Contemporary marketing practice: a research agenda and preliminary findings

International audienc

Customer relationship management: the case of a European bank

Purpose – To convert the principle of customer relationship management (CRM) into practical guidelines for best practice in the implementation of a CRM programme in the real world. Design/methodology/approach – The findings of an extensive review of the literature provide the foundations for a general CRM paradigm, which is applied to a case study of a large European bank's specification, development and implementation of CRM over a five-year period. Data for the case study were collected in 1-2?h long depth interviews with executives of the bank and a consultancy firm collaborating in the design of the programme, and were analysed by a formal coding procedure. Findings – The design and implementation phases of CRM programme development are described in detail, the latter organised into 18 initiatives in five categories: testing, founding, building doing and ongoing. Research limitations/implications – Because of the stage of development of the bank's programme at the time of writing, it was not possible to report meaningfully on an obvious sixth phase: evaluation. The paper considers shortcomings of CRM implementation and proposes avenues for further research. Practical implications – A shortage of practically grounded templates for the design and implementation of CRM programmes has left marketing managers struggling to apply the widely advocated principle to their own situations. By adding empirical evidence to prescriptions for best practice, this paper begins the process of bridging that gap between theory and practice. Originality/value – The unique case study reported here will therefore be of definite interest and potential value to managers responsible for developing market intelligence into formal plans for a CRM strategy, beyond the specific context of financial services

Bla-bla-bla: video chat service on the Internet - a market feasibility study

The Internet is changing the way that companies carry out their business and, in fact, constitutes an entirely new application domain, which makes product innovation possible. Moreover, it is a new medium for reaching consumers, which is a central preoccupation to organisations in the current business market. Here interest lies in video chatting on the Internet. This is a type of service that adds video support to chatting using a Web cam and is gradually attracting more Internet users. The paper consists of a market feasibility study evaluating the potential commercialisation of a software program that enables the “cutting away” of the chatters from the original background filmed by the Web cam, and later re-integrates them into a new background. The software program could, therefore, be interesting for advertising companies

Online support for commerce processes: the Dutch food retailing sector

Advances in information technology have changed not only traditional goods and services, but also business-to-consumer relationships in terms of interactivity. For example, by facilitating access to company data, offering additional services, and/or providing self-service options through the World Wide Web, consumer requests can be recorded, handled faster, and dealt with more individually in a cost-effective manner. This article examines the extent to which companies in the Dutch food retailing sector are using the World Wide Web and its associated technologies to conduct their business. Employing the electronic commerce architecture suggested by Basu and Muylle (1999, 2002), Muylle and Basu (2003), we analyse the commercial Web sites of Dutch food retail companies (numbering 34 in all) to determine which commerce processes are being supported online in this sector. The results of the research provide insights to academics on the adoption of electronic commerce in a particular industry sector and to food retail managers on their competitors' usage of the World Wide Web. Our findings show that, generally, support for electronic commerce processes and sub-processes is merely 16 per cent of the considered sample. Most retailers use the Internet only as a medium of communications, although others have set up commercial Web sites that provide higher customer support. Several sub-processes appear to be supported such as core logistics, online search of products, and price information display and determination. With the exception of search, there is practically no online customisation possible in the processes. A high correlation was observed between search, valuation, and authentication on the one hand and support for online payment on the other hand. Lastly, there is no significant difference between regional/national retailers or firm size, especially for the search and valuation processes, which share close to identical extent of support

Absorbing customer knowledge: how customer involvement enables service design success

