The current shift in demographics - aging and shrinking populations - in many countries around the world presents a major challenge to companies and societies alike. One particularly essential implication is the emergence and constant growth of the so-called "graying market" or "silver market", the market segment more or less broadly defined as those people aged 50 and older. Increasing in number and share of the total population while at the same time being relatively well-off, this market segment can be seen as very attractive and promising, although still very underdeveloped in terms of product and service offerings. This book offers a thorough and up-to-date analysis of the challenges and opportunities in leveraging innovation, technology, product development and marketing for older consumers and employees. Key lessons are drawn from a variety of industries and countries, including the lead market Japan.

Now, more than ever, customer experience plays a pivotal role in the success and longevity of a company. Based on rigorous scientific tools and global data, this book offers a simple but thorough guide on how to master the challenges of the market, and how to deliver superior performance through effective customer experience management.

Customer centricity is fundamental to business growth and ongoing success. Most executives appreciate the importance of it yet don't know how to execute it or sell the processes internally. This thoroughly revised edition of Breaking Through guides readers systematically through the ten breakthrough points of implementation, to explain how to execute a transformation to customer centricity, so that a company can engage continuously with its customers, making them allies and advocates with all the rewards that it brings. With updates on digital opportunities, social media, emerging markets (including Africa), and the social as well as financial impacts of customer centricity , this book successfully blends strategy with implementation and also features a range of innovative new and traditional business examples from across the globe. Easy to read, in-depth and full of practical advice, this is the essential step-by-step guide to implementing customer centricity to endure in the long-term.

To stay competitive, firms need to build great products but they also need to lend these products to the uses and misuses of their customers and learn extensively from them. This is the first book to explore the idea that allowing customers to adapt features in online products or services to suit their needs is the key to viral growth.

How to effectively design and deliver virtual advisory services can be a mystery to many public and private organisations. This study examines the interesting phenomenon of providing virtual advisors to assist users in accomplishing their tasks in the digital world. Based on a thorough analysis of abundant typical applications in various business and government sectors, this book discusses the current status and future trends of virtual advisory services in digital environments. This book also reveals exactly what users expect from such services, and what they hate! It provides thought-provoking guidelines for best practice in the design and provision of virtual advisors on e-portals.

With emerging technology transforming customer expectations, it's important to keep a laser focus on the experience companies provide their customers. Tomorrow's customers need to be targeted today! Customer experience futurist Blake Morgan outlines ten easy-to-follow customer experience guidelines that integrate emerging technologies with effective strategies to combat disconnected processes, silo mentalities, and a lack of buyer perspective. The Customer of the Future explains how today's customers are already demanding frictionless, personalized, on-demand experiences from their products and services, and companies that don't adapt to these new expectations won't last. This book prepares your organization for these increas ing demands by helping you do the following: Learn the ten defining strategies for a customer experience-focused company. Implement new techniques to shift the entire company from being product-focused to being customer-focused. Gain insights through case studies and examples on how the world's most innovative companies are offering new and compelling customer experiences. Tomorrow's customers will insist on experiences that make their lives significantly easier and better. Craft a leadership development and culture plan to create lasting change at your organization!

This book constitutes revised papers from the eight workshops which were held during June 2021 at the 24th International Conference on Business Information Systems, BIS 2021. The conference was planned to take place in Hannover, Germany, and changed to a fully online event due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There was a total of 67 submissions to all workshops of which 31papers were accepted for publication. The workshops included in this volume are: AKTB 2021: 12th Workshop on Applications of Knowledge-Based Technologies in Business BisEd 2021: BIS Education: Trends and Challenges DigBD 2021: 1st Workshop on Digitization in the Flux of Big Data Scenarios DigEx 2021: 3rd International Workshop on transforming the Digital Customer Experience iCRM 2021: 6th International Workshop on Integrated Social CRM QOD 2021: 4th Workshop on Quality of Open Data BITA 2021: 12th Workshop on Business and IT Alignment BSCT 2021: 4th Workshop on Blockchain and Smart Contract Technologies

Despite businesses often being based on creating desirable experiences, products and services for consumers, many fail to consider the end user in their planning and development processes. This book is here to change that. User experience research, also known as UX research, focuses on understanding user behaviours, needs and motivations through a range of observational techniques, task analysis and other methodologies. User Research is a practical guide that shows readers how to use the vast array of user research methods available. Written by one of the UK's leading UX research professionals, readers can benefit from in-depth knowledge that explores the fundamentals of user research. Covering all the key research methods including face-to-face user testing, card sorting, surveys, A/B testing and many more, the book gives expert insight into the nuances, advantages and disadvantages of each, while also providing guidance on how to interpret, analyze and share the data once it has been obtained. Now in its second edition, User Research provides a new chapter on research operations and infrastructure as well as new material on combining user research methodologies.

With their word-of mouth advocacy of products or brands, superpromoters influence us and how we buy with the power of enthusiasm. Business managers should not just focus on complaining customers but they should value their enthusiastic friends: the superpromoters. By cultivating the superpromter they can more effectiviely promote their brand.

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.

This book highlights the latest research on sub-supplier management while also discussing its current state and related managerial challenges. It provides a process framework for managing sub-suppliers and an overview of the various buyer / sub-supplier relationships and their key characteristics. Furthermore, the respective chapters address essential capabilities to successfully manage sub-suppliers and to discuss how to overcome barriers and challenges associated with sub-supplier management. Concrete examples and cases are also provided, and, in closing, potential research opportunities are outlined and demonstrated.

