Customer Groups Research Articles

Direct marketing for the implementation of the concept of sustainable development

Direct marketing is one of the most significant and effective strategies in terms of attracting a target audience interested in specific services or products. The essence of this type of marketing is that there is no need to involve specialists in intermediary services, and it is aimed only at its target group of customers. In the implementation of direct marketing, special attention is paid to the marketing information system and marketing research. It is appropriate to note that marketing, as an economic and social category, develops on the basis of continuous changes in technology, supply and demand, which predetermines the adaptability, and not at all the sustainability of the new marketing concept. A marketing information system involves the systematic collection, analysis, interpretation, and communication of market information within an organization. It collects data from both internal and external sources of the organization. All important marketing activities such as price, new product development, packaging, distribution, promotion, media, etc. depends on the information provided by that system. The availability of quality information helps organizations make more informed market decisions. Wrong decisions regarding market operations will have a negative impact on the business and hinder its survival.

Obtaining Consumer Information for the Purchase of Over-The-Counter Medicines and Food Supplements from Hungarian-Speaking Adult Consumers in Slovakia

The present study focuses on the role of online (Internet) ordering, information seeking, and the importance of the information provided by health professionals connected with the purchase of over-the-counter medicines and food supplements. Our primary survey was conducted in April-May 2022 and received 216 answers from Hungarian-speaking consumers in Slovakia that could be analysed. The data collected through the questionnaire was examined using statistical analysis and calculations. The data were organised in a single Excel file to facilitate our analysis and were processed using IBM SPSS Statistics 23 software for statistical tests – descriptive statistics, cross-tabulation analysis, Khi-square tests (variables were in nominal and ordinal measurement level). Results were considered significant at a p-value<0.05 and a p-value<0.001. Results and discussion: As to obtaining information, its receiving in person at the pharmacy is essential for consumers. When buying OTC medicines and dietary supplements, personal contact with a person working in a pharmacy is important. Consumers who want to receive information about the use of OTC medicines/supplements regard it essential to receive this information in person at the pharmacy. However, consumers who desire to purchase over-the-counter medicine/dietary supplements outside the pharmacy do not consider it important to obtain this information in person at the pharmacy. There is no association between monthly net income and highest educational attainment and the use of over-the-counter medicine based on information obtained from an advertising campaign. The results show no relationship between the education, income, age group of Hungarian-speaking consumers in Slovakia and the use of OTC medicines based on information from advertising campaigns. Only one relationship was found between the age group of the Hungarian-speaking Slovakian consumer and the use of non-prescription medicines based on information from advertising campaigns. Conclusions: The results pointed out that although online OTC medicine purchases have gained ground, personal professional advice is important for the group of customers who buy products in person at the pharmacy. It is advisable for companies producing OTC preparations to focus both on consumers who prefer online ordering and those who prefer personal shopping. What is much more important is that the pharmacy staff is still an essential source of information, and they also help with self-diagnosis. From the sales perspective, it is important to maintain online trade as consumers demand it.

The mediating role of customer awareness to enhance the relationship between using social media tools and post-purchase behavior upon electrical devices buyers in Jordan

This study examined the effect of social media on post-purchase behavior on electrical device buyers in Jordan. Drawing on resource-based and knowledge-based previous studies, the mediating effects of customer awareness were also tested. Data were collected from 385 participants from the segment targeted group of customers in Jordan, and hypotheses were tested through partial least squares structural equation modeling using Smart PLS 4.0. The results showed that the mediating role of customer awareness influences enhancing the relationship between social media and promotion mix on the one hand, and post-purchase behavior (exit, voice, and loyalty) on the other hand. Our findings contribute to the existing literature by explaining and strengthening this relationship, which is also referred to as the black box through the mediation of customer awareness. Marketers should recognize the importance of this relationship to develop modern promotional tools in multiple social media to positively enhance the customers’ post-purchase behavior by giving them a competitive advantage.

