2546
Apple (Smartphone)
Aim: This Report seeks to understand to what degree organisations have implemented CRM by analysing the organisations’ use of CRM for customer acquisition, retention and development and the organisations’ use of technology (websites, social media, email) to enhance their CRM and potentially customer experiences with the organisation. The objective of the Report is to ascertain the level of implementation of CRM for the organisations, the consistency of CRM implementation and the potential implications for the organisations CRM related strategy and performance.
General Approach:
Students will undertake research about organisations and their implementation of CRM. Data may be obtained from surveys, observations, physical evidence such as websites, apps, brochures etc. and through other sources. From this analysis each student is expected to submit a written report outlining the research findings and conclusions.
Report Tasks:
Students are to select an appropriate organisation from the potential sectors/organisations listed below and investigate aspects of the overall Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategy of the organisation. This investigation should include relevant components of CRM including aspects of consumer behaviour, segmentation, tactics for acquisition, retention and development, application of technologies, communications and other relevant organisational issues regarding structure or management (where applicable).
The report should address the following major areas in detail, in addition to any other
areas the student considers relevant to the organisation and its CRM. The following questions serve as a guide and may not be relevant to all organisations. However, as far as possible students should seek to address these questions in a suitable narrative (don’t just answer each question one by one but weave the answers into a story with evidence for support). Students should seek to analyse rather than just describe the evidence they gather.
Part 1:
The first student submission should include information on selected organisation as indicated below. Students do not have to answer all the questions below as they are a guide only. Students should use their judgment as to the importance of each question in understanding the relevant topic category. Other information can be included provided the student is able to demonstrate the relevance of the information to the topic category. Where external information is provided students must ensure these sources are suitably referenced.
Situation Analysis : – What is the general product/service being offered by the organisation? What are the characteristics (size, competitors, activity etc) of the market in which the organisation is operating? What is the history of the organisation in the market? What are the relevant legal, political and economic and contextual factors that may be relevant?
Customer/Product Profile : What are the sources of benefits/value for customers in general for the products/services being offered by the organisation? Are the sources of value the same for all customers? Does the organisation appear to segment its customer base and if so what are the segments the organisation targets? What is the organisational Customer Value Proposition (CVP)? What are the segment CVP’s?
Customer Strategies : How satisfied do customers appear to be with the organisation and the organisations products/services? How would you characterise the loyalty of the organisation’s customers and/or customer segments? What appear to be the overall strategies concerning customer acquisition, retention and development? What tactics are employed by the organisation for acquisition, retention and development? Do these tactics employed by the organisation differ by customer segment or extent of customer relationship? Are the tactics consistent with the customer analysis in (1) and the CRM strategy in (2)? How do these tactics compare to the tactics being used by competitors?
Report Submissions:
General details regarding the submissions of the Report are indicated below: Each student will an individually prepared Report for each of the two submissions . Each submission should have the following form:
Executive Summary
The ES should be a one page or less summary of the Report, including your most important findings, recommendations and conclusions for management of the organisation for that particular submission.
Background/Introduction
A brief description of the research, an overview of the research objectives and a general overview of the organisation studied with accompanying context (which sector, how big, what % market etc) ( Common to both submissions )
Analysis
This section should contain your analysis which seeks to answer the 3 main areas indicated above in each submission. It would be recommended to separate the analysis section into the 3 main areas above as sub-headings. However, you should not just answer the questions in the each of the 3 sections but build a narrative which links in a coherent and logical structure all of the relevant issues.
The analysis should contain evidence to support your conclusions regarding the 3 areas with an overall conclusion for each of the areas. If there is evidence which is required to establish the conclusions you are making in this section then it should be included in the analysis section (provided it is of appropriate size). If the evidence is useful but not directly relevant, then put it in the appendix with a suitable appendix reference in the analysis section.
Recommendations/Conclusions
In this section you should summarise and integrate the findings of the previous analysis section into a coherent set of conclusions regarding the organisation’s CRM strategy. You should give the report a managerial perspective by assuming the work had been commissioned by the organisation to improve the overall CRM strategy and CRM performance of the organisation. However, the conclusions and recommendations should be related directly to the findings of your analysis and not based on ideas and concepts not explored in this report.
Bibliography
You must include all reference sources including websites and other relevant sources. All referencing must conform to the Journal of Marketing reference standards, details of which are provided within this unit outline.
Appendices
Relevant evidence which is required to help explain analysis and conclusions
Each Report submission must be prepared as a formal business report, written from the perspective of your group being consultants to the organization. It will be likely that you will split each of the 3 areas among the group members. The names of all group members should appear on the cover page as well as the name of the student who has authored the individual report submission.
The information gathered by the group should be available to be used by each group member, but each student’s Report must be written individually. You should be careful to avoid plagiarism as this will be heavily penalized.
The Report should be presented with consistent fonts, line and page spacing. Presentation of the report will be a relevant component in assessment and marking of the report.
Each Report submission should be no longer than 10 x 1½ spaced 12 point typed pages excluding appendices, cover page and references.
