About Morrison’s Case Study
Discuss About The Security Analysis On Marketing Automation.
Relationship marketing is vital component of efficient customer relationship management (CRM), which develops long-term customer engagement. It is the effective strategy of marketing that seeks to enhance the solid relationship with consumers by providing them direct information that organizes to their specific requirements. Relationship marketing is an effective approach that helps to understand the nature of both the buyer and the seller in the process of marketing. The depth concept is to create long-term relationships with consumers. Relationship marketing includes the development of internal operations. On the other hand, customer relationship marketing is considered as the business process in which customer loyalty, client relationship and brand value are created by various marketing strategies and activities (Alrubaiee and Al-Nazer, 2010). CRM is the strategic process that allows businesses to enhance the long-term relationship with existing and new customers while facilitating the streamline performance of corporate. Customer relationship management is a kind of technology that permits businesses whether it is large or small to cater, automate and synchronize every surface of the interaction of the customers (Oly Ndubisi, 2007). It is the system that includes marketing, customer services, sales and support. It is the case study based assignment in which Morrison’s case study has been chosen in which RM and CRM will be defined. The two questions will be answered in a significant manner by applying the relevant theoretical framework. As a marketing manager of Morrison, I will ensure the new loyalty card is entirely integrated as a component of Morrison’s CRM Strategy.
Morrison was founded over 100 years ago, as a stall in Bradford Market. The company had to face many challenges for growing rapidly but it got success in a significant manner. In 2008, the company grew progressively from market store to superstore. It has around 450 stores and now it has become the UK’S fourth largest store. It has more than 131,000 employees who serve over 11 million consumers each week (Morrison, n.d). It has applied major four elements to make the customer satisfied such as information, specialist attention, after sale services and convenience. It has been found that the Morrison has recently launched a ‘Match & More’ card. The main aim of this scheme is to match and evaluate the competitive prices of the German discount chains such as Aldi and Lidi. It is the loyalty card that offers the customer to earn profit point while purchasing products with Morrison (Sogn-Grundvåg, Larsen and Young, 2013).
The role of Relationship marketing in the organization to retain the customers
Relationship marketing has the capability to create effective relationships between organization and customer that facilitates to increase comparative advantages. On contrast, market relationship is liable for building sustainable benefits in an efficient manner because it is hard to handle. It has been analyzed that the service marketing has close connection with the relationship marketing and these adjoin has the ability to develop competitive advantages (Ndubisi, Malhotra, and Wah, 2008). Morrison is a retail food industry in UK and it operates on such marketing principles where the role of customer relationship is vital for profitable business. The basis requirement of relationship marketing is to obtain the competitive advantages which develop the better economic development (Jumaev and Hanaysha, 2012). In term of Morrison Company, it should identify and make a network of relationship to execute better for its customers. There are various theories of relationship marketing that helps business to grow significantly.RM essentially includes the improvement of internal operations because there are many customers that leave the company due to bad quality services are given by the employees. If streamlines of business are able to satisfy all their customers, they will be happier even at the time of facing issues in the products.
Morrison is moving towards attaining the competitive advantages and for this company has started to focus on its approach to recruitment. It offers employment in various areas such as manufacturing, logistics, IT, marketing, and finance and specialists trades. The relationship marketing efforts of this company are approachable as it provides high-quality customer satisfaction to maintain the long-term relationship with the company (Zhao, Huo, Flynn, and Yeung, 2008). The four elements can be considered as the RM efforts of the company.
The company is more focused towards providing the direct information to the customers by the employees of the company regarding packaging, websites, leaflets, and catalogs. Signs and directions to the products assist customers to navigate by the store more effectively (Ahmed, 2008).
The company has trained staffs that provide accurate and effective advice to the customers regarding the food services. There are butchers and fishmongers that provide genuine information about the meat or fish along with that the menus how to cook in an appropriate manner.
Morrison knows that the service of the company is not up to selling the products but it increased if a customer faces any issues or challenges regarding the bought products. It involves packaging, complaints, guarantees, exchanges and refunds. There are friendly staffs at Morrison that deliver an exceptional checkout experience to retain the customers.
Morrison’s RM effort and role of CRM models
The responsibility of the store is not limited up to establish it rather it amplifies to provide the facilities to the customers as well. It is necessary for retaining the customers to have enough space of parking, entrance, ease of access, location, availability of public transport and convenient pay such as card, cash and chip and pin facilities. At Morrison, convenience has the highest priority to retain the customers.
