Tools and Techniques Used for Customer Relationship Management

Continuing to fulfill the requirements and needs of today's customer is a perplexing job for all the corporations. There have been a number of strategies developed to engage with customers, but few considerations have been paid to string them together in generating well-developed relationships. For of this reason companies are moving towards customer relationship management (CRM) to execute reliable strategies in engaging with customers. CRM emphasizes aiding companies thoroughly to manage the procedures involved in upholding good relationships with customers. This chapter discussed various strategies and examined case studies that adopted different techniques to engage with customers.

Customer Engagement

This chapter focused on exploring the engagement in which consumers interact with each other while conducting online shopping activities, such as discovering products, sharing product information, and/or collaboratively making shopping decisions. At the core of the product/service offering, successful shopping models will be able to meet the needs of highly engaged shoppers. In order to develop sustainable shopping model for this group of shoppers, social support theory could explain the current phenomenon of the use of social media for shopping. The social media technologies facilitated collaborative learning and collaborative improvement on the sale of unconventional and innovative products. The chapter contributes in social commerce innovations and provides managerial implications for understanding the overall interactions of social commerce.

Consumer Socialization Process for the Highly Connected Customers

Over the past two decades, social media has developed exponentially and significantly changed the customers' shopping behavior. Social media apps enable customers to interact with retailers and other customers closely, and influences their purchase decision. Hence, it is small wonder that businesses are investing time and resources to promote their products and brand image on social media applications. Instagram is best known for its enriched visual features in both image and footage and suitable for developing strong brand engagement. It is a viable platform for businesses to promote their products to customers. This chapter proposes a framework of product learning process with the use of Instagram. It contributes in effective management of social media marketing and provides marketers with the guidelines in using Instagram creatively to roll out customer engagement strategies.

The New Horizon of Public Relations

Consumers pay attention to other consumers' comments, advice, and interactions during the purchase decision process. Besides having a strong impact on consumers' brand decisions, these user-driven contents have an important effect on brand's online reputation, which is very important area for consumers to follow the information about the brand. Therefore, some of the public relations practices will be forced to change by this new communication eco-system. The increasing power of consumer-driven content could lead to the evolution of traditional public relations and marketing communication. Interaction and participation would be the main concepts in the coming future of public relations. Therefore, this chapter aims to explain the effect of consumers' interactions on brand's social media accounts that would lead to their brand selection decisions.

A Systematic Review of Digital Marketing in South Africa

This chapter investigates the extent of digital marketing usage in South Africa, its perceived impact, and factors that influence its adoption in the South African context. The methodology adopted is the systematic review using the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) framework. The results show that digital platforms currently used include mobile marketing (SMS) and social media platforms. The findings suggest that SMS-based marketing may be appealing to other market segments but not to young adults. The findings further suggest that social media marketing has had a significant influence on the purchase intentions among South African millennials (Generation Y). Moreover, the findings suggest that marketers, in their quest to influence customer purchasing decisions, should consider the knowledge that social media followers have regarding a subject matter (such as a product), and make an effort to educate those followers on the subject (or product) before suggesting a purchase.

Understanding Generational Impact on Online Business

In today's age of technology and exploding internet penetration, customers are rapidly moving toward continuous connectivity across every facet of their lives. Similarly, business is also changing in response to this digital boom. This chapter analyzes digital tools such as virtual communities, social collaboration, and its impact on the multiple generations in managing connected customers for organizations. The technological tools make it simple for customers to be connected at all times, which has become the major challenge for organizations to formulate strategies and be competent in the market. The major types of virtual communities that can be associated with businesses were discussed in detail. This chapter proposes a model for organization to manage their customers effectively. The above-mentioned digital tools are playing vital role in retaining customers and strategies can be formulated to manage the connected customers successfully. Thus, the chapter analyzed the major areas that are important to the organizations in order to succeed in formulating competitive strategy.

Consumer Perception of Purchasing Organic Foods

The aim of this study is to identify the consumer perception of buying the organic foods online in Malaysia. Consumer perception is typically affected by the variables such as purchase intention, price, health consciousness, organic certification and labeling, consumer knowledge, availability, and environmental concern. This study attempts to identify the relationship and linearity between the dependent and independent variables. Survey questionnaire was targeted to 200 online consumers aged between 18 to 65 years old who buy organic foods. The results indicate a significant positive relationship between price, health consciousness, organic certification and labeling, consumer knowledge, availability, and environmental concern and the purchase of organic food. It shows that purchase intention is linearly related to price, health consciousness, availability, and environmental concern.

A Qualitative Insight Into the Personal Factors Impacting Online Impulse Behavior

The purpose of the chapter is to have a deeper understanding of impulse buying and find out the different personal factors that affect the impulse behavior of the consumer in the online context. Phenomenology methodology was used by conducting 12 in-depth interviews with Gen Y as the main respondents. The interview transcripts were analyzed through the method of thematic analysis. This study found that factors such as sudden urge to buy, haptics, risk factors, persuasion, convenience, monotony and boredom, and trust were the dominant personal factors. These factors act as the triggers for consumers to make impulse purchase decisions. This study differentiates the personal and market-oriented factors and broaden the understanding of impulse buying behavior. The findings will enable the marketers to make effective strategies and help the business organizations to increase their revenues.

Taxation of Digital Business in Malaysia

Governments across the world are looking at introducing the “digital tax,” which will be imposed on technology companies and digital business players. Digital giants like Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft are benefiting from the strong growth of digital business. The Malaysian government has announced in the national 2019 budget that a digital tax will be implemented effective January 1, 2020. The rationale of the tax is that both the international and local businesses in the digital sector must pay their fair share of tax. Malaysia has been taxing income from e-commerce, but it has no guidelines on the taxation of income from digital business. Global digital businesses often avoid paying taxes in Malaysia because they have no physical presence in the country. This chapter looks at how Malaysia is reforming its laws and policies to ensure its tax base fully reflects the scale of transactions and profits generated by the digital economy.

Empirical Study of Single Platform E-Payment in South East Asia

Freedom, choice, and simplicity brought about by the e-commerce and technologies are creating the next internet and mobile wave. The single platform e-payment interactions have emerged in the consumer-centric world. The combination of evolving business drivers, globalization, downsizing, changing customer demands, and the evolution of enabling technology is constructing the customer-centric e-payment solutions. In this chapter, the authors discuss and analyze the e-commerce payment systems with the focus on single platform e-payment. This chapter presents an empirical study of e-payment systems and the implications of the findings on e-payment systems in Southeast Asia. Marketing and management personnel of the e-payment organizations will be able to utilize the study information for developing products and services that encourage the usage of single platform e-payment.