Customer Acquisition Research Articles

ANALISIS PENGUKURAN KINERJA KOPERASI SYARIAH BERDASARKAN BALANCED SCORECARD (STUDI PADA KOPERASI SYARIAH BAITURRAHMAN BANDA ACEH)

This study aims to determine the performance of Baiturrahman Sharia Cooperative based on the balanced scorecard method. This research is descriptive with the method of collecting data documentation, interviews, and questionnaires. The analysis used is the Balanced Scorecard analysis. The respondents in this study were 93 cooperative members and 14 cooperative employees. Based on the results of the study using the balanced scorecard, the financial perspective obtained values in each ratio, namely the current ratio of 25, Total Debt to Total Asset Ratio of 0, and Return On Asset of 25 which showed poor performance in the cooperative financial perspective. In the customer perspective, customer retention has increased by 24%, the level of customer acquisition has increased by 10%, as well as the level of customer satisfaction which has a score of 4.0 which shows good customer performance. In the perspective of internal business processes, the innovation process gets a score of 4.6, the operating process gets a score of 4.7, and good after-sales service shows the performance of a good internal business process perspective. In the perspective of learning and growth, employee productivity increases, the results of employee retention indicate that the company can hold employees accountable, and employee satisfaction which scores 4.6 which shows performance in the perspective of good cooperative learning and growth. Overall, the four perspectives show good categories except in a financial perspective.

Influence of eWOM information on consumers’ behavioral intentions in mobile social networks

PurposeToday, consumers play an active role in creating, generating and distributing the electronic word of mouth (eWOM) independent of marketers. Customer acquisition through referrals and word of mouth (WOM) has thus become an important goal for firms. In addition, mobile social networks have created valuable opportunities for eWOM. People are now able to discuss products and services of brands with their friends and acquaintances. The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of eWOM information on consumers’ behavioral intentions in mobile social networks.Design/methodology/approachThis study employed the information adoption model (IAM), theory of reasoned action and social exchange theory to investigate the influence of eWOM information on consumers’ behavioral intentions in mobile social networks. The study used 394 respondents to evaluate the proposed model using SmartPLS software.FindingsResults show that the quality and credibility of eWOM information has a positive direct effect on perceived information usefulness. Attitude toward eWOM information mediates the influence of perceived information usefulness on information adoption. Also, attitude toward eWOM information has a significant positive influence on behavioral intentions, such as purchase intention and forwarding of eWOM information. However, information adoption does not have any significant relationship with the forwarding of eWOM information.Research limitations/implicationsThis study seeks to address the dearth of research in the field of mobile social networks, especially regarding eWOM information. The study proposes a new model and empirically validates the hypothesized relationships. This research can serve as a stepping-stone for future research in this field.Practical implicationsThis research is one of the first studies focusing on the influence of eWOM information, especially in mobile social networks. The research offers comprehensive and empirically validated factors pertaining to eWOM information in mobile social networks. The results of this study may be useful also for practitioners and managers of online companies.Originality/valueA new eWOM IAM in mobile social networks is proposed based on information characteristics and consumer behavior. The model is validated afterward.

Measuring the Return on Investing in Customer Acquisition and Retention

We examine customer acquisition under budget constraints. Marketers often compare customer lifetime value (CLV) with acquisition spending to project returns but such simple marketing return on investment (SMROI) metrics are biased wherever retention spending occurs. Omitting retention understates marketing investments, overstating SMROI. We propose MROI, which equals CLV minus acquisition costs divided by the sum of acquisition and discounted retention spend. Using analytic models we show that managers using SMROI will acquire customers with relatively high retention costs over more profitable investments. We map the competitive implications, specifically increased competitive intensity giving lower returns and market profits using SMROI. We note how retention spend can be planned for at acquisition, that MROI is more robust than SMROI to error in projecting retention rates and marketing effectiveness, and that SMROI overstates the value of customers providing access to further cash flows, e.g., referrals and cross-sales. Critically, when using SMROI for acquisition a firm may waste cash acquiring customers, then immediately refuse to retain them. MROI, therefore, also reduces the challenges related to firing customers.