Premium power investment strategy utilizing the economy of scale of custom power devices

The possible existence of ‘economy of scale’ in manufacturing poor power quality (PQ) mitigation devices motivates customers to participate in a common mitigation solution. A custom power park (CPP) is an option where the CPP operator offers a set of custom solutions to a group of customers. Given that these custom solutions comprise one or many custom power devices, both CPP operators and the customers are expected to coordinate to obtain individual mitigation device ratings while maximizing the overall utility of customers. Here, CPP operators would calculate ratings of custom solutions and associated unit cost for the minimal total cost, while the customers are expected to select custom solutions to maximize their overall benefit. Furthermore, the customers utilize their willingness-to-pay function in this process and strictly participate in this arrangement if the utility received is more than their self-generated non-negative utility. Without the CPP operator, customers would form a CPP-like arrangement to recover the cost of investment and operation and maintenance. This combinatorial problem has been solved in two stages, involving the calculation of independently generated utility in the first stage and the overall CPP designing problem in the second stage. While customer and operator-side nonlinearities in the cost functions have been suitably discretized, the proposed methodology ensures that the solution space remains intact. The proposed method is illustrated using three devices, three custom solutions, and three customers. • Existence of economy of scale is a motivating factor for common mitigation solution. • A system-wide PQ improvement might not lead to a socially justifiable outcome. • Customers participate if utility received is more than self-generated utility. • Proposed method converts the MINLP problem into MIP. • Proposed methodology could be used for complex problems with similar structure.

A Representation-Based Query Strategy to Derive Qualitative Features for Improved Churn Prediction

The effectiveness of any Machine Learning process depends on the accuracy of annotated data that is used to train a learner. However, manual annotation is expensive. Hence, researchers adopt a semi-supervised approach called active learning that aims to achieve state-of-the-art performance using minimal number of samples. Although it boosts classifier performance, the underlying query strategies are unable to eliminate redundancy in selected samples. Redundant samples lead to increased cost and sub-optimal performance of learner. Inspired by this challenge, the study proposes a new representation-based query strategy that selects highly informative and representative subsets of samples for manual annotation. Data comprises messages of a set of customers sent to a service provider. Series of experiments are conducted to analyze the effectiveness of the proposed query strategy, called “Entropy-based Min Max Similarity” (E-MMSIM), in the context of topic classification for churn prediction. The foundation of E-MMSIM is an algorithm that is popularly used to sequence proteins in protein databases. The algorithm is modified and utilized to select the most representative and informative samples. The performance is evaluated using F1-score, AUC and accuracy. It is observed that “E-MMSIM” outperforms popular query strategies, and improves performance of topic classifiers for each of the 4 topics of churn prediction. The trained topic classifiers are used to derive qualitative features. These features are further integrated with structured variables for the same group of customers to predict churn. Experiments provide evidence that inclusion of qualitative features derived using E-MMSIM, enhance the performance of churn classifiers by 5%.

Customer Segment Prediction on Retail Transactional Data Using K-Means and Markov Model

Retailing is a dynamic business domain where commodities and goods are sold in small quantities directly to the customers. It deals with the end user customers of a supply-chain network and therefore has to accommodate the needs and desires of a large group of customers over varied utilities. The volume and volatility of the business makes it one of the prospective fields for analytical study and data modeling. This is also why customer segmentation drives a key role in multiple retail business decisions such as marketing budgeting, customer targeting, customized offers, value proposition etc. The segmentation could be on various aspects such as demographics, historic behavior or preferences based on the use cases. In this paper, historic retail transactional data is used to segment the customers using K-Means clustering and the results are utilized to arrive at a transition matrix which is used to predict the cluster movements over the time period using Markov Model algorithm. This helps in calculating the futuristic value a segment or a customer brings to the business. Strategic marketing designs and budgeting can be implemented using these results. The study is specifically useful for large scale marketing in domains such as e-commerce, insurance or retailers to segment, profile and measure the customer lifecycle value over a short period of time.

New niche: the ageless market

Age has played a vital role in influencing marketeers to decide their target customers. Marketeers have always focused on targeting younger group of customers eluding one segment of customers who have often gotten neglected is the 'baby boomers' or 'ageless customers'. This article attempts to understand the gap between the demand of baby boomers and focus as well as supply from the retailers. In depth interviews and content analysis with retailers and baby boomers were conducted. Findings suggest that most retailers were not very keen on specifically targeting the segment of baby boomers. It explores the retailer connect required with this set of customers and the shopping behaviour exhibited by them.

