G2C Marketing

Public administration has been challenged by “new public management” and “government redesign” paradigms. In addition, the relationship between government and citizen has been changed dramatically based on the mentioned paradigm shift. Customer orientation in the public sector is one of the changes originated from the private sector's principles and paradigms. Nowadays, scholars emphasize applying concepts and techniques of customer orientation in e-government. In this text, firstly, customer orientation and its importance in government activities, especially e-government, is described. Then, principles, applications, and experiences of citizen relationship management as a technique of customer-oriented governments are described.

Marketing Higher Educational Institutions on Social Network Sites

With social network sites growing in popularity, many organisations, including educational institutions, are starting to use this new platform to market themselves. However, marketing on social network sites is different from traditional marketing. Its value lies in engaging members of the social network and generating shared cultural meaning of the advertised brand rather than promoting awareness of the brand to a large number of people. As marketing on social network sites remains in its infancy and educational institutions are only beginning to understand that it is different from traditional marketing, it is not clear as to how educational institutions can leverage social network sites for their marketing effort. Using a case study on the use of Facebook as a marketing tool by a private educational institution offering degree programmes in Hong Kong, this chapter proposes a framework for marketing higher educational institutions on social network sites. The model suggests that educational institutions should encourage the participation of students on social network sites and engage the students through activities. The activities and participation of students on social network sites not only provide positive reinforcement of the decision to enroll in the education institution but also provide information to prospective students when they are evaluating the alternatives in the choice of an educational institution. In addition, the model also proposes that social network sites should facilitate the decision to enroll in the education institution by providing support in the application process.

Personally Engaged with Retail Clients

This chapter examines how social and economic changes of recent years have led to a new consumer profile. Furthermore, it explores how current responsible concerns regarding consumption, as well as a greater concern for welfare sustainability and the environment, are affecting purchasing behavior. With these ideas in mind, this chapter analyses how organizations have to evolve towards a new marketing paradigm in order to link to their customers emotionally. In this regard, the evolution of the marketing concept is reviewed—departing from a Marketing 1.0 paradigm, passing through a Marketing 2.0 paradigm—in order to understand how the so-called Marketing 3.0 emerged. The chapter concludes by analyzing the different rules that guide this new approach and how companies in the distribution sector are applying them in their daily activities.

Consumer Culture Theory

Consumer culture theory helps us take note of the cultural forces and dynamics in which technology consumption is entangled. It enables people to articulate the cultural processes (ideological, mythic, ritualistic, etc.) through which cultural meanings become granted to or denied to technological innovations, thus shaping the value of technologies as cultural resources sustaining consumer identities. In its urge to shed light on these aspects, CCT tends to reinforce the gaps and asymmetries between the “socio-cultural” and the “techno-material”, leaving plenty of room for further study. The authors outline the strengths and limitations of CCT to offer several tentative suggestions as to how ANT and CCT might draw on each other to enrich our understanding of technology consumption.

Exploring Marketing Theories to Model Business Web Service Procurement Behavior

This chapter provides literature-grounded definitions of contemporary Web services and marketing theories, which can model business demand through procurement decision-making behavior. First, the literature was reviewed to identify contemporary Web 2.0 and Web service ontology alongside marketing theories, which can describe individual decision making in an organizational or personal context. The Web services included cloud computing, social networking, data storage, security, and hosted applications. Then selected models for assessing procurement decision-making behavior were discussed in more detail. The constructed grounded theory method was applied by interviewing Chief Information Officers (CIO) at large organizations across four industries in the USA: healthcare, higher education, energy creation, and banking. The purpose was to determine which marketing theories could effectively model their Web service procurement behavior. An empirical procurement decision-making model was developed and fitted with data collected from the participants. The results indicated that Web service procurement decision-making behavior in businesses could easily be modeled, and this was ratified by the CIOs. The chapter proposes a state-of-the-art ontology and model for continued empirical research about organizational procurement decision-making behavior for Web services or other products.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

The considerable value of CRM is well documented in the literature, and it is further exemplified in today's highly turbulent, competitive, and fragmented markets. Nevertheless, the conceptualisation and operationalisation of CRM remains an area of intense debate, and hence, by reviewing and synthesising literature from the various relational research traditions, the chapter offers a critical perspective as to what customer relationships are and discusses the conditions under which relationships can flourish. To this end, the chapter discusses the conditions, which are conducive to relationship building, highlights the different forms that customer relationships may assume as well as their distinct developmental paths, and offers a number of recommendations to enhance relational efforts.