In pursuit of an effective B2B digital marketing strategy in an emerging market

In business markets, firms operating in developing economies deal with burgeoning use of the internet, new electronic purchase methods, and a wide range of social media and online sales platforms. However, marketers are unclear about the pattern of influence of firm-initiated (i.e., paid media, owned media, and digital inbound marketing) and market-initiated (i.e., earned social media and organic search) digital communications on B2B sales and customer acquisition. We develop and test a model of digital echoverse in an emerging market B2B context, using vector autoregressive modeling to analyze a unique 132-week dataset from a Brazilian hub firm operating in the marketplace. We find empirical evidence supporting our conceptual framework in emerging markets. Underscoring the importance of a market development approach for emerging markets, the findings show that owned media and digital inbound marketing play a bigger role in influencing customer acquisition. Impressions generated through earned social media complement owned media, but not paid media. These insights highlight the notion that while sources of digital echoverse may remain the same across countries, its components exert a particular pattern of influence in an emerging market context. This is expected to encourage managers to rethink their digital strategies for B2B customer acquisition and sales enhancement while operating in emerging markets.

Employee-level open innovation in emerging markets: linking internal, external, and managerial resources

Leveraging external sources of knowledge has become a vital element of innovation strategy, especially in emerging markets, where many firms lack the sophisticated knowledge required to innovate. However, extant research in this domain puts little emphasis on emerging economies and also typically treats openness as a firm-level concept. In contrast, this study investigates how individual employees rely on both internal and external knowledge to increase their innovative work output (and, secondarily, their customer acquisition performance) and how their supervising manager’s characteristics moderate these mechanisms. Using hierarchical linear modeling of data collected from 123 employees and 50 managers in telecommunications companies in the emerging market of Vietnam, we find support for our hypothesized relationships. These findings have important implications for research and practice as they highlight the role of the individual employee in open innovation, the need for considering a more distributed set of organizational functions, and the relevance for emerging markets.

Improving Customer Compatibility with Operational Transparency

Through a large-scale field experiment with 393,036 customers considering opening a credit card account with a nationwide retail bank, we investigate how providing transparency into an offering’s tradeoffs affects subsequent rates of customer acquisition and long-run engagement. Although we find tradeoff transparency to have an insignificant effect on acquisition rates, customers who were shown each offering’s tradeoffs selected different products than those who were not. Moreover, prospective customers who experienced transparency and subsequently chose to open an account went on to exhibit higher quality service relationships over time. Monthly spending was 9.9% higher and cancellation rates were 20.5% lower among those who experienced transparency into each offering’s tradeoffs. Increased product usage and retention accrued disproportionately to customers with prior category experience – more-experienced customers who were provided transparency spent 19.2% more on a monthly basis and were 33.7% less likely to defect after nine months. Importantly, we find that these gains in engagement and retention do not come at the expense of customers’ financial wellbeing – the probability of making late payments was reduced among customers who experienced transparency. We further find that the positive effects of tradeoff transparency on engagement and retention were attenuated in the presence of a promotion that provided financial incentives to choose particular offerings. Taken together, these results suggest that providing transparency into an offering’s tradeoffs may be an effective strategy for informing customer choices, leading to better outcomes for customers and firms alike.

Customer Acquisition and Retention: A Fluid Approach for Staffing

We investigate the trade-off between acquisition and retention efforts when customers are sensitive to the quality of service they receive, i.e., whether they get timely access to a company's resources when requested. We model the problem as a multi-class queueing network with new and returning customers, time-dependent arrivals, and abandonment. We derive its fluid approximation; a system of ordinary linear differential equations with continuous, piecewise smooth, right-hand sides. Based on the fluid model, we propose a novel approach to determine optimal stationary staffing levels for new and returning customer queues in anticipation of future time-varying dynamics. Using system accessibility as a proxy for service quality and staffing levels as a proxy for investment, we demonstrate how to apply our approach to two families of time-varying arrival functions motivated by real-world applications: an advertising campaign and a clinical setting. In a numerical study, we demonstrate that our approach creates staffing policies that maximize throughput while balancing acquisition and retention efforts more effectively (i.e., equitable abandonment from each customer class) than commonly used near-stationary methods such as segmentation-based square-root staffing policies. Our model confirms that acquisition and retention efforts are intimately linked; this has been found in empirical studies but not captured in the operations literature. We suggest that in time-varying environments, focusing on either alone is not sufficient to maintain high levels of throughput and service quality.

PCI Membranes buys Pentair product line

PCI Membranes has completed the strategic acquisition of Pentair's X-Flow Classic Tubular Membrane, including assets and customers.