This collection of original ethnographically based research from five continents, provides insights into the dynamics of stability and change in our globalizing world. The chapters comprising Live Experiences of Public Consumption give a vivid account of how cultural and economic value intertwine at face-to-face encounters in marketplaces.

The development of Relationship Marketing (RM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has forced a change in thinking among marketers about the meaning of marketing and its role and function within an organisation. One such change is the way in which organisations relate to their customers. Organisations today need to adopt a more focused approach to interacting with customers while also developing clear strategies for building relationships not only with these customers but with all stakeholders.

Customers are treated badly. Not all customers. Not always. But many are and often. Some customers are bad. They treat firms badly. Firms have to react. Employees and customers endure the consequences. Such bad behaviours, by firms and customers, have consequences for perceptions of trust and fairness, for endorsements and referrals, for repeat purchasing and loyalty, and ultimately for a firm's profitability and RoI. The management of customer relationships is core to the success and even survival of the firm. As The Dark Side of CRM explores, this is an area fraught with difficulties, duplicitous practice and undesirable behaviours. These need acknowledging, mitigating and controlling. This book is the first of its kind to define these dark sides, exploring also how firms and policy-makers might address such behaviours and manage them successfully. With contributions from many of the leading exponents globally of CRM and understanding customers, The Dark Side of CRM is essential reading for students, researchers and practitioners interested in managing customers, relationship marketing and CRM, as well as social media and marketing strategy.

Blending the hot topics of new technology, market spaces, competitive strategy and customer behaviour, Customer Capitalism stands conventional wisdom on its head by introducing a new business model which shows how any business can generate increasing returns and gain a massive competitive advantage. Taking examples from companies as diverse as Amazon.com and Mondex, Microsoft and Monsanto, the author explains how businesses can escape the traps of a traditional mindset and originate for the customer rather than the product. These entreprises transform classic product/service categories, moving them away from market share into new "market spaces" where they find new ways of doing for customers. Customer Capitalism does what old capitalism could never do -- it gives corporations a sustainable edge. Sandra Vandermerwe shows how to relate the ten principles of customer capitalism to your business and achieve the multiple and exponential rewards of increasing returns. Customer Capitalism generates growing customer value streams from ever--deepening and expanding relationships with individuals who lock--on to an organisation. These customers become an "installed customer base" who want the organisation as their dominant or sole choice on an ongoing basis. The new enterprise becomes the standard for these new ways of doing things by gathering market momentum. A growing number of individuals see and use the new way of doing things, making the enterprise ever more prevalent, and its brand increasingly infectious to others. Central to the concept of customer capitalism are six positive feedback loops which ensure customer lock--on and accelerating growth. Once the loops go into motion as one interlinking, reiterative system then the real forces of the new market and economic dynamics of customer capitalism come into play. Customers become the competitive barrier. Advantage leads to more advantage, success to more success, accumulating increasing returns in new market spaces.

New competition, technology and economics have changed the behaviour of markets and the practice of marketing. Customers are more discerning, and demand more quality, service and choice. Established brands are under threat. New brands are tougher than ever to build. How to create business value by sustaining existing brands and building new brands is the priority of our major business leaders, the managers to whom they entrust their brands and the students who are the brand stewards of the future. In this book Stewart Pearson explains how to build your brands directly: by investing in the loyalty of your customers and explains the commercial realities behind today's marketing headlines.

This new book focusses upon customer care in relation to Human Resource Management issues and strategic planning. It addresses the objective of customer loyalty and retention in relation to business success and shows how this can integrate a company's strategy with regard to Marketing, Human Resource Management, Quality and Management of Change. This is an innovative book in a topical area that draws upon case study material.

8 POWERFUL WAYS TO INSPIRE TODAY'S TOUGH CUSTOMERS IN TOUGH TIMES AND MAKE THEM STICK "With Jim Champy's well-proven gift for keen management analysis, today's essential notions of business transparency, channel and customer alignment, and enduring cultural values become palpable, memorable, and-most important-usable." Alan Spoon, "Managing General Partner, Polaris Venture Partners" "If you love the game of business, you'd be hard pressed to find a book with more 'good moves' per page than "INSPIRE ""Paal Gisholt, "President and CEO, SmartPak" "Full of insightful ideas, this book is for those who like winning, who embrace innovation, and who wish to transform how they lead. It is not for the defenders of the status quo."Michael Dowling, "President and CEO, North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System" ""INSPIRE " provides 'food for thought' and insightful guidance for all companies. This is particularly important in today's economy where even established companies are looking for ways to maintain the growth they have enjoyed in better times."Chiquita White, "Section Head, Product Development, Procter & Gamble" Jim Champy revolutionized business with "Reengineering the Corporation." Now, in "Inspire ," the second book in a series about what's new and really works in business, he takes on the challenge of inspiring customers--even in tough times. In an era of commoditization and ever less loyal customers, this book shows how to keep customers coming back. Drawing on dozens of original case studies from companies in a variety of industries, new and old, Champy reveals how to define a consistent value proposition your customers will be passionate about--and will "stay" passionate about. You'll learn how to engage a new generation of customers who value transparency and authenticity above all...how to reinvigorate your company in the face of brutally tough and creative competition...how to go beyond mere marketing campaigns to lead crusades customers want to join. Once again, Jim Champy has given businesses actionable solutions to one of the most challenging problems they currently face: "making customers stick." How to reignite customer loyalty by...- Bringing authenticity to everything you do- Creating new products that reflect the best of what you really are- Delivering new value based on convenience, simplicity, and honesty- Nurturing your mystique- Choosing the right channel partners- Doing well by doing good