This proceedings volume highlights the latest research presented at the 8th International Conference on Research on National Brand & Private Label Marketing (NB&PL2021). The topics covered include: retailing, private label portfolio and assortment management, marketing of premium store brands, using national brands to exclude (delist) and include, optimal assortment size, consumer store patronage, etc. Several contributions also focus on private label pricing and promotion, especially on the relative pricing of standard and premium private labels, and with regard to the national brands in the assortment.

Praise for "Chocolates on the Pillow Aren't Enough"

"Jonathan recognizes that in today's Internet-fed, savvy-consumer world, it is the people-to-people connections, regardless of price point, that differentiate a customer's experience. Gimmicks come and go, but without sincere and caring people delivering the overall experience, from start to finish, well, it's true--chocolates on the pillow are not enough. A great read!"
--David Neeleman, founder and CEO, JetBlue Airways Corporation

"If you don't work for your customer, you're not doing your job. Who better to turn to for lessons in great customer experiences than Jonathan Tisch? He has long been one of the most respected leaders in travel and hospitality, and when it comes to treating all customers like guests, to put it simply, he gets it. And then some."
--Millard S. Drexler, Chairman and CEO, J. Crew Group

"What brings customers back to my restaurants? Why do viewers watch my TV show? It's more than Bam! It's delivering a kicked-up customer experience. Tisch is the guy who knows how to do this best. His book gives the inside scoop on how to excite your customers and bring 'em back for more."
--Emeril Lagasse

"Attention to detail, passion, and dedication are a few of the things that made me successful as an athlete. Jonathan knows that by doing the same in business, you maximize the customer's experience and outscore the competition."
--Tiki Barber

Customer satisfaction and loyalty are becoming increasingly important to most organizations since the financial benefits from improving them have been well documented. This book presents a thorough examination of how to use research to understand customer satisfaction and loyalty. It takes the reader step-by-step through the process of designing and conducting a survey to generate accurate measures of customer satisfaction and loyalty. The research process is explained in detail, including questionnaire design, analysis and reporting, but the book also covers other elements of an effective customer satisfaction process. These include project planning, communicating with customers before, during and after the survey, as well as providing internal feedback and taking effective action to address issues raised by the survey. There is also comprehensive coverage of loyalty measurement methodologies as well as the satisfaction-profit chain and associated modelling and forecasting techniques.

The essential guide to creating a successful organization by making things easier, better and more straightforward for your customers. Across all sectors, organizations' fixation with functionality have meant that the 'human' elements of the customer's experience have become neglected. Strict processes and automated procedures have created organizations full of people who aren't allowed to act in a 'human' way. As a result, and despite these new technologies, customers are no more satisfied than they were a decade ago (according to the Institute of Customer Service) and, according to Edelman, they now trust big organizations even less than they did in the past. In The Human Experience, John Sills draws upon extensive research and illustrative case studies to explain that the emotional experience is just as important as the functional one, and, if done right, will create a more efficient business. He also demonstrates that the customer experience is not just the responsibility of front-line employees, but shared across the company, from the CEO operating as the spokesperson of the business to the programmers developing a seamless and welcoming user interface. Whether you're a well-established incumbent or an early-stage start-up, on either end of your product or service is a human. Packed full of practical advice and engaging case studies, The Human Experience is the ultimate guide to creating a culture and an experience with humanity at its heart, helping to develop a customer base that will stay with an organization, and a company that will grow in an increasingly efficient way.

