Challenges and Opportunities with IT-Enabled and Assisted Customerships

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate challenges and opportunities related to IT-enabled and assisted customerships. The chapter begins by defining the term digitization and illustrates what can be digitized and to what extent. Next we illustrate how IT (and digitization) can assist in various types of interactions or create new types of interactions. Digitization and interactions form a fulcrum for the rest of the chapter, which deals with IT-assisted and -enabled marketing activities and customerships. We will make a clear distinction between classical relationship marketing and IT-enabled techno-relationship marketing. Finally we focus on a single marketing activity, namely customer service.