The CRM Model entails the major three parts such as Acquire, Retain and Extend which dependent on growth. It includes informational technology innovation, marketing orientation and shareholder value creation. The model of CRM facilitates Morrison to identify the customers by including the various elements in it such as identity, differentiate, interaction and customize. It is vital for the company to know about the actual customers of the company which can be done with the help of CRM model. The customers should be differentiated as per two bases such as value and need. Morrison would be able to interact with customers in most significant manner to understand the expectations of the customers. This model says that the company should customize the products and services of the company as per their values and needs (Narteh, Agbemabiese, Kodua and Braimah, 2013).
In the context of case study, the commitment trust theory is suitable because it defines that how commitment to consumers has significant role in attaining the growth.
Commitment and trust are two key factors that have the ability to motivate the marketers to work at conserving relationship investment by co-operating the exchange partners and to insight the high-risk action sensible due to the belief that their partners will not take action opportunistically. It has been apparent that both trust and commitment can enhance the productivity of the workers and help to retain the customers significantly (Wu, Weng and Huang, 2012).
Relationship commitment is a vital component which recognizes in a different forms such as buyer-seller relationships, channel relationships, social exchange theory and network theory. These all theories have a crucial role to maintain the long term relationship with customers. It has been found that the commitment of the Morrison is to provide better quality to the customers. Along with that it entails the affective commitment in which company involves in the social interactions among individual presenting partner organization (Järvinen and Taiminen, 2016).
Trust is the major part of making belief on other partners of the company. According to Wu, Chen and Chung, (2010), trust is referred as a willingness to faith on exchange partner in whom one has confidence. Trust cannot be developed forcefully; it creates as per the experience. It is vital for the company to provide the efficient services to the customer regarding products so that their trust can develop towards the company (Liu, Guo and Lee, 2011). Along with that if a company wants to make trust from the employees, it is essential for the company to keep on commitment (Castelfranchi and Falcone, 2010). In the context of Morrison, it has been observed from the case study that the company has followed number of activities to make its customers satisfied.
Commitment-Trust Theory
It has been found that there are major five precursors of relationship commitment and trust that is relationship termination costs, relationship benefits, shared values, communication and opportunistic behaviour. In the context of relationship termination cost, it is an assumption that terminated company will look for another relationship and have switching cost. A good relationship with customers and employee will be given efficient benefits to the company. Shared value has the significant role in the relationship commitment and trust. It has been analyzed with the help of this theory that communication is considered as the precursor of trust (Palmatier, Jarvis, Bechkoff and Kardes, 2009). Opportunistic behaviour is the effective approach that helps to maintain the effective relationship commitment and trust within the organization. This kind of behaviour is liable to bring the more opportunities in the organization that would be helpful to enhance the revenue of the company.
Trust is vital to relationship exchange as it has various dimensions such as disposition of trust, perceived risk, confidence and trust in internet technology. Disposition to trust refers the common willingness to trust other party and helpful to recognize whether the consumer has trust on online products and services or not (Keh and Xie, 2009). Trust has the ability to reduce the risk perceived by the customers. The company invests huge amount in the technology and the other stocks it is vital for the operations to have the trust of another party. Confidence is the major factor that increases the trust of customers (Liang, Chen and Wang, 2008).
Trust and relationship commitment has the potential of reducing the decision making uncertainty and resolve the functional disputes in a significant manner. These factors are helpful to promote relationship marketing success. Cooperation can increase the support from each other and make the group that is ready to consider issues of each other and tries to resolve them with mutual support (Aurier and N’Goala, 2010). Morrison has four elements such as information, specialist attention, after sale services and convenience to satisfy its customers. There is a one team approach that maintains that relationship commitment and trusts each other.
There are some relationship marketing activities that would be helpful for the Morrison to retain customers. These are mentioned below:
Target customers with special offers
The customers of the Morrison can be retained in an appropriate manner if company target customers with special offer (Goo and Huang, 2008). It has been analyzed that Morrison has various competitors that provide same services to the customers with high quality and to retain the customers, the company can provide special offers or packages to the customers on the products of the company.
Loyalty rewards would increase the customer retention in an appropriate manner. Morrison’s sale will be increased by building a personal relationship. Loyalty programs assist the company to stop comparing the prices with other competitors by providing another way to differentiate to store. It has been analyzed that loyal customer more than old ones on the products.
As per this proposal, Morrison can take the contact details of each customer and provide them latest information about the update products and services. It would be beneficiary for the company to keep remember them that they are connected with the company and advantageous offers are waiting for them (Abdullah, Putit and Teo, 2014). This activity of the relationship marketing would be helpful to maintain the long-term relationship with the customers.
