Marketing Shell Oil

Good marketing cannot be imagined without concern about customers: One of the strategies in this field is Customer Relationship Management (CRM). It is a process of methodology used to learn more about customers’ needs and behaviors in order to develop stronger relationships with them. There are many technological components to CRM, but thinking about CRM in primarily technological terms is a mistake. The more useful way to think about CRM is as a process that will help bring together lots of pieces of information about customers, sales, marketing effectiveness, responsiveness and market trends.

The other useful strategy is Customer Retention. It is the marketing goal of keeping your customers from going to the competition. The rule of the thumb is that it costs five to ten times less to keep a customer than it does to acquire a new one. Retaining customers means keeping them active with you. If you don’t, they will slip away and eventaully no longer be customers. The truth is, almost all customers will leave you eventually. The trick is to keep them active and happy as long as possible, and to make money doing it.

An example: Shell Oil strategy Over the past few years this company has been developing detailed knowledge of consumer needs and attitudes, which formed the basis for a new initiative. They studied a sample group of their customers to find out what their needs were. The result was that everyone wanted three things form their service station: competitive price, a nearby location and good quality fuel.

A focus group was set up for each segment; an anthropological study was carried out, which involved team members spending long hours with people from each segment, watching them at home and accompanying them on shopping trips to see their buying habits. The study indicated that three groups should be targeted:

Premium speeders -outgoing, ambitious, competitive and detail oriented. They drive upmarket cars. Simplicity seekers -loyal, caring and sensitive, frustrated with complexities of everyday life. They want simple, easy tarnsactions. Safety firsters -control orientated, confident people, like oder and comfort of the familiar. Prefer to stay close to cars.

The common thread was that they all wanted a faster and easier service than anything already available. A new advertising campaign was launched and a sophisticated measurement system introduced to monitor satisfaction, behaviour and perception of the brand.

Compound adjectives II

Some compound adjectives can be formed by combining two words with no hyphen: match the two columns to form adjectives. Up Down Over Under Out Due Drawn Market Staffed Worked Priced Paid Dated

Replace the words in italics with a compound adjective: 1)The invoice still hasn’t been paid. It’s now two weeks late. 2)Some of our customers are complaining that our products are too expensive. 3)Our latest policy is to introduce more luxury products. This means that we will phase out our less sophisticated brands. 4)During the Christmas period many employees will be on vacation and as a result the company will be short of personnel.

5) The only catalogue I could find is from last year but I’afraid that the information in it is no longer valid. 6) For the last few weeks I’ve been staying late to get everything finished; I really feel that i’ve been doing too much. 7) The database is two years old and needs to be changed to include the latest information. 8) The workers claim that they are not earning enough. 9) My bank account has been in debit for the last two months.