Customer Relationship Management is a holistic strategic approach to managing customer relationships to increase shareholder value, and this major Handbook of CRM gives complete coverage of the key concepts in this vital field.
It is about achieving a total understanding of the concepts that underlie successful CRM rather than the plethora of systems that can be used to implement it.
Based on recent knowledge, it is underpinned by:
* Clear and comprehensive explanations of the key concepts in the field
* Vignettes and full cases from major businesses internationally
* Definitive references and notes to further sources of information on every aspect of CRM
* Templates and audit advice for assessing your own CRM needs and targets
The most lucid, comprehensive and important overview of the subject and an invaluable tool in enabling the connection of the major principles to the real world of business.
* A definitive, heavily researched, comprehensive overview
* Key concepts allied to action templates
* Written by one of the first major marketing thinkers in the field and based on Cranfield Business School's internationally acknowledged leadership in the field

Knowing your users stimulates your imagination and helps you create more exciting and effective design solutions. But there is a problem: the normal conception of 'the user' is incomplete and based on outdated notions. These notions of simple, direct relationships between people and products are no longer valid in today's complex, technologically interconnected world. This fun and practical book with a set of cards will change the way readers think about users. Rethinking Users introduces a radical new approach that questions some of our most fundamental ideas about the nature of user experience. It points to new opportunities to create products and services that help users in new ways. The book includes a deck of user archetype cards and step-by-step team activities for unlocking new user-centered thinking and design inspiration. For designers, design researchers, strategists, innovators, product managers, and entrepreneurs in almost any field.

* Uniquely focuses on achieving customer satisfaction with the hotel and event industries, giving step-by-step practical guidance. * Integration of case studies, author voice boxes, and example forms and documents for the standardization of procedures key to achieving customer satisfaction, informed by extensive professional experience of both authors put into the context of existing theoretical frameworks. * Inclusion of underexplored areas such as employee empowerment, customer delight, over-promising, cultural implications and contractual issues in customer satisfaction.

In 1987, Motorola developed Six Sigma out of a need for improvement in their pager manufacturing processes. Since then, Six Sigma has been implemented by a number of manufacturing companies, predominantly in the USA. In the late 1990s, however, Six Sigma gained wider and international popularity due to successful implementation at General Electric. Six Sigma has now become one of the integral aspects of manufacturing, as well as non-manufacturing businesses worldwide. In recent years, many books have been published on Six Sigma, mainly on its application in manufacturing and product development. This book, by contrast, focuses specifically on the application of Six Sigma in service and transactional environments. The book comprises two parts. Part One provides the necessary knowledge for understanding the Six Sigma methodology and its underlying concepts. Part Two consists of practical examples of Six Sigma application to transactional and service environments which have been provided in the form of real world case studies written by internationally successful companies, to complement the reader's knowledge of Six Sigma and to increase comprehension of issues surrounding Six Sigma implementations. It has been written for newcomers as well as for experienced practitioners who are interested in improving processes in everyday business operations. The focus is on the implementation of the Six Sigma methodology rather than on the statistical tools and techniques. The aim of this book is to provide the reader with some practical and useful guidelines for Six Sigma deployment and its application to transactional and service processes.

Discover an important tool in the development of new marketing strategies for satisfying online customers! Edited by two experts in the fields of business and marketing, Customer Relationship Management in Electronic Markets is designed to help you build Internet relationships that lead to customer retention and long-term loyalty. With this book, you will be able to offer customers the benefits they seek in the virtual marketplace and serve their best interests. Examining Web sites, e-mail, data mining, and other technology, this valuable tool can help you attract and keep the customers who will be the most profitable for your business. Despite many predictions that electronic marketing would create high profits for lower costs, many businesses have been discouraged by low yields due to ineffectual methods of obtaining and maintaining customers. Customer Relationship Management in Electronic Markets provides multiple frameworks, strategies, and techniques around which to organize your company's electronic marketing plans. It shows you how to calculate trends, predict customer loss and gain, and prevent dissolution through analysis of the customer's ever-changing needs. This volume also utilizes examples of real successful companies that have used the Internet to the fullest extent, like Staples, Dell, and Amazon.com. Customer Relationship Management in Electronic Markets is an excellent resource for individuals engaged in any aspect of business relationships, from customer service managers, consultants and corporate trainers in marketing, to owners of major corporations, online businesses and entrepreneurs, and students in the field. Specifically, you will gain information on the following: business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-customer (B2C) exchangessimilarities, differences, and how the Internet has changed these relationships the prospects of the Internet for marketing and customer relationshipspredictions, positive effects, and negative effects from its inception to today how to develop and maintain a loyal customer base via the Internet improving B2B exchanges and business buyer relationship management through seamless Internet integration how to create a Web site that satisfies loyal customers and draws in new customers Featuring several charts, tables, and graphs, this guide provides effective measures that you can institute to ensure your company's longevity. Customer Relationship Management in Electronic Markets will help you create marketing strategies that will successfully meet the needs of your customers and enhance your business reputation.