Operation CRM is considered as the system that streamlines the process of the business of the organization. The main focus of it is on automation and improvement of consumer-facing and consumer touching business processes. The main component of a CRM system depends on how the marketing, selling and services oriented processes are automated. It does not include only marketing automation but also entails sales automation and service automation. The major aim of this system is to develop leads and alter them into contacts, captivate entire required information and give support throughout the lifecycle of customers (Sweezey, 2014).
On the other hand, marketing automation is fundamentally focused on mechanized marketing processes. In marketing, campaign management includes marketers to utilize customers’ explicit information to decide, analyze and enhance communications that are considered for targeted customers in multilevel as well as multichannel environment (Todor, 2016). It is the process in which campaigns are developed for making better communications with the customers (Heimbach, Kostyra and Hinz, 2015). It has the ability to automate the responses of the customer queries and inform sales team bout new opportunities. Event based marketing is another strategy within marketing automation that is able to define the queries in the resolution form to the customers, for instance, customer has the credit card and he wants to know about the current interest rate, for which he approaches customer care to know about it. it represents that customer is exploring for the favourable interest rate and endeavouring to compare the interest rates and can switch to other competitors to discover precise deals which suits him. In such case, CRM system pops up an event of the offer and trying to provide the best offer to that customer which would be helpful to retain the customer back (Zhang, Zhao and Sun, 2009).
Morrison has launched the loyalty card to escalate supermarket price war with its latest scheme “Match & More”. The main of this card is to match the prices of the discount chains that are famous in Aldi and Lidl, which have risen in popularity in last years. It is a strategy which helps attract customers to buy a lot of products at lower rate. Customers need to fill the form for getting this card in which personal and professional details should be done by them (Guardian, 2018). After completing this process, customer will get this card which can be swiped at the till and the cost of the purchased goods would be compared with Tesco, ASDA, Sainsbury, Aldi and Lidl. The certain points will be added to Match &More card in case of the cheaper price elsewhere.
Marketing automation is an effective system that can facilitate Morrison to retain customers by providing efficient quality to the customers (Williams and Chinn, 2010). The best examples of marketing automation software are Eloqua, Hubspot and Pardot. There are some steps mentioned below to apply marketing automation to Morrison’s so that the impact of loyalty card of it can be improved.
Marketing automation facilitates Morrison to track and reach advocates to intensify commitment and underpin loyalties (Luke, 2013). The loyalty card program of the company can be improved if the company starts to invite vocal loyalists to adjoin rewards of loyalty program to foster their appreciation. It will simultaneously encourage customers to repeat purchasing for getting points in the card. Marketing automation is considered as the easy concept to setup regular touch points to measure the loyalty of the customers. Along with that referrals are the largest source of potential consumers for a number of businesses (Rahman and Masoom, 2015). Marketing automation in the operation of Morrison can determine which customers are probably advocating for the company which will improve the position of the company.
Marketing automation permits the company to recognize the right content that must be brought to each consumer at the correct time. This data can be utilized by the company to develop the profiles of the customer. It would be the great opportunity for the company to define the executed loyalty program to the customers. There are many customers linked to the company and personalization the customer experience assists the organization to improve the impact of loyalty card.
Marketing automation is the easiest way to keep the finger on the rhythm of the loyalty of the customers. Segment consumers should be divided into nurture streams after that it is vital for the company to put questions to the customers about their current company relationship. The loyalty card of the company is provided benefits to the customers by comparing the prices its competitors. After getting feedback about the loyalty card, the company would be able to improve and minimize unfavorable experiences.
Marketing automation has the efficient power to lead scoring after buying to decide which consumers are linking with the products and services of the company and who might be ready for up-sell or cross-sell. Instead of showing impersonal content such as a newsletter, company should target them with related to their engagement behaviours and history. Marketing automation system facilitates to give the customer information which is stored earlier to support and growth the customer relationship in the context of this loyalty card of Morrison. Campaigns at Morrison can develop to communicate customers individually and inform them about the “Match & More” card in which they can get points to use it in next purchasing.
Marketing automation analytics will inform the after sale campaigns which are extrapolative of both life-long encouragement and frequent revenues. In such concept, the marketing automation improves on the impact of a loyalty card. Marketing automation is the simply best way to remain current and engaged with the customers wherever they go because it includes social media, email, web marketing.
Conclusion
In the limelight of above discussion, it can be concluded that relationship marketing and customer relationship marketing have the significant role in the organization as they facilitate to improve the growth of the company. The report has been made on Morrison’s case study in which model and theory discussed for enhancing the better understanding of the concept of the study. The good relationship commitment can enhance the repeated selling of the company and increase the loyalty. The discussion has been made on operation CRM and Marketing Automation. Marketing automation has the ability to retain the customers in a significant manner, the involvement of this system at Morrison for improving the impact on Match & More loyalty card has been described by considering the various points.
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