Since gaining a mass following in the mid‐1990s, companies have poured millions into customer relationship management (CRM) software and solutions. Over the next few years analysts predict that this high spend is set to continue. But why the explosion in investment? Can CRM offer long‐term...

Purpose – This review seeks to consider the use of intellectual capital reporting to strengthen business‐to‐business partnerships. Design/methodology/approach – The piece uses a case study of QST, a quoted Taiwanese multinational in the fastener industry producing C‐class industrial...

Purpose – To examine the use of Twitter by companies for corporate social responsibility (CSR) communications and the management of relationships with stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach – Defines three communication strategies for one-way or two-way communication and assesses their...

Customer retention, we are told, leads to higher profitability, but how many companies have developed strategies to retain their valued customers? Adaptation and bonding are two potentially useful approaches that manufacturers of industrial products can apply to help keep their best long‐term...

When Frontier Bank (not its real name) set up its telephone banking service for businesses in 1995, the aim was to have 30,000 customers on board by 2000. The people at the UK’s Frontier Bank had done their sums. They knew each account would earn around £55.00 in commissions and bank charges...

Although marketers in service industries face similar challenges to those in manufacturing, their approach to tackling these challenges can often be very different. A major US health insurance company has successfully applied conventional market segmentation techniques to better understand its...

Four wheel‐drive trucks splash through swollen rivers, crunch through gravel and roll effortlessly across rutted terrain. Rugged men with designer stubble cut like butter through rock‐hard surfaces using the latest in power tools, while balancing nonchalantly on I‐beams 15 storeys up. We...

We all know hectic mornings. Children to get up, chase round the house and get to school, pets to feed, bills to open, chores to do. All that and get ourselves ready and at work before nine. Now imagine you’d got through all that, finally landed at your desk and found yourself called straight...

Writing nearly 20 years ago, Robert Heller emphasized marketing’s focus on the constant and systematic study of what products a company should be offering, when and at what price. Marketing, said Heller, is the part of the company that should always be asking “What business are we in?” In...