This book puts the commoditization phenomenon under the microscope, laying out an economic analysis, followed by solutions and strategic recommendations. Using concrete examples this book will help to change businesses approach by acting not only on the economic analysis presented, but also on the diagnosis of commoditization and the recommendations for creation of customer value. The common thread throughout this approach is the obsession with customer satisfaction, the search for a fair balance between the long and short term, and the will to reinvent business models by harnessing innovation.

How do you develop products that people will actually use and buy? This practical guide shows you how to validate product and company ideas through customer development research-before you waste months and millions on a product or service that no one needs or wants. With a combination of open-ended interviewing and fast and flexible research techniques, you'll learn how your prospective customers behave, the problems they need to solve, and what frustrates and delights them. These insights may shake your assumptions, but they'll help you reach the "ah-ha!" moments that inspire truly great products. Validate or invalidate your hypothesis by talking to the right people Learn how to conduct successful customer interviews play-by-play Detect a customer's behaviors, pain points, and constraints Turn interview insights into Minimum Viable Products to validate what customers will use and buy Adapt customer development strategies for large companies, conservative industries, and existing products

The definitive "Customer Success Manager How-To-Guide" for the CSM profession from Gainsight, who brought you the market-leading Customer Success The Customer Success Manager has become a critical asset to organizations across the business landscape. As the subscription model has spread from the cloud and SaaS to more sectors of the economy, that pivotal role will only grow in importance. That's because if you want to compete and thrive in this new environment, you need to put the customer at the center of your strategy. You need to recognize you're no longer selling just a product. You're selling an outcome. Customer Success Managers (CSM) are committed to capturing and delivering those outcomes by listening to their customers, understanding their needs, and adapting products and services to drive success. Although several existing resources address the customer success imperative, there is no authoritative instruction manual for the CSM profession--until now. The Customer Success Professional's Handbook is the definitive reference book for CSMs and similar roles in the field. This practical, first-of-its-kind manual fills a significant gap in professional customer success literature, providing the knowledge every CSM needs to succeed--from the practitioner level all the way to senior leadership. The authors--acknowledged experts in building, training, and managing Customer Success teams--offer real-world guidance and practical advice for aspiring and experienced CSMs alike. The handbook is written by practioners for practioners. An indispensable resource for front-line Customer Success Managers, this much-needed book: Demonstrates how to build, implement, and manage a Customer Success team Helps new CSMs develop their skills and proficiency to be more employable and grow in their careers Provides clear guidance for managers on how to hire a stellar CSM Presents practical tactics needed to drive revenue growth during renewal, expansion, and customer advocacy opportunities Explains proven methods and strategies for mentoring CSMs throughout their careers Offers valuable insights from Gainsight, the Customer Success Company, and the broader customer success community with more than a dozen of the industry's most respected leaders contributing their perspectives Currently, with over 70,000 open positions, Customer Success Manager in one of the fastest-growing jobs in the world. The Customer Success Professional's Handbook: How to Thrive in One of the World's Fastest Growing Careers--While Driving Growth For Your Company will prove to be your go-to manual throughout every stage of your CSM career.

