Most popular learning customer theory to guide CRM

Study customer theory to guide CRM development and implementation

most CRM researchers and application experts do not believe that CRM exists as the theoretical basis for application support, and at best, they believe that CRM is only a business strategy to support enterprise marketing. This is closely related to the fact that the current theoretical research and academic discussion of CRM are not really systematized and unified. The functional application of CRM system urgently needs the guidance of relevant theoretical basis to help users really get rid of the practice of making decisions based on experience

most CRM researchers and application experts do not believe that CRM exists as the theoretical basis for application support, and at best, they believe that CRM is only a business strategy to support enterprise marketing. With the improvement of enterprises' enthusiasm for pursuing the performance of market activities, enterprises began to adopt qualitative and quantitative analysis methods to make decisions on enterprise activities related to the market and customers, such as effective customer satisfaction evaluation, customer classification, customer profitability analysis, etc. These decisions urgently need the guidance of relevant theoretical basis to really get rid of the practice of making decisions based on experience. Here, the theoretical basis of CRM is collectively referred to as theory on customer

look through the marketing, sales, consumer behavior, consumer psychology and other books related to describing market behavior and customer behavior, and you will find that there is no word "customer theory". Careful analysis shows that this phenomenon is inevitable. I remember a foreign expert talking about CRM said that the current CRM practice is obviously ahead of theoretical research. I don't think he made a false assertion when he said this, which is related to the fact that the current theoretical research and academic discussion of CRM have not really moved towards systematization and unification. At present, most books related to marketing talk more about business strategies and methodologies starting from enterprises and products, and do not discuss what mechanism leads to the effectiveness or failure of marketing decisions. Therefore, relatively speaking, the content of customer consumption behavior and consumption psychology is closer to the description of customer theory. They are only part of the customer theory

1. Mechanism of customer decision

before defining customer theory, it is necessary to understand the internal mechanism of a customer decision process

decision making refers to the choice and decision of rational individuals or groups on the direction, objectives, methods and means of future practice. Customer decision-making is a complex process from customers' internal needs, to being stimulated by the outside world and finally producing consumer behavior. The modeling of customers' consumption behavior and psychology is helpful to understand the internal mechanism of customers' decision-making. Consumer behavior modeling describes how customers make purchase decisions, how to use and deal with the purchased products or services. It also includes the analysis of purchase factors and the use of products. Consumer psychology modeling describes the generation, development and general regularity of customers' psychological phenomena in the process of demand, purchase and use of products or services

consumer psychology restricts and affects consumer behavior. According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory, customers' needs can become de facto purchasing behavior under the direct guidance of purchasing motivation. The explanation of psychology is that every rational behavior has a certain purpose and motivation behind it. Therefore, among the many psychological factors that affect consumption behavior, demand and motivation occupy a special position and are closely related to consumption behavior. Demand generates purchase motivation through certain incentive factors, and motivation generates consumption behavior under certain driving factors. The analysis of the internal mechanism of customer decision-making enlightens CRM developers and users that whether CRM can really play a role depends on whether it can effectively capture customer needs and motivations, and then produce driving factors that affect customer consumption

2. The content of customer theory

to sum up, customer theory is a theory related to customers. It is a collection of closely related theories such as customer behavior research, customer psychology research, customer value research, and relevant evaluation and judgment of enterprises on customers. Therefore, there are two perspectives in the study of customer theory. One is the study of customer attributes (characteristics), such as consumer behavior analysis and consumer psychological analysis, which is based on the customer itself; The second is the research on the object of customer analysis, which adopts qualitative and quantitative analysis methods to analyze the object of analysis based on and with reference to customer attributes, such as customer satisfaction analysis, profit rate analysis, customer loyalty analysis, customer knowledge, customer value analysis, etc. The result of customer analysis is to produce effective customer strategies or strategies, such as customer retention strategy, marketing strategy (such as target market selection strategy, marketing mix strategy, price strategy), sales strategy, etc

however, in terms of the current research trend of customer related theories, most of these studies ignore such a premise: an enterprise is an entity pursuing profits, and enterprises with different customer strategies pursue different customer theories. Reflected in these two perspectives, some enterprises only pay attention to the research of the first perspective, while ignoring the second perspective; Or only use qualitative methods to study customers

throughout the current research status of customer theory, there have been a large number of research results on customer satisfaction. Consumer behavior analysis and consumer psychological analysis have also made profound research and progress in the field of marketing. Even so, there is no recognized overall model of consumer psychology and behavior. The research on customer loyalty has also been published. This has a certain relationship with the strong industrial nature of CRM, which restricts people's research vision

