International E-Business ¿ Building Online Customer Loyalty with Relationship Management

Diploma Thesis from the year 2001 in the subject Business economics - Customer Relationship Management, CRM, grade: very good, University of Innsbruck (Institute for Corporate Leadership), language: English, abstract: ... 1.1 Problem Statement For many years, successful neighborhood merchants, restaurants and pubs had real customer relationships. They knew their customers personally, understood what they wanted, and, as best they could, satisfied their needs through personalized service. As a result, they earned loyalty and a large share of their customers¿ business. Some of the best examples of building customer loyalty can be found in those traditional small businesses. Now the question arises how customer relationships can be built in the world of E-Business. E-Business - the buying and selling of products and services over the Web - and its impact is comparable with the industrial revolution at the end of the last century. After hysteric times of E-Business startups and well known bursting bubbles the point of disillusion has come. Some internet companies recognize that traditional business concepts are not necessarily outdated. Acquiring customers on the international marketplace of E-Business is enormously expensive and unless those customers stick around and make lots of repeat purchases over the years, profit will remain uncertain. For lasting success companies have to intensify their efforts towards customer loyalty and customer relationship management. Without loyalty even the best-designed E-Business model will collapse. This leads to the following objective. 1.2 Objective The objectives of the thesis are -to combine the concept of customer loyalty with the characteristics of E-Business -show how companies can build loyalty with customer relationship management 1.3 Relevance of the Topic 1.3.1 Theoretical Relevance Concerning E-Business there exists plenty of literature mainly from a technical point of view. The drawback is that although loyalty and relationships are seen as very important factors in the context of international business, the question has obtained scarce attention in literature about E-Business. Existing studies in this area mainly have descriptive character or try to offer quick-fix over-optimistic internet solutions, which become obsolete pretty fast. The contribution of this thesis is to fill that gap and offer a more conceptual/systematic as well as critical perspective. The thesis -Transfers the concept of relationship management into the environment of E-Business -Points out potential conflicts -Demonstrates benefits and show ways to increase online customer-loyalty 1.3.2 Practical Relevance ...