A Predictive Analytical Study on Factors Enhancing Customer Acquisition and Retention

A Predictive Analytical Study on Factors Enhancing Customer Acquisition and Retention

Entrepreneurial Marketing and Social Networking in Small and Medium Service Enterprises: A Case Study into Business Dealings in Cameroon

ABSTRACT This paper investigates how owners/managers of service small and medium enterprises (SME) leverage on social networks to develop and implement successful marketing strategies. Adopting an entrepreneurial marketing perspective, in-depth interviews with owners/managers of SME in the city of Douala, Cameroon, are conducted and analyzed. We found that owners/managers of service SME use their social relationships to create and deliver customer value via market intelligence, access, and acquisition of new customers, and retention of current customers. Some specific mechanisms utilized include finding door openers to new customers, offering gifts to consolidate business and social bonds, and treating key customers like family members. Finally, the reliance on managerial relationships often can have adverse effects on some marketing activities.

Residential retrofits at scale: opportunity identification, saving estimation, and personalized messaging based on communicating thermostat data

Basic insulation and heating system retrofits of existing homes could achieve annual energy savings of up to $4–5 billion in the USA. However, current US utility energy efficiency (EE) programs are costly and challenging to scale. Customer acquisition occurs primarily through energy bill mailers, mass media, and on-line advertising that lack specificity about particular home retrofit opportunities, expected energy savings, and cost-effectiveness. Specific retrofit opportunities are identified via on-site home energy assessments that can be inconvenient to homeowners, expensive, and of variable accuracy. Our paper discusses using communicating thermostat data to significantly increase the customer uptake of energy conservation measures (ECMs) by identifying homes with the most significant retrofit opportunities, estimating post-retrofit energy savings, and formulating home-specific outreach. We extended our previously developed gray-box building model to identify physical building parameters corresponding to the target retrofit opportunities, i.e., whole-home R value, air leakage characteristics, and heating system efficiency. The estimated R values and air leakage characteristics compare favorably with the ground truth. The validated algorithms can calculate home-specific energy savings estimate for each ECM, and the algorithm outputs can be used by utility EE programs to formulate home-specific retrofit offers.

Mobile Wallet and Entrepreneurial Growth

Using mobile wallet and card transaction data from a leading Singapore bank, this paper studies the effect of a mobile wallet payment technology introduction in 2017 on business growth. We find that mobile wallet usage doubled after the new technology introduction, and the improved payment efficiency generated a significant spillover effect. Small merchants experienced a monthly increase in debit and credit card sales amount (count) of 3.5 percent (3.4 percent) compared to large merchants. The payment technology promoted sales growth primarily for new businesses by facilitating customer acquisition.

Exploring of Factors Related to the Technology Adoption in Purchasing System of Product Through Mobile Application

The digital world has been disrupting many conventional methods, especially the purchasing system. The smartphone is also becoming more addictive today. This study aims to explore the factors related to the people reaction and learning process of technology adoption in term of using the application on a smartphone as the purchasing canal. To find the factors related to adopting the technology, the qualitative analysis, including an in-depth interview with an expert, tech-savvy people, and another related person to the research question, is used. The company reputation, pro- motion in term of price-reducing and design of User Interface (UI) and also easy User Experience (UX) are the factors that we found related to the technology adoption. The result of the qualitative method will become basic questions for a quantitative method using a questionnaire and validate the results with the unified theory of acceptance and the use of technology. The promotion has become the most influential factor based on our research to gain awareness or reaction until peoples are driven to learn the technology and decides to purchase. The price value has a relation to the behavioral intention that ended with the use of behavioral as a final step. The finding result will be used for jumping the chasm that exists between the early adopters and the early majority on the technology adoption lifecycle. Due to the small number of early adopters on market shares, the early majority becomes important segmentation in order to gain bigger market shares and become a market leader. The finding factors will also use for the marketing strategy for future penetration and customer acquisition, especially new start-ups, where their products/services are based on mobile applications. This study has not yet explored the strategy related to the operation and financial aspect on the company in term of using the finding factors for the customer acquisition process.

Analysis of Customers Acquisition Behaviour of Multiple SIM Networks Among University Lecturers in Southeast Nigeria

As the voice-service-market of mobile telecommunication providers fast reaches its saturation amidst increasing competition, its revenue potential to telecom providers continue to decline. Therefore, understanding consumers use behavior portends important strategic consideration for customer acquisition and retention for telecom operators. This study seeks to empirically determine the factors that influence the acquisition of multiple GSM networks by university lecturers in Southeastern universities in Nigeria. Data were generated from a sample of 301 respondents. Three hypotheses were stated and tested using Analysis of variance (ANOVA). The result shows positive relationships between income, social affinity networks, and brand image and consumer acquisition of multi SIM networks. It is therefore, recommended that income, social affinity, and brand image be used as strategic marketing tools to attract customers to acquire a particular network.