The second volume of this research monograph describes a number of applications of Artificial Intelligence in the field of Customer Relationship Management with the focus of solving customer problems. We design a system that tries to understand the customer complaint, his mood, and what can be done to resolve an issue with the product or service. To solve a customer problem efficiently, we maintain a dialogue with the customer so that the problem can be clarified and multiple ways to fix it can be sought. We introduce dialogue management based on discourse analysis: a systematic linguistic way to handle the thought process of the author of the content to be delivered. We analyze user sentiments and personal traits to tailor dialogue management to individual customers. We also design a number of dialogue scenarios for CRM with replies following certain patterns and propose virtual and social dialogues for various modalities of communication with a customer. After we learn to detect fake content, deception and hypocrisy, we examine the domain of customer complaints. We simulate mental states, attitudes and emotions of a complainant and try to predict his behavior. Having suggested graph-based formal representations of complaint scenarios, we machine-learn them to identify the best action the customer support organization can chose to retain the complainant as a customer.

In the context of rapid ICT development, this book focuses on how gamification affects consumer engagement and can be used to create a shared value for customers and companies. Based on the constructs of shared value, consumer engagement and gamification, it creates a conceptual model and a research methodology to enable empirical testing and provide complex empirical research findings. The book demonstrates the use of game elements and the motivation to play games as a means of achieving a psychological effect, i.e., consumer engagement manifested through gamified activities and brand engagement. This joint empirical study, by an expert team, concludes that the analysis of consumer perceived value in the context of engagement in gamified activities should distinguish between not just the theoretically identified company/brand-related economic, emotional, functional and social values, but also between engagement-related social and functional values.

Social media has found its way into most businesses as a tool to push sales. However, its potential to create long-term customer loyalty has not been fully exploited. In industries characterized by fierce competition, customer loyalty is key for sustainable success. How can companies attract future consumers? Born in the digital age, digital natives are powerful experts of social media and will dominate businesses. By focusing and building on insights from the aviation industry, this book develops an approach to use social media in a way that engages the digital natives in long-term customer relationship management (CRM). (Series: Internet Economics / Internetokonomie - Vol. 7)

This research monograph brings AI to the field of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) to make a customer experience with a product or service smart and enjoyable. AI is here to help customers to get a refund for a canceled flight, unfreeze a banking account or get a health test result. Today, CRM has evolved from storing and analyzing customers' data to predicting and understanding their behavior by putting a CRM system in a customers' shoes. Hence advanced reasoning with learning from small data, about customers' attitudes, introspection, reading between the lines of customer communication and explainability need to come into play. Artificial Intelligence for Customer Relationship Management leverages a number of Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine Learning (ML), simulation and reasoning techniques to enable CRM with intelligence. An effective and robust CRM needs to be able to chat with customers, providing desired information, completing their transactions and resolving their problems. It introduces a systematic means of ascertaining a customers' frame of mind, their intents and attitudes to determine when to provide a thorough answer, a recommendation, an explanation, a proper argument, timely advice and promotion or compensation. The author employs a spectrum of ML methods, from deterministic to statistical to deep, to predict customer behavior and anticipate possible complaints, assuring customer retention efficiently. Providing a forum for the exchange of ideas in AI, this book provides a concise yet comprehensive coverage of methodologies, tools, issues, applications, and future trends for professionals, managers, and researchers in the CRM field together with AI and IT professionals.

Practical Customer Success Management is a complete "handbook for CSMs", written by a customer success expert who has coached and trained many hundreds of customer success managers across the globe. The book is aimed at increasing both productivity and consistency of quality of output for customer success managers of all levels, from relative newcomers through to seasoned professionals. The book is highly practical in nature and is packed full of good humored but very direct advice and assistance for dealing with exactly the types of real world situations CSMs face every day. Practical Customer Success Management provides a simple-to-follow, best practice framework that explains what the core customer success management steps are at each stage of the customer journey to business outcome success and in what circumstances to apply those steps. It describes and explains which situations each step applies to and provides recommendations for activities or tasks that the CSM can perform to complete each step, together with detailed explanations and step-by-step guidance for successfully completing each activity or task. Included in this book is an entire suite of tools and templates that enable rapid completion of each task and ensure consistency of approach both across multiple customer engagements and by multiple CSMs within a team. Each tool's use is clearly explained within the book, and CSMs are able to adapt and customize the tools to suit their own specific needs as they see fit.

