From Mass Distribution to Customer-Centric Awareness Tools

The demand for meat grew in Western Europe after World War II: meat became a mass-product from the 70s of the last century onwards. However, while in the consumer product section “brands” were established, in the agricultural sector food was an anonymous product. Unfortunately, mass-production and discount-prices resulted in many food scandals starting in the 80s. In the beef-sector, especially the British Cow Decease (BSE) created a mistrust of meat. To re-gain “trust” meat-buyers of six German retail-chains started in 1995, together with the Cologne-based EHI Retail Institute, a tracking and tracing system—known later as the EHI-Meat-Label. This private initiative has been rolled out since 1997 by the EU via EU-regulations. Within the last five years, most stakeholders had been built up in the total supply chain in Western Europe with tracking/tracing systems from farm to fork, quite often with the help of IT. The evolution at the beginning of this decade is caused by mobile technology and social media, i.e. apps on smart phones that enable the communication “from fork to farm.” The challenge is a U-turn of info-streams strongly emphasizing consumer awareness. Part one of this chapter discloses what had happened at the backstage of the EHI-Meat Workshop between 1994 and 2001 to create a technical tool for tracing, to intertwine all stakeholders in the market, and to establish politics, both nationally and internationally. This work represents a case study of applied sciences to explain chronologically what happened within that time-period. Part two is an analysis of the marketing-tools and how the mix of the activities of EHI was used so that this success-story could unfold. Part three is a look at how to cope with the new challenge of smart phones and apps by integrating the individual pioneers into an EU-roof of Future Internet and Technologies. The chapter has been developed through an ethnographic observation platform by the author’s practical experience and observation.

Toward a Customer-Centric Strategy Implementation Model

This chapter presents a model of customer-centric strategy implementation based on best practices developed by Vetropack, one of the leading companies in the European glass packaging industry. The company developed its own mix of customer-centric marketing strategies, which are implemented on various organizational levels and include processes such as quality assurance, key account management, customer care, business partnering, and a marketing information system. Although the model developed and case presented are based on some industry specific features, the overall approach could be used as a benchmark for different industries and companies, especially those active in business-to-business markets. As an outcome, combining the theoretical framework and best practice findings, we propose a new approach to customer-centric strategy, which unifies internal and external organizational learning.

Consumer-Brand Relationship

The relationship between a brand and consumers is known to produce positive outcomes for both partners. Consumers develop relationships with diverse brands regarding brands as partners. Brands are humanized in the minds of consumers and therefore provide symbolic meanings and social and cultural value, which is beyond the utilitarian benefits. Following this paradigm, the purpose of this chapter is to show an overview of the research from customer relationship management to consumer-brand relationship and propose a theoretical model of consumer-brand relationship process. In this vein, the chapter begins with the conceptualization of customer relationship management. Then, the foundation, an overview of main theories, and the seminal models of consumer-brand relationship are shown. Finally, a model of consumer-brand relationship process is proposed and insights for further research are provided.

Social Software Platforms as Motor of Relationship Marketing in Services

The traditional role of German airports as providers of infrastructure serving macro-economic purposes gives way to a more market-oriented understanding. Airports with overlapping catchment areas increasingly compete for airlines and passengers. Despite an evolving awareness of the need for customer-orientation, airports lack genuine passenger insights, as airlines and tour operators own the passenger relationship. The emergence of public Social Software Platforms (SSP), such as the online social network Facebook or the micro-blogging service Twitter, provides airports with the opportunity to take a genuine customer-centric approach to airport service quality. The chapter provides an overview of the convergence of social and technological networks. Touching on the ‘need-satisfier’ approach of economist Max-Neef and contributions of self-determination theory, the motivational pull of SSP is analyzed, and success factors for harnessing their Relationship Marketing potential are deduced. Finally, the chapter summarizes opportunities and challenges for airport organizations when engaging with passengers on SSP.