Understanding customer-perceived quality in informal stores

PurposeAlthough customer-perceived quality (CPQ) has been studied for years, very little is known about the implications of CPQ to informal retail stores particularly in collectivist and high uncertainty avoidance societies like Nigeria. More specifically, this study aims to investigate the indirect implications of CPQ to post-purchase behaviour primarily word-of-mouth (WoM) communication which is even more critical for customer acquisition in the research context. By so doing, it develops a contextualised model in which the emerging concept of commercial friendship (CF) is incorporated to mediate the relationship between CPQ and WoM communication.Design/methodology/approachUsing a survey-based design, data were gathered from 372 informal merchants’ customers. Structural equation modelling technique primarily PLS-SEM (partial least squares structural equation modelling) was used in analysing the data.FindingsThe data confirm that the multifaceted CPQ construct has an important implication for WoM through the mediation of CF. Supplementary analysis reveals that CF fully mediates one of the sub-components of CPQ, namely, personal interaction in relationship to WoM in addition to acting as a partial mediator between store policy, physical aspect and reliability and WoM.Originality/valueThe value of this study is that it draws attention to the special role that CF plays in the investigation of the relationship between CPQ and WoM communication in the research context. Additionally, it is a step towards extending and contextualising research about service quality perceptions and its outcomes in non-traditional Western contexts.

Research on Hotel Customer Relationship Management System Based on the Classification Algorithm

The hotel management relationship is a good business strategy for hotels, which can promote the development of a hotel, when a classification algorithm is applied to customer relationship management system. First, the classification algorithm is based on a support vector machine is studied, the nearest neighbor sample density is used, and the corresponding mathematical model is constructed. Second, the procedure of a classification algorithm based on fuzzy support vector machine is designed. Third, a customer acquisition plan based on a classification algorithm is analyzed. Finally, a hotel is used as the research object, and a customer acquisition analysis is carried out, and the results show that the new method has quicker training speed and higher classification correctness.

Is obsession with data and analytics making future marketers analytical researchers? A conceptual customer relationship marketing model for customized marketing education

The author proposes a customer relationship marketing -enabled student-attracting product redesign conceptual model for education for business by focusing on customization in business degrees through mirror mapping the interests and career focus of marketing degree students and skills demand of the industry as different from a business degree in analytics. An implementation of the model would make customer acquisition, retention, and relationship processes much more efficient and effective. The author proposes a new way of granting business degrees through “customized personalization” rather than “mass customization” for career focused rather than “get educated, get-job” -focused students. The suggested model has significant implications for institutions’ strategy formulators, customer relationship marketing heads, and policymakers.

An optimization model for traceable closed-loop supply chain networks

• A closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) network comprises forward and reverse logistics. • A stochastic multi-product traceable CLSC using a radio frequency identification system is modelled. • Customer acquisition behavior when choosing internet over conventional sales is considered. • A greedy randomized adaptive search procedure (GRASP) is used to solve the problem. • A real-life case study of network marketing shows the applicability of the proposed model. In this paper, a new non-linear mixed-integer mathematical programming problem is proposed to model a stochastic multi-product closed-loop supply chain (CLSC). The radio frequency identification (RFID) system is implemented in the supply chain to decrease product losses and the overall lead time of transportation while computing the profit derived from internet and conventional sales. The resulting traceable CLSC improves upon the existing literature by allowing us to: (1) boost the incorporation of traceability assumptions in mathematical programming problems so as to enhance the efficiency and visibility of a supply chain, (2) analyze the strategic effects that different internet sale formats have on customers’ evaluations and acquisition choices, and (3) account for the environmental and socio-economical dimension by explicitly formalizing employment-based incomes as part of the profit function. Two meta-heuristic algorithms are introduced to solve the proposed optimization problem, namely, the greedy randomized adaptive search procedure (GRASP) and particle swarm optimization (PSO). Twelve test problems of different sizes are generated and solved using these algorithms. The computational results show that GRASP outperforms PSO in terms of both profit and CPU time values. Finally, a case study in the network marketing industry is presented and managerial implications outlined to show the validity of the proposed model and shed more light on its practical implications.

