Take the customer seriously if you care about your bottom line

Marketing: Companies with close customer relations make more money

03/16/2011

Take the customer seriously if you care about your bottom line

Companies with close customer relations have higher earnings than companies with more focus on the product than the customer. That is one of the tendencies in a new survey 'Profitable kunder nu (profitable customers now)', made by Professor Torsten Ringberg and External Lecturer Per Østergaard Jacobsen.

Unnerving, when companies neglect their customers

The small sticker with the text 'Reklamer Nej tak (no advertising material)' has become increasingly popular in Denmark along with the Robinson List - a list of people who have opted out of receiving marketing material of any kind. It has become harder to get in direct contact with the customers, which is why there is an increase in the need of obtaining knowledge about the customers and to use this knowledge, especially in cases where customer retention and reacquisition are essential elements.

- It is disturbing that 35 percent of the participating companies fail to gather information about their customers. And very interesting that the companies spend less than 10 percent of their marketing resources to win back their customers, which has proven more efficient than attracting new customers, says Per Østergaard Jacobsen.

Are loyalty programmes the solution?

The common denominator for a large part of the most profitable companies is loyalty programmes such as CoopPlus by the Scandinavian supermarket Coop or SAS’ bonus programme EuroBonus.

- The survey shows a clear tendency that companies with loyalty programmes are the most profitable. The analysis indicates that there is a great potential in measuring performance in relation to business optimisation, says Torsten Ringberg.

'Profitable kunder nu' - a customer relationship analysis

The survey has been carried out among Danish companies in January and February 2011 by CBS in partnership with Huset Markedsføring and Intermail.

Download the entire survey ’Profitable kunder nu’ at profitablekunder.nu, where you can also find previous customer and marketing analyses.

The page was last edited by: Sekretariat for Ledelse og Kommunikation // 03/21/2011