3. The current research focus of customer theory

a perfect CRM should run the activities of enterprises acting on customers through the whole life cycle of customers. Customer life cycle includes customer understanding, customer classification, customer customization, customer communication, customer acquisition, customer retention and other stages. Peter Drucker, a management master, said, "the ultimate goal of an enterprise is to create customers and retain them". Most of the previous marketing theories and practices tend to focus on how to attract new customers rather than customer retention, emphasizing the creation of transactions rather than relationships. At present, the competition of enterprises for customer resources is intensifying, while the overall customer resources have not increased significantly. In this case, the realization of customer retention is undoubtedly the most concerned and hard work of enterprises at present

how to retain existing customers? First of all, customers should be satisfied with the existing customer relationship, that is, customers are satisfied with the products or services provided by the enterprise. Customer satisfaction is a necessary condition to achieve customer retention, but it is not a sufficient and necessary condition, because customer satisfaction does not mean customer retention. 2. If customers who are satisfied with the touch key operation mode do not receive further customer care related to improving customer loyalty, customer loss is inevitable

some convincing studies have proved this. More and more enterprises pay attention to customer profit margin, customer life cycle value, customer loyalty, customer retention and customer satisfaction. Their survey shows that 90% of enterprises have realized the great value of customer retention; 60% of enterprises believe that the long-term existence of customer loyalty and customer relations requires some electronic support: KONE electronics, Shanghai Mold Association, Midea, PolyOne, stauber, sharp, Tyco Electronics, Shure electronics and natural connections; 45% of enterprises believe that loyalty marketing will bring higher ROI than advertising costs

4. The inspiration of customer theory on the development and application of CRM

(1) CRM emphasizes the management of the "relationship" between enterprises and customers, rather than just the management of basic customer information. Customer "relationship" has a life cycle, that is, the cycle of relationship establishment, relationship development, relationship maintenance and relationship rupture, which is "customer relationship" understood from the perspective of enterprises. From the perspective of customers themselves, it is because each customer has a complete customer life cycle, so there is the customer "relationship" life cycle understood by enterprises. Looking at the current CRM systems of domestic and foreign openers, most of them focus on the beginning of customer "relationship", that is, the establishment of customer relationship, and a few pay attention to the development of customer relationship and the rupture of customer relationship. Generally speaking, in terms of customer relationship maintenance, in addition to good customer service, there are too few functions provided

(2) in the current period, the focus of customer theory is customer retention. The most effective way of customer retention is to improve customer loyalty to the enterprise. Customer loyalty in a business environment can be defined as the persistence of customer behavior. Customer loyalty refers to customers' perception, attitude and behavior towards the enterprise. They drive customers to maintain a long-term cooperative relationship with the enterprise without losing to other competitors, even if the enterprise makes short-term mistakes in price or service. Customer loyalty comes from the ability of an enterprise to meet and exceed customer expectations, which enables customers to have continuous customer satisfaction with the enterprise. Therefore, understanding and effectively capturing customer expectations is the fundamental to achieve customer loyalty. The current CRM system can't do this. Through the centralized management of enterprise customer information, CRM provides convenience for enterprises to manage customers accurately and quickly. This application is only one aspect of customer "relationship" management, because it does not involve how to maintain or enhance the existing customer "relationship". Therefore, whether effective customer retention can be achieved through the implementation of the system provided by the current CRM developers is not a small question

(3) at present, the marketing function of CRM system is generally weak, and some of them basically do not develop marketing functions. Marketing is the ability to generate marketable opportunities. Through scientific promotion, market analysis and other means, the company's technicians decided to develop a set of quality management system by themselves. CRM helps enterprises comprehensively improve their ability to serve customers and make decisions. Some domestic developers have effectively improved the ability of CRM analysis and decision-making by implementing multidimensional analysis and data mining technology into system components to analyze and mine customer transaction information. This is what CRM developers should follow

5. Summary

in this paper, the theoretical basis of CRM is collectively referred to as customer theory. CRM is not only supported by relevant theoretical basis, but also the research of customer theory can guide the development and implementation of CRM. Realize customer 4 Angle type (the transmission shaft of the actuator is perpendicular to the valve stem) and other customer retention are the focus of customer theoretical research and application at this time. However, because the function of CRM system in marketing is generally weak, it can provide strong decision support for the realization of customer retention. This may be a fatal factor that affects users' acceptance of CRM. (end)