Entrepreneurship - Quarter 2 - Unit 1
What Is Customer Relationship Management?
Customer relationship management (CRM) has many different definitions. Some experts define it as using technology to understand customers. Peter Drucker, an acclaimed business author, describes CRM as the most basic function of a business: "...to create and keep a customer." Other definitions are more complex. The Gartner Group, a leading technology research company, defines it as "an enterprise wide business strategy designed to optimize profitability, revenue and customer satisfaction by organizing the enterprise around customer segments, fostering customer-satisfying behaviors and linking processes from customers through suppliers." This definition indicates that a business should create ways to learn about its customers and their preferences. It should be aware of the variety in the choices that its customers have. It should create products that suit different segments in order to maximize revenues and profits. The concept of CRM existed long before today's technological age. However, companies depend on software, databases, and marketing information systems for CRM today. The definitions of CRM may not mention technology, but modern application requires technology to manage large amounts of data.
Primary and Secondary Research
Market research methods are of two types: primary and secondary. Primary Market Research The primary market research method uses primary sources to collect market data. Such sources refer to the respondents of a sample. Businesses use five popular primary market research methods. These methods are personal interviews, focus groups, telephone surveys, email or direct mail surveys, and behavior observation. Let's learn about these methods one by one. Personal interviews: In this method, a business's marketer interviews the selected participants. Such a face-to-face interaction helps a business understand a consumer's needs, problems, preferences, and interests. Interviews can be time-consuming. However, they help a business gain useful insights about consumers' expectations. Such interviews might have generic questions, which the respondents can answer at length. Some interviews might use a questionnaire, which seeks specific answers. Depending on the type of questions, the data these interviews collect could be unstructured (qualitative) or structured (quantitative).
The Market Research Process
The functions and plans that businesses make might vary from industry to industry. However, the market research process remains the same. Let's learn the six main steps that form a part of this process. Defining the problem: The first step in this process is to identify the purpose of the research. A business defines an existing problem or an objective. For example, a business might want to improve one of its existing brands that isn't performing well. Alternatively, a business might plan to launch a new product in the market. The goal of the research in both cases would be to find the latest market trends. With the help of market data, a business can enhance its product or design a new product that caters to the market. sources.