Performance Measurement in CV. Sinar Energi Gemilang with Balanced Scorecard Method

This study aims to measure the performance carried out on CV. Sinar Energi Gemilang (SEG) with the Balanced Scorecard method. The next objective is to find out the contribution of the factors that influence performance on the CV. Sinar Energi Gemilang uses the Balanced Scorecard method which includes four perspectives, namely financial perspective, customer perspective, internal business perspective, and growth and income perspective. This research is a type of qualitative descriptive research. The data used in the form of documentation, questionnaires, and interviews. Indicators from a financial perspective are revenue growth and budget realization. Indicators from the customer perspective are market share, customer retention, customer acquisition, and customer satisfaction. The indicator of an internal business perspective is the process of innovation, operational procedures, after-sales processes. Indicators of growth and learning are the level of employee satisfaction, employee retention, employee productivity. The results show 1) performance from a financial perspective shows growth. 2) performance from the customer’s perspective shows good results. 3) performance from an internal business perspective starts to improve. 4) performance from the perspective of revenue growth shows good results

Myanmar’s tourism

PurposeStudies show that internet has become a major force propelling growth in tourism sector in many countries. An appropriate diffusion of the information and communication technology (ICT) services can facilitate visibility of hotels and lodges on search sites and third-party booking websites and thus influence demand. It also helps leverage the use of social media for promotion and customer acquisition purposes. Recently, Myanmar, with impressive historical world heritage sites, is witnessing a tourist boom; more hotels are opening up and achieving competitive advantage by offering free internet connectivity to guests and locating their premises in the vicinity of an ICT infrastructure. The purpose of this paper is to investigate ICT readiness to support the lodging industry in Myanmar by focusing on one sub-index of the Network Readiness Index (NRI, a term heavily used by World Economic Forum). The paper focuses on the “Network Use” component of NRI, pertaining to the effect of the “quality of the Internet connection” available to lodges, and its association with the following dimensions: customer service: the availability of ICT services to guests, such as internet connectivity and availability of ATM in the vicinity; digital marketing: the use of social media, keeping records of guests and analyzing aggregate data to extract business insights; and business-to-business online booking: the use of online booking via major third-party intermediary websites like Expedia, Booking.com and Agoda.com.Design/methodology/approachSurveys were conducted in three major touristic cities in Myanmar: Bagan, Mandalay and the capital city, Nay Pyi Taw. A total of 101 valid questionnaires were used. Survey questions were centered around the following themes: internet connection problems, digital marketing activities, and online booking directly or via third party digital intermediary. The data are presented and interpreted by descriptive statistics and regression analysis.FindingsThough, Myanmar is new to internet and commercial use of ICT, the awareness of the importance of leveraging social media and online booking for business development is surprisingly high in the lodging sector. On average, about 80 percent of surveyed hotels are present on the WWW through a dedicated hotel website. However, most websites lack an online booking capability. As a result, and due to a global trend, online booking through third-party intermediaries has become the dominant option for hotel booking arrangements in Myanmar. Agoda, founded in Bangkok in 2002, was found to be the number one choice for online booking intermediary in Myanmar, followed by Booking.com. Analysis of the logistic regression revealed that it was highly likely that areas around ATMs have better internet connectivity. As expected, it was also found that it is very unlikely that hotels reporting a problem in internet connectivity will be able to provide internet service to their guests. Despite the presence of problems in internet connectivity in Mandalay and Bagan cities, located away from the capital; most hotels in these cities resort to leveraging social media for promotion and customer/guest development. The analysis also revealed that cities located away from the capital are more aggressive in leverage online third-booking intermediaries.Research limitations/implicationsWhile researchers were hoping for a higher participation rate in the survey, especially in the city of Mandalay, data collection was challenging, a number of hotels/lodges denied participation. This may have some implications on the generalization of results. However, over 70 and 45 percent of hotels/lodges in the capital city and the ancient city of Bagan, respectively, had participated in the survey.Practical implicationsTourism has a great potential for growth in Myanmar. This research recommends ways to achieve and sustain competitive advantage for the lodging sector, which is vital for tourism.Originality/valueThough a considerable research exists on tourism and the recent advances of the ICT sector in Myanmar, the country’s readiness for the actual usage of the internet for the development of tourism has not been specifically addressed. This paper explores this with compelling research findings useful for policy makers as well as players in the tourism sector.