Customers are a knowledge resource outside of the firm that can be utilized for new service success by involving them in the design process. However, existing research on the impact of customer involvement (CI) is inconclusive. Knowledge about customers’ needs and on how best to serve these needs (articulated in the service concept) is best obtained from customers themselves. However, codesign runs the risk of losing control of the service concept. This research argues that of the processes of external knowledge, acquisition (via CI), customer knowledge assimilation, and concept transformation form a capability that enables the firm to exploit customer knowledge in the form of a successful new service. Data from a survey of 126 new service projects show that the impact of CI on new service success is fully mediated by customer knowledge assimilation (the deep understanding of customers’ latent needs) and concept transformation (the modification of the service concept due to customer insights). However, its impact is more nuanced. CI exhibits an “∩”-shaped relationship with transformation, indicating there is a limit to the beneficial effect of CI. Its relationship with assimilation is “U” shaped, suggesting a problem with cognitive inertia where initial learnings are ignored. Customer knowledge assimilation directly impacts success, while concept transformation only helps success in the presence of resource slack. An evolving new service design is only beneficial if the firm has the flexibility to adapt to change

Customer Interaction and Innovation in Hybrid Offerings:Investigating Moderation and Mediation Effects for Goods and Services Innovation

Hybrid offerings are bundles of goods and services offerings provided by the same firm. Bundling value offerings affects how firms innovate, interact with customers, and customize their goods and services. However, it remains unclear how customer interaction might drive the innovation performance of various bundled components. Therefore, this study investigates the effects of customer interactions and service customization on both goods and services innovations in a hybrid offering context, using a unique data set of 146 information technology and manufacturing firms. Customer interaction appears beneficial to both goods and services innovation in a hybrid offerings context, but service customization has different direct effects on goods versus services innovation. As a potential mediator, customer knowledge mobilization resources exert different effects on the goods and services elements of hybrid offerings. Furthermore, for high-interaction customers, medium levels of technical modularity lead to most favorable innovation outcomes for services innovation. The results thus suggest that providers of hybrid offerings should foster customer interactions, to drive the innovation performance of the good and service components, while still making sure to implement service customization strategies. These findings have notable implications for service innovation research

ECMO for COVID-19 patients in Europe and Israel

Since March 15th, 2020, 177 centres from Europe and Israel have joined the study, routinely reporting on the ECMO support they provide to COVID-19 patients. The mean annual number of cases treated with ECMO in the participating centres before the pandemic (2019) was 55. The number of COVID-19 patients has increased rapidly each week reaching 1531 treated patients as of September 14th. The greatest number of cases has been reported from France (n = 385), UK (n = 193), Germany (n = 176), Spain (n = 166), and Italy (n = 136) .The mean age of treated patients was 52.6 years (range 16–80), 79% were male. The ECMO configuration used was VV in 91% of cases, VA in 5% and other in 4%. The mean PaO2 before ECMO implantation was 65 mmHg. The mean duration of ECMO support thus far has been 18 days and the mean ICU length of stay of these patients was 33 days. As of the 14th September, overall 841 patients have been weaned from ECMO support, 601 died during ECMO support, 71 died after withdrawal of ECMO, 79 are still receiving ECMO support and for 10 patients status n.a. . Our preliminary data suggest that patients placed on ECMO with severe refractory respiratory or cardiac failure secondary to COVID-19 have a reasonable (55%) chance of survival. Further extensive data analysis is expected to provide invaluable information on the demographics, severity of illness, indications and different ECMO management strategies in these patients

Misreading of consumer dissatisfaction in online product reviews: Writing style as a cause for bias

International audienceThis study improves our understanding of managers’ misreading of negative online reviews. Our findings are derived from a sample of 1014 written online reviews and 507 experienced marketing managers. By building on the judgment-bias literature and psychometric language-style analysis, we find several key results that can ultimately contribute to more effective information management for marketing decisions. Managers tend to better interpret negative reviews when consumers use more cognitive language markers in the form of insight and discrepancy words and more third-person pronouns (i.e., undefined social referents) in their reviews. The inverse relationship exists for the use of causality words and future tenses (i.e., behavioral intentions), as managers tend to underestimate the gravity of the situation under these conditions. Expressions of positive and negative emotions in reviews do not significantly affect managers’ readings of negative reviews. Furthermore, more experienced managers and female managers are better at identifying negative reviews, and longer consumer reviews make it more difficult for managers to correctly identify negative reviews