Part 1
Traditional marketing has evolved through direct marketing into new marketing paradigm in the centre of which, new marketing concept is developed. This is the concept of the customer, where customer orientation is no longer marketing form, but a company strategy. In their article, Hoekstra, Leeflang and Wittink (1999) discuss the new marketing paradigm as a continuum of a customer concept, new marketing activities and a marketing domain. The new customer concept concerns the creation and design of superior customer value for company’s selected targets in order to obtain long term profits. New marketing activities such as creation of customer life-time value, attraction and retention of customers are developed, thus matching the customer preferences of products and services to prices, facilitated communication, promotions, specified distribution channels. Being a third element of the new marketing paradigm, marketing domain establishes the realization of relationships between customers and companies by integration and participation. To do so, the internal environment of companies plays a central role. Employees create superior customer value; therefore the relationship management meets different requirements in the organizational culture, leadership styles, HRM, business processes and stakeholder satisfaction.
Customer knowledge is one of the cornerstones of customer relationship management. It regards data collection, data management and analysis of company’s customers in order to create customer database and provide better understanding of customers needs and wants. Databased marketing (Oppermann, 1999) is determined as a marketing strategy that is based on a memory of business transactions with customers. The aim that this strategy pursues is focused ...