Praise for "MANAGING THE NEW CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP"

"Gordon delivers an impressive synthesis of the newest methods for engaging customers in relationships that last. No organization today can succeed without the mastery of customer relationship management strategy fundamentals. But to win in the decades ahead, you must also understand and capitalize on the rapidly evolving social computing, mobility and customer analytics technologies described in this book. Checklists, self-assessments and graphical frameworks deliver pragmatic value for the practicing manager."

-- William Band, Vice-President, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research Inc., Cambridge, MA

"A very comprehensive and practical book on managing relationships with existing customers in the age of social media I particularly enjoyed reading chapters on teaching customers new behaviors, which were illustrated by excellent case studies."

-- Jagdish N. Sheth, Ph.D., Charles H. Kellstadt Professor of Marketing, Emory University, Atlanta, GA

"The strategic breadth and depth of this book is impressive as Gordon explores the new customer and how to plan and manage the new customer relationship. I found his review of strategies, techniques and technologies for social, mobile, mass customization and customer analytics to be particularly insightful. Gordon urges marketers to live and breathe one-through-one marketing and to master social engagement techniques. The checklists, cases and examples make the content grounded and actionable. This is an important, current and detailed book to which every organization should pay close attention to improve customer relationships and create shareholder value."

-- Marcus Ruebsam, Vice-President, Line-of-Business Marketing Solutions, SAP AG, Walldorf, Germany

"There are many books on CRM, but I recommend this one because Gordon's book does what others do not. He considers CRM strategy and evolves it to recognize a new customer, one who is always connected, socially available and influential. The book doesn't just discuss many point solutions for specific marketing challenges; it integrates technology with strategy, people, process and customer analytics to develop relationships continuously. This book is a broad and deep exploration of CRM, providing practical, fact-based perspectives that every company can use to validate and rethink their customer and stakeholder relationships."

-- Helmuth Cepeda, Small, Medium and Distribution Director, Microsoft Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico

Marketing has changed fundamentally in the last few years and has become an entirely new discipline, one that focuses on a new customer and a new relationship, framed by new principles, strategies, processes, roles and tactics. Individual customers are economically targeted and served, and treated as segments of one rather than members of a target market. Word of mouth and recommendations are vital as customers influence one another more than a company can do within its own advertising or customer dialogs. Today's customer is always online, accessible and connected. Now marketing is not only direct and customer-specific but a "continuous "process by which companies seek to engage customers and be progressively more relevant, attractive and valuable. This is the era of a new customer relationship--an individual relationship that is social, mobile and local, influenced by peers and shaped by cognitive, behavioural and social psychological principles. New techniques, processes and technologies transform what it means to implement marketing strategy and achieve improved business results.

The new customer relationship requires that even those companies that have embraced customer relationship management ought to reassess their customer management. Now every marketing decision, whether online or in the physical world, whether of a technological nature, whether it affects customer experience, communications, dialogs, teaching or organizational memory, "every "decision should be seen through a single lens focused on the individual customers who matter most. "Managing the New Customer Relationship "provides a strategic and practical guide to help companies attract, develop, sustain and build more valuable relationships by: Expanding upon existing customer relationship management theories, concepts and methods to make these considerations more useful, strategic and contemporaryRecognizing the profound importance of social media and how to plan customer engagement in the social context of each customerExploring new technologies that offer new opportunities for engaging customers, including mobile, local, the cloud and customer analyticsDemonstrating how to develop customer-specific understanding, predict what customers will want next, and how to manage each individual customer, andOffering perspectives to help the organization endure by focusing a chain of relationships on the end customer and creating meaning for stakeholders that can make relationships more intense and robust.