Bank-SME Relationships

The chapter synthesizes extant interdisciplinary literature, by putting together a combination of relationship management theories as well as banking, economics, and finance theories, and blends this with findings from an ethnographic research platform to discuss the critical variables in the development of Bank-SME relationships. In addition, the chapter considers the effect of the recent economic crisis on the Bank-SME relationship. It can be seen that few banks looked inside their relationship with their SME customers as a means of redressing the crisis’ effect and this has detrimental effects on their long-term performance. As a consequence, the chapter proposes recommendations so as to reduce the crisis negative impact. Moreover, it highlights that the new developments in the technological environment, i.e. social media, can be used to strengthen the Bank-SME relationship’s success and is especially pertinent in such times of financial duress as it can enhance the communication mode of the dyad.

How Customer Knowledge Management is Becoming a Dominant Industry Trait

This chapter provides a detailed review of the literature to understand the origin and nature of CKM, its major theoretical tenets, and well-known CKM models to underscore what is needed if an organization considers working on CKM. The synthesis of key CKM models has brought out valuable insights to assist and further any empirical study in this field. This chapter may serve as a comprehensive reference material for future researchers.

Brand-Led Transformation

Customer centric strategies are often conceived and developed within marketing departments of organizations. The marketing team, leveraging a keen understanding of the latest theories on effective marketing management and consumer behaviour, often does an outstanding job initiating new customer centric thrusts within organizations. However, to be truly successful, these strategies must flow from and build upon the company brand and be operationalized across the entire enterprise. Brand-led customer centricity must penetrate all aspects of the firm from corporate leadership to staff, and across all customer offers, business plans, projects, processes, and programs of the organization. Only in this way can organizations transform the way the consumer experiences their brand. While most organizations subscribe to the need for customer centricity, the number of companies that consistently and effectively implement such strategies are few. Organizations typically struggle with translating brand-led customer centric strategies into tangible and specific initiatives. This chapter melds a practitioner’s view with current theory and offers pragmatic and proven approaches to translating these strategies into initiatives that drive direct customer and company benefits with successful enterprise-wide outcomes that impact the full business.

Customer-Centric Strategies in Place Marketing

This chapter reports the results of a survey articulated into two complementary studies, performed in four districts located in Italy. These studies assess the opportunity to design destination branding strategies on the basis of customers’ perceptions, providing a framework to quantitatively determine the identity of a local district and its perceived image. The chapter proposes that the perceived image of a place can be examined through the concept of perceived personality as adapted to a place, labeled as “destination personality,” and analyzed using the Big Five Model (Digman, 1990). The main contribution of the research consists in presenting a methodology for the evaluation of the consistency between the identity, the image, and the perceived personality of a district. Results demonstrate the strong validity of the destination personality construct as a conceptual tool to analyze the perceived images of local districts, and show how findings may be particularly useful for Destination Management Organizations (DMOs) to design effective marketing strategies capable of attracting and retaining resources.

Virtual Communities in Marketing Processes

The chapter provides a marketing framework to analyse the uses of virtual communities on marketing processes. The framework involves: actors (companies and companies), goals, marketing strategies, and influence process. Each of these elements is described in detail. Moreover, in the chapter the framework is applied to EBay in order to understand how the functionalities provided by this virtual community allow companies and consumers to achieve their marketing goals.

Relationship Quality in Services

In today’s highly competitive environment, the development of successful relationships with customers is considered a significant competitive advantage. Thus, the maintenance and enhancement of Relationship Quality (RQ) becomes critical for service providers. This chapter aims to analyse the concept of RQ and its antecedents and consequences in the area of services, account for its development and evolution through the last 2 decades, identify the developmental trends in the literature, and offer directions for future research. The field has become more specialised with age and the only area of convergence is the use of trust, satisfaction, and commitment as dimensions of RQ. However, lately RQ is conceptualised as a single dimension concept based on buyer’s perception. Researchers use antecedents that are buyer-related, seller-related, or relationship-related, and the most important consequence investigated is customer loyalty. Lately, RQ research emphasises the importance of the environment effect (technology, economy, culture, etc.), is focusing on multi-industry or multi-country studies, and investigates the relationship of RQ with other major concepts such as service quality.