Analysis of Micro-vacation Customer Positioning in China: A Case Study of Aranya

Tourism is a beautiful thing, tourism can bring tourists a variety of enjoyment and experience, let tourists harvest instant joy and happiness, leave them with good impressions and memories, so that tourists are relaxed and soothed, so tourism is actually a good way of life. As a tourism industry that has developed rapidly after the epidemic in China, “micro-vacation” has increasingly become the first choice for people’s daily travel. This paper combines the customer positioning case of Aranya Tourism Resort in China, analyzes the characteristics of micro-vacation customers through the professional knowledge of marketing management such as market positioning and market segmentation, and explains how to do the micro-vacation customer group positioning analysis of tourism projects.

Brand storytelling techniques arousing emotional bonds in different customer groups based on cluster analysis

Brand storytelling techniques arousing emotional bonds in different customer groups based on cluster analysis

Working with ‘The Passionate Few’: the Indirect Benefits of Actor Engagement in Mundane Service Settings

The engagement concept has grown in importance in recent years with firms recognizing and seeking to leverage the latent potential within their customers and finding innovative ways to engage them. However, engagement has, to date, been explored within high contact service settings where benefits are largely dyadic (between firm and customer) or shared (within the customer community). This study contributes to literature on engagement by assessing the potential for engagement in low contact settings, between a firm and minority customer groups to have positive indirect effects on other ‘unengaged’ customers. To do so, we use multi-level modeling within a public transport setting where a firm has invited local community members to ‘adopt’ their local railway stations. We propose that neither a small number of passionate customers, nor low contact, ‘mundane’ service settings, should be an impediment to firms benefiting from engagement.

Using Importance-Performance Analysis in The Measurement of Muslim Visitor's Satisfaction with Hotel Facilities in Taiwan

Abstract
 Many countries in the world are considering tourism as an important sector in their economy. A rapid growth of Muslim population, in consequence increasing the number of Muslim travelers with their high contribution to global tourism revenue, has made Muslims a potential group of customers to the tourism market. Achieving Muslim tourist satisfaction could be very challenging for Non-Islamic Countries, especially Taiwan. To attract the Muslim visitors, Taiwan is eager to offer a Muslim friendly environment since Muslim people have some basic and specific needs in line with their belief and thispracticeis called Muslim travel or Halal tourism. Importance-Performance Analysis was conducted in this study to investigate which hotel attributes satisfy Muslim visitors and to identify their expectations and satisfaction with these attributes. The results indicated that “halal logo or certificate and its display at the entrance of hotel” had the strongest influence on Muslim visitor’s satisfactions with hotels in Taiwan. The results reported will enable hotels to better manage their facilities for Muslim visitors to ensure the sustainability of business performance.

Channel Preferences in the High-Value Electronic Device Purchase Decision Process Regarding the Purchase Attitude among Domestic Buyers

Customer experience is influenced by the total purchasing decision process starting at the need recognition and ending at the post-purchasing stage. The IT development of the retail industry provides an opportunity and at the same time forces retailers to implement multi-channel strategies and give their consumers the opportunity to use the channels that best suit their needs at a given time for an enhanced shopping experience. The purpose of the study was to examine how Hungarian respondents’ purchasing attitude influences channel usage preference (instore, online big- and small screen) at different stages of customer journey when purchasing high-value electronic devices. For this purpose, the paper first identified homogenous respondent groups based on purchasing attitude factors, then explored the differences in the channel preference patterns at different stages of the purchasing process in customer groups separated by purchasing attitude. The purchasing attitude was measured using Likert scale in 7 priori dimensions including need of physical touch, impulsiveness, innovativeness, price and brand consciousness, convenience, and shopping experience. The research analyses collected data by quantitative online survey of 415 domestic respondents. The examined sample showed web-rooming behavior pattern and the homogeneous groups identified based on the purchasing attitudes of our respondents differed significantly in their channel usage preferences.