The Impact of Marketing Strategy in Small Family Businesses

This chapter refers to small family businesses in Greece and examines the impact of their marketing strategy during an economic crisis period. The research took place in the broad area of Athens between December 2011 and March 2012. Data were collected to form a database of Greek independent private family companies (n=380) using personal interviews (structured questionnaire) with owners/managers of first- and second-generation family businesses. The chapter shows how small family businesses indicate marketing strategy using Carson's model. Limitations of expertise outline the marketing background, which can be described as “self-assisted.” The research offers a verification of a previous model so that problems that arise from companies not putting into practice any marketing concepts can be examined. The significance of the chapter is that there have not formerly been any reviews made about Carson's model in Greece during the economic crisis period emphasizing family businesses.

Effects of Consumers' Social Media Participation on Consumer Behavior

Technological advancements have shaped and reshaped the marketing landscape from time to time. The digital revolution in particular has given rise to a new digital era that has changed this marketing landscape, perhaps permanently. One of the core technologies involved in defining this digital era is the Internet. The Internet has not only empowered the people by creating and disseminating information like never before but also has affected the way we conduct our businesses. Various business usages of the Internet in search engines, email, mobile, and social media have given rise to new ways of conducting marketing activities such as affiliate marketing, display advertisement, email marketing, search marketing, and social media marketing among others. The significance and the relevance of online social media marketing have made this particular digital channel a topical subject of the digital era. The effects of social media have been felt in influencing both seller and buyer behaviors. However, the focus of this chapter is to address two important aspects of consumer behaviors in an online digital social media environment. First, the authors propose a conceptual framework of consumers' social media participation. Second, the chapter discusses how this participation affects consumers' behaviors including their purchases. Finally, the authors present a few econometric challenges associated with modeling consumers' social media participation and quantifying its impact on their behaviors.

Behavioral Branding as a Customer-Centric Strategy

Behavioral branding is an integral part of contemporary business strategy. It aims to align external brand promise with employees' brand building. Two-way branding strategy reinforces the brand and increases customer satisfaction because people are the ones who convey the message regardless of their hierarchical level or job description. The purpose of this chapter is to provide conceptual discussion on the major issues of behavioral branding, to summarize the existing models so far developed in various conceptual and empirical studies, and to present the two-way branding strategy construct. It reviews the critical success factors of behavioral branding, and based on the arguments from the existing body of knowledge, presents strategy, internal communication, leadership, and the organizational culture as the most important and effective ones. Finally, the influence of behavioral branding strategy on the marketing and financial performance of the company is discussed.

A Study towards the Relation of Customer Relationship Management Customer Benefits and Customer Satisfaction

The purpose of this study is to investigate the efficacy of customer relationship management (CRM) benefits for customers in relation to customer satisfaction. A model has been developed and empirically tested through survey data collected from 150 customers of three Malaysian companies. The results indicate that the benefits of CRM for customers have had a significant positive effect on their satisfaction in marketing companies. Personalized service, responsiveness to customer's needs, customer segmentation, customization of marketing, multichannel integration, time-saving and improving customer knowledge are the benefits that we proposed would affect customer satisfaction in order to significantly improve marketing performance. Additionally, the results reveal that all the benefits found, with the exception of time-saving, enhanced customer satisfaction. This paper contributes to the existing literature by incorporating the benefits of CRM for customers and the relationships of these benefits with their satisfaction in the proposed model.