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Top1. Introduction
Marketers collect information about customers to understand their needs, wants, and preferences, and to gain customer insights (Carmen & Marius, 2016). The information is collected through competitive marketing intelligence which is stored in internal databases maintained by companies. However, the stored information requires additional analysis. Managers may need help while applying the information to gain customer and market insights that will improve their marketing decisions (Mandal, 2018). Marketing managers may use advanced marketing analytics to learn more about the relationships within the sets of data. They may apply analytical models to improve the quality of analysis. Such analysis may help marketers make better decisions and may help in developing better customer relationships (Al-Weshah, 2017).
Marketing information needs to be processed and analyzed carefully. Once the analysis is over, it must be made available to the right decision-makers at the right time (Khan, Ehsan, Mirza, & Sarwar, 2012). The study discusses the important issue of analysis of marketing information without which it is impossible to generate customer insights. Customer relationship management (CRM) plays a major role in the analysis of marketing information. CRM has a narrower meaning with respect to management of data. CRM refers to capturing and using data from all sources to manage customer interactions, to engage customers, and to build customer relationships (Chalmeta, 2006). However, CRM also has a broader implication with respect to formulation of marketing strategies and development of fruitful and long-term relationships with customers.
It is important to understand the roles of marketing information, marketing analytics, and marketing intelligence in the implementation of customer relationship management. However, there are few studies which deal with the connections and the inter-connections among marketing information, marketing analytics, marketing intelligence, and their roles in customer relationship management. The study aims to address this research gap.
The objective of the study is to focus on the roles of CRM in understanding customers and their requirements with the help of analysis of relevant marketing information and generation of marketing intelligence. The study focuses on the roles of marketing analytics, big data, and marketing intelligence in the generation of marketing and customer insights. The study also reiterates that implementation of CRM is only a step forward to understand customers better. However, CRM has its own drawbacks and will not solve all issues related to customers.
The methodology adopted is the qualitative and the conceptual analysis of the literature on marketing information, marketing analytics, marketing intelligence, and customer relationship management. So, these may be considered as the variables for the study. Primary data was not collected and empirical analysis was not done.