"Managing the New Customer Relationship "is for organizations of all sizes in all industries, for private- and public-sector organizations and not-for-profits. In short, every organization can apply the new principles, strategies, techniques and technologies discussed here to recognize important marketplace changes, plan to improve relationship and financial results and capture new shareholder value from new customer relationships.

This volume explores the interconnection of social, political, technological and economic challenges that impact consumer relationships, new product launches and consumer interests. Featuring contributions presented at the 2019 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) World Marketing Congress (WMC) held in Edinburgh, Scotland, the theme of this proceedings draws from the Scottish Enlightenment movement of the mid-Eighteenth Century, which centered on ideas of liberty, progress and the scientific method. The core values of this movement are being challenged by the rapidly changing, globally shifting and digitally connected world. The contributions presented in this volume reflect and reframe the roles of marketers and marketing in incorporating and advancing the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment within contemporary marketing theory and practice. Founded in 1971, the Academy of Marketing Science is an international organization dedicated to promoting timely explorations of phenomena related to the science of marketing in theory, research, and practice. Among its services to members and the community at large, the Academy offers conferences, congresses, and symposia that attract delegates from around the world. Presentations from these events are published in this Proceedings series, which offers a comprehensive archive of volumes reflecting the evolution of the field. The series deliver cutting-edge research and insights, complementing the Academy's flagship journals, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS) and AMS Review (AMSR). Volumes are edited by leading scholars and practitioners across a wide range of subject areas in marketing science.

Grafton Whyte introduces and explores a new academic theory for customer service delivery for Africa, aimed at addressing issues of poor customer service and poor service delivery. The V-Model of Service Quality (VMSQ) offers a powerful tool for measuring service quality, augmented by a service exchange model to provide a general framework for services, describe core components and provide contexts within which the VMSQ can operate. The VMSQ provides an indication of where problems may lie in a service operation, and an additional African Management Matrix identifies some of the historical and contextual barriers that need to be overcome by African managers to achieve effective customer service delivery. This book grounds the theoretical interventions in data drawn from case studies in the Sub-Saharan African context to make the models applicable to both researchers and working managers. It looks at the complex question of customer service delivery in Africa, and embraces both concepts of customer service and service delivery.

Praise for The Best Service Is No Service

"A very sharp and practical treatise on why so many call centers and service operations are playing with the wrong deck of cards altogether. We strongly recommend it to anyone involved in customer service issues."
--Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D., authors, Rules to Break and Laws to Follow

"The Best Service Is No Service presents great new ideas about how to make service work for the company and the customer. Customers are clamoring for self-service that answers all of their questions, and this important book shows companies how to achieve this level of customer satisfaction."
--Sheryl Sandberg, vice president of online sales and operations, Google

"I recommend The Best Service Is No Service to companies and their outsourcing partners alike--when customers don't need to contact companies for help or information because everything is clear and works right, then everyone benefits. The 'best service' principles also work across all countries and cultures, a new universal goal!"
--Sanjeev Aggarwal, managing director, Helion Ventures Pvt Ltd Gurgaon, India, and founder and former CEO of IBM Daksh

"Building 'the best service is no service' also applies outside of corporations--universities and business schools can learn a lot from this book and its principles. I recommend this book to academic leaders for their schools and for their students to obtain firsthand lessons that really work!"
--James Jiambalvo, dean, Michael G. Foster School of Business; and Kirby L. Cramer Chair of Business Administration

"This book is compulsory reading for executives, customer service managers, and decision makers whose actionsdefine a company's customer experience. The Best Service Is No Service points out areas where management mistakes or confusion can lead to unnecessary contacts and disoriented customers. The concept of 'no service' is elegant in its simplicity. You will find clear solutions and tips on how to achieve 'no service' but also how to provide 'awesome customer experiences' while pursuing 'no service.'"
--Bert Quintana, former vice president, Dell International Services