. Concluding, it can be said that further research is necessary in order to identify what kind of information is required for a comprehensive and unified account management information system. / Thesis (DBA(DoctorateofBusinessAdministration))--University of South Australia, 2007.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/267081 |
| Creators | Willand, Heinz G.P. |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | copyright under review |
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