Cultural Factors-2

Today we discuss some of these changes for cultural factors are as follows:
i) Convenience: With more women joining the work-force there is an increasing demand for products that help lighten and relieve the daily household chores, and make life more convenient. This is reflected in the soaring sale of gas stove, mixes, washing machines, roller shades, woven wood shades, blinds, vacuum cleaners, ready to eat/cook packets of dehydrated frozen/precooked foods, fast food outlets etc.

Fifteen years ago when Hindustan Lever first introduced the concept of dehydrated vegetables and marketed Hima peas, the concept did not succeed. The cultural value was of eating fresh and freshly cooked food. But today that cultural value does not have successfully marketed.

ii) Education: People in our society today wish to acquire relevant education and skills that would help improve their career prospects. This is evident from the fact that so many professional, career-oriented educational centers are coming up, and still they cannot seem to meet the demand. As a specific instance count the number of institutions offering courses and training in computers that has opened in your city. The establishment of IGNOU is also a result of this cultural trend.

Reference Group -1

Formal and informal groups:
A formal group has a highly defined structure, specific roles and authority positions and specific goals. Rotaty, Lions, Jaycees are some of the well-known social groups in our society. Labor unions, social clubs and societies are other types of formal groups to which individuals may belong.

In contrast, an informal group is loosely defined and may have no specified roles and goals. Meeting your neighbors over lunch once a month for friendly exchange of news is an instance of an informal group.

Membership and symbolic groups:
A membership groups is one to which a person belongs or qualifies for membership. All workers in a factory qualify for membership to the labor union. A symbolic group is one which an individual aspires to belong to, but is not likely to be received as a member. A head clerk in an office may act as if he belongs to the top management group by adopting their attitudes, values and modes of dress. Both membership and symbolic groups influence consumer behavior but membership groups have a more direct influence. Primary, informal and small groups exert the maximum influence on consumers and are great interest for marketers.

Any of these groups can serve as a reference group for a consumer if it serves as a point of reference or comparison in the formation of the values, attitudes and behavior. As a part of one women social reference group, all member women are eligible to have a free medical insurance or maternity coverage. Different kinds of groups, whether small or large, formal or informal or symbolic qualify as a reference group. The concept of reference group is a very wide one and includes both direct and indirect or group influences.

Indirect reference groups comprise those individuals or groups with whom an individual does not have any direct face-to-face contact. Such as film stars, TV stars, sportsmen, politicians.

CRM

What is CRM?

There are three aspects of CRM(Customer Relationship Management) which can each be implemented in isolation from each other:

• Operational - automation or support of customer processes that include a company’s sales or service representative



• Collaborative - direct communication with customers that does not include a company’s sales or service representative



• Analytical - analysis of customer data for a broad range of purposes

Operational
Operational CRM provides support to "front office" business processes, including sales, marketing and service. Each interaction with a customer is generally added to a customer's contact history, and staff can retrieve information on customers from the database as necessary.
One of the main benefits of this contact history is that customers can interact with different people or different contact channels in a company over time without having to repeat the history of their interaction each time.Many call centers use some kind of CRM software to support their call center agents.

Collaborative
Collaborative CRM covers the direct interaction with customers, for a variety of different purposes, including feedback and issue-reporting. Interaction can be through a variety of channels, such as web pages, email, automated phone or SMS.The objectives of collaborative CRM can be broad, including cost reduction and service improvements.

Analytical
Analytical CRM analyzes customer data for a variety of purposes:

• Design and execution of targeted marketing campaigns to optimise marketing effectiveness


• Design and execution of specific customer campaigns, including customer acquisition, cross-selling, up-selling, retention


• Analysis of customer behavior to aid product and service decision making (e.g. pricing, new product development etc.)


• Management decisions, e.g. financial forecasting and customer profitability analysis
  Prediction of the probability of customer defection.

Analytical CRM generally makes heavy use of predictive analytics.

Key functionalities of Any CRM:--

A typical CRM system is subdivided into three basic sub modules:

1. Marketing
2. Sales
3. Service

More on Functionalities of CRM come next time.

WHY CRM ?

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the way in which businesses acquire, document, and assess their potential customers, and maintain relationships with their clientele. CRM systems aid businesses in scheduling and maintaining their clients in order to build a long lasting and trusting business relationship more efficiently than ever before. Without such a system, any businesses would constantly be rewriting the same information on different documents.

With a CRM system, fields are automatically populated by the information that is repetitive (Name, D.O.B., etc.) such that agents save vast amounts of time and energy on these forms, time and energy that is then reassigned to attaining new cases.

Reference:

1)http://en.wikipedia.org

2)http://www.leadorganizer.net