Research and Innovation of Business Model of Shengu Town in Dinghu Mountain Under the Development of Forest-based Wellness Industry

China's Forest-based Wellness Care Industry started late, but in recent years, with people's increasingly strong pursuit of high-quality healthy life, driven by a series of policies, it has received more and more attention and involvement from social capital. How to innovate the business model of emerging industries deserves academic attention. This study takes Shengu Town in Dinghu Mountain as an example. Its business model under the background of industrial development has five characteristics: taking the middle and high consumption customer groups of all ages as the target customers, taking multi-industry integration as the value proposition, taking multi-path implementation as the value creation and delivery, taking tourism real estate as the value capture, and taking rural revitalization as the social responsibility. Based on these characteristics, according to the customer segmentation theory and the business model innovation model, this study puts forward innovative suggestions for timesharing model and alliance model.

Segmentation of e-customers in terms of sustainable last-mile delivery

Research background: A rapidly developing e-commerce market and growing customer expectations regarding the speed and frequency of deliveries have made the last mile of the supply chain more challenging. The expectations of e-customers increase every year. They choose those companies that deliver goods faster and cheaper than others. A significant group of customers in Poland still selects home delivery. Many of them frequently return products to the retailer. These expectations and behaviour pose a challenge for the transport companies to deliver parcels to individual customers soon after the purchase, sometimes even on the same day. In addition, increasingly frequent deliveries contribute to environmental pollution, congestion, and accidents, as well as more expensive deliveries. Purpose of the article: The paper aims to identify e-customers? preferences and assess their impact on sustainable last-mile delivery (LMD) in the e-commerce market. The authors have also identified factors influencing e-customers? behaviour to make last-mile delivery more sustainable. Methods: The conjoint analysis was applied to evaluate a set of profiles defined by selected attributes in order to investigate the overall preferences for the profiles created by the respondents to the survey. Findings & value added: The segmentation of e-customers according to their preferences connected with last-mile delivery was presented. The added value of the paper is the presentation of the methodology to assess the impact of customer preferences on sustainable last-mile delivery. The obtained results may contribute to the formulation of recommendations for e-commerce and logistics companies regarding the preferences of e-customers to improve the sustainability of last-mile delivery.

EVALUATION OF CURRENT SITUATION, CRISIS MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES AND POST-PANDEMIC PROSPECTS OF TAIWAN YOUTH HOSTEL DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC

In 2020, COVID-19 affected almost all countries, it has governments faced with difficult trade-offs given the health, economic and social challenges it raises. More than half of the world’s population had experienced a lockdown with strong containment measures. The regional and local impact of the COVID-19 crisis is highly heterogeneous, with significant implications for crisis management and policy responses. This study is qualitative research adopted interviews to collect the data. The research focused on the changes in the operation of youth hostels due to the pandemic, the method which they comply to respond, and the future prospects of the youth hostel industry. As a result, it was found that youth hostel operators are slow in responding to crisis due to the lack of awareness, and do not have immediate effective methods to response to the impacts. According to the views of the three participants from the youth hostel operators, the strategies include cost reduction, reducing prices, modification of booking and cancellation policy, develop new customer group segments, revitalize of space and expand the alliance effect was comply in order to cope with the impact of the pandemic. It is suggested that the operators to emphasize on establishing an effective crisis management system with enhancing their awareness of crisis and risks. Developing customer from different categories is an issue to concern in order to avoid over relying on single customer group to make the youth hostel industry more sustainable. KEYWORDS: Covid-19, youth hostel, crisis management, post-pandemic prospect

Changes in Starbucks Business Model Based on 2008 and 2020

This paper mainly analyzed the business model and strategy transformation made by Starbucks in two key years, namely the financial crisis in 2008 and the sudden outbreak of the epidemic in 2020. The main objective of this paper was to understand and analyze the decisions made by Starbucks in terms of financial performance, strategy and business model during these two special years, to bring better inspiration and corresponding strategies to other multinational enterprises. This paper first investigated and analyzed past articles in related fields, and then conducted a financial ratio analysis on their financial statements between 2007 and 2021. Finally, it concluded that based on the analysis of Starbucks, other multinational enterprises should learn from its strengths and avoid risks. First of all, other multinational companies could actively expand their market shares, but not blindly. Secondly, relative services should be provided according to the demands of customer groups. Thirdly, we should analyze the current economic development in time to choose between long-term and short-term debt. In addition, employee benefits and incentives were also one key factor for Starbucks to become a successful multinational enterprise.

