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Top1. Introduction
Marketers require maintaining proper relationships with customers (Buttle & Maklan, 2019). Companies require keeping their customers satisfied to be able to sustain and excel in the competitive business environment. Companies will be able to satisfy their customers only when they have detailed information about the requirements and the preferences of individual customers (Chen, Riantama, & Chen, 2021). In this digital age, companies maintain databases to collect and store information about customers. They keep track of all the customer touch points to collect customer information and to maximize customer loyalty (Ismail, 2021). It is imperative for companies to build and maintain profitable customer relationships by delivering superior customer value and satisfaction (Weking, Hein, Böhm, & Krcmar, 2018). To achieve this, companies require acquiring, retaining, and growing customers (Xue, Sun, Bandyopadhyay, & Cheng, 2021).
Companies acknowledge that they require building and maintaining relationships with customers to achieve business excellence (Padmavathy, 2017). However, with the changing business environment, significant changes are taking place in the ways companies and customers interact with each other. Previously, companies used to adopt mass marketing assuming that the requirements and the preferences of different customers are the same. At present, companies realize that not all individuals should be targeted and it is not advisable to do mass marketing (Bukhari & Kazi, 2016). Companies may waste their time, energy, money, and resources if they target all customers. Companies are selective in choosing customers based on certain criteria and in targeting them accordingly (Bukhari & Kazi, 2016). They focus on developing deeper, more direct, and lasting relationships with those customers who really matter (Shah, Kumar, Kim, & Choi, 2017). Companies adopt a number of strategies to build relationships with selected customers. Companies realize that building customer relationships will be possible only when customers understand the importance of relationships and participate actively in the process of building relationships (Shah et al., 2017). In the present age, customers themselves generate a lot of information by interacting among themselves, with companies, and by creating different forms of communications. The widespread access and the usage of the internet allow individuals to remain online and to have seamless communications both with other customers and also with companies. Such communications help in the development of customer relationships and such relationships are controlled by the customers themselves (Adjei, Noble, & Noble, 2012). Companies should be aware of customer rights and should respect their privacy and security at all customer touch points. Companies also require developing effective customer preference programs to attract and retain their customers (Berman, 2016). A proper understanding of customers and building customer relationships are important for companies to achieve excellence in the competition.
Information technology plays a major role both for customers and for companies. The recent developments in information technology have made it possible for customers to access any information at one click of the mouse (Sachdeva, 2020). They search for products, interact with other customers, access social media to understand the current and emerging trends, compare different offerings of companies, do comparisons of price and quality, and do online shopping while they are on the go (Kim, 2019). Individuals can access the internet on their smart phones. They can perform all their online activities from their smart phones. Recent developments in e-commerce have made it possible for individuals to compare products, do the purchases online, and track product orders from their smart phones (Lin, 2020). Also, individuals can perform all these activities from the comfort of their homes.