Evolution of customer focus: from artisans and family businesses to CRM-systems

Abstract

The process of evolution of such phenomenon as customer focus and its impact on the formation of trade relations has been considered. In order to study the phenomenon as a whole and the factors that influenced the changes in particular, a retrospective analysis from the era of craftsmanship to the present day has been made. Special attention has been paid to industrial revolutions as stimulators of change, and to the peculiar boundaries of the periods of using different approaches to trade and business interaction. The article also touches on the topic of direct marketing, as a prototype of today’s business relations. In addition to the history of marketing and the impact of industrial revolutions on the development of the relationship between seller and buyer, the paper considered and analysed such a phenomenon as the automation of production in order to create a fullfledged picture, reflecting the reasons for the creation, the essence and relevance of CRM-systems in the modern world. CRM-systems in this article have been considered as one of the tools of customer focus methodology, which facilitates the interaction between participants in business relationships, as well as serving as a centralized directory of information about the customers. The initial and, consequently, the ultimate goal of the study was to create an interconnected scheme for the formation of a modern system of customer focus and definition of the role of CRM-systems in the whole process.