Time coordinates change strategy - different strategies in different competition

As companies all have their specific strategies in order to develop their companies. Companies always make various decisions that is the most appropriate to the industries. This paper discusses about how companies decision and strategies are impacted by the status and the current stage of the companies. During the analyzation, the AAA Framework, Porters’ Five Forces and SWOT Analysis are used. The research of three companies of Popmart, Lululemon and Pepsi has resulted in demonstrating the importance of diversify the company strategy in different stages. Companies like Popmart are the entrants of a market which need more customers attractors in building the brand fame. But for companies that has already been incumbents like Lululemon and Pepsi, more attention should be payed for maintain their current customers and brand fame, with the developing of the potential customer groups that have been ignored in the previous market strategy. Although disparate stages means different needs of strategy, all stages companies need to insure their brand fame and companies goal.

Hotel service quality dimensions and attributes: An analysis of online hotel customer reviews

This study examines service quality dimensions and attributes of the hotel industry in a famous beach resort destination of Phuket based on 25,267 online reviews from the TripAdvisor website collected for 56 hotels. Machine learning analysis using the KNIME analytics platform was employed to analyze four datasets, namely the total dataset, the couple dataset, the family dataset, and the friend dataset. The results reveal six dimensions of guest service quality in the hotel industry: leisure activities, tangibles and surroundings, reliability, responsiveness, service process, and food, with specific attributes identified in each dimension. The study was able to verify the robustness of HOLSERV Plus model as the dimensions developed by topic modelling of online reviews are found to correspond to the dimensions of HOLSERV framework, with some adaptation required. It is also confirmed by the current study that the same set of service quality dimensions and attributes is not applicable to all groups of customers, instead each group has its own unique requirements and expectations. In addition, service process is revealed in this study as the most sensitive dimension that determines customer dissatisfaction.

Targetd Analysis of Cookie Consent Management Platform Companies

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which turned into effective in 2018 asks any companies who collects, saves, processes or transfers users’ privacy data have to meet its strictest requirement. Under this circumstance, cookie consent managers are essential for the publishers who collect and use user’s cookie. However, cookie consent manager has only recently attracted the attention of researchers, and there are not many related studies about it. This report gives a comprehensive understanding of CMP industry and CPMs. Different data sets are involved and analysed in this project. Competitive analysis is applied to cookie notices from customer group, product property and business competitiveness perspectives. The results show that CMPs with better end-user experience normally have a larger quantity of customers. And customers tend to choose a local CMP with regional advantages instead of a global widely used CMP with high exposure score.

Exploring strategies of small ski areas with different destination governance structures: A comparative case study

Small ski areas (SSAs) face several challenges, from changing environmental conditions such as lower snow levels and shorter ski seasons, to demographic changes of skiers, such as an aging population. SSAs find themselves operating in mature markets characterized by increased competition by larger ski areas and multi-resort ski conglomerates. Due to their smaller size they have strategic disadvantages, which makes precise positioning in the market and added value creation for their customers necessary. This study examines strategies of SSAs by exploring the influence of different governance structures. Using a comparative case study approach to gain an in-depth understanding of strategies of SSAs, this paper examines two SSAs with different governance structures, one in the U.S. and one in Europe. Data gathering includes nineteen in-depth interviews with various stakeholders of both SSAs, archival data, and on-site observations. Thematic analysis was used for data analysis. The findings highlight three core differentiating factors: (1) technology and innovation, (2) market positioning, and (3) communication and collaboration with stakeholders. While both SSAs pursue a differentiation strategy and target similar groups of customers, they apply different segmentation and marketing strategies, climate change adaptation measures, and service offerings. The findings contribute to the development and management of SSAs as they explain different strategies regarding innovation, market positioning and collaboration with stakeholders due to contrasting governance structures and highlight stakeholders’ awareness to climate change and sustainability.