AN IN DEPTH REVIEW OF TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES FOR CUSTOMER VALUE MANAGEMENT

ABSTRACT

Over time, it has become obvious that satisfying customers’ needs must be a key element in strategy formulation, for differentiation and competitive advantage to be achieved, and sustained.  Any customer-related initiative or interaction must differentiate customers to give insight into the value-creating potential of those customers. Nevertheless, at the strategy level, many companies remain focused on pushing out products rather than drawing in customers. If a company’s strategic focus is to sell as many products as possible, customers will be overwhelmed by irrelevant marketing and sales offers, and their satisfaction will be lowered. This study objective is to find out the value of the customer to the company, and to analyze the various tools that a company can used to measure and manage the customers. The objective of this study range from evaluating the value of the customer toward higher profitability, how a company can migrate unprofitable customers and what motivate customers to strengthen their relationships with the company. To be able to test our findings four hypotheses will be tested. The second part of the study talks about related literature on customer value management and various measurement tools. Data collection for this thesis has been through a survey questionnaire from companies in different areas of production ranging from manufacturing to service delivery. The data was analyzed using chi square test. The findings of the research shows that finance, customer relationship management and improve customer loyalty by companies will lead to profitability of the company. It was also agreed that corporate reputation and how the customer view the organization contribute in creating customer satisfaction. Finally it should be noted that not all customers can be profitable today and some provide learning opportunities, whilst others are strategically important or may be unprofitable today but are tomorrows ‘cash cows’. Customer profitability measurement informs many important business decisions and is becoming a ‘must-have’ inside many organizations.