Increasing Customer Loyalty via Mobile Customer Relationship Management

Diploma Thesis from the year 2002 in the subject Business economics - Marketing, Corporate Communication, CRM, Market Research, grade: 1, Wiesbaden University of Applied Sciences, language: English, abstract: In times of computerization and mass consumption, one vital element has long been left behind. So far the customer rather tended to be treated as a trash dump for all those mailings that completely missed his interest, while he actually longed for companies to guess his needs, requirements and wishes and send him personalized offers especially tailored to those. With the beginning of the new century, technological advances and innovations in the field of data mining and data management have already made this dream come true for many customers. This new way of building relationships is called Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and comprises all aspects of interaction a company has with its customers. It s a business strategy that aims to understand, anticipate and manage the need s of a company s current and potential customers. 1 Along with the fast proliferation of mobile devices, consumer s behavior has changed considerably. Customers do no longer constraint their activities to one communication channel, but take advantage of new technological opportunities such as mobile commerce. In this fast-moving technological environment creating and intensifying customer loyalty has become indispensable for the business world. This change in consumers behavior gave way to the development of mobile CRM solutions enabling companies to serve every customer individually at any time and anywhere and create services and offers specifically corresponding to their needs. With every mobile phone user being able to send and receive short messages, wireless marketing offers great potential in the field of Customer Relationship Management. Nevertheless, if the Short Message Service (SMS) is applied to send offers and advertisements it should be an end-to-end service2. Customers are to be given the opportunity to directly respond to an offer and finish the transaction over their phone. This requires secure mobile payment solutions. Just recently, the German subsidiary of the international Mobile Market Association has been founded in Munich while Hewlett Packard, Lucent, Oracle, Siemens and Sun Microssystems have formed a consortium to standardize mobile payment an foster mobile business.3