Marketing Chapter 5 Homework Brand And Customer Asset Evolution Least Equal

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Chapter 05

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APPLICATION QUESTIONS

1. Consider each of the brands below. Assuming that a strong CRM system is in place in each

brand’s parent firm, what specific actions can marketing managers take in each case to

ensure high satisfaction and loyalty among the most profitable customers?

Students will provide various answers. The following are examples of possible responses.

a. Aeropostale

A CRM system can help Aeropostale discover which customers purchase which

clothing items to aid in development of new products.

b. Wynn Las Vegas

c. Your own college or university

A CRM system will help the admissions/recruiting team keep track of students who

have inquired about or visited the university, including student preferences and

priorities.

d. Subaru automobiles

2. Consider the CRM process cycle of knowledge discovery, market planning, customer

interaction, and analysis and refinement. Pick a company of interest to you and identify

one of its important brands or product lines (it can be a good or a service). Chart what

you believe the CRM process cycle should be for that firm, paying particular attention to

identifying the relevant customer touchpoints. Be as specific as you can in describing

each of the cycle elements.

Student answers will vary based on companies/brands/product lines chosen. As an

example, consider AT&T’s cellular phone business:

Knowledge Discovery

• Customer Touchpoints

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o Email communications and responses

o Retail store transactions and other interactions with retail personnel

Marketing Planning

Customer interactions collected in the CRM system can inform planning for all parts of

the marketing mix:

• Product – New versions of existing products or new products can be developed to

solve problems or fill gaps exposed through feedback from customers. E.g.,

customers may complain about running out of minutes on their cell plan or about

Customer Interaction

AT&T representative s in the call centers (sales and service) and at the retail locations

can more intelligently interact with customers through information contained in the CRM

system. E.g., knowing that a particular customer has been a long time Apple iPhone user

would allow the customer rep to offer the latest version or to suggest optional

accessories.

Analysis and Refinement

An effective CRM system coupled with a data warehouse should allow marketing

management to quickly adjust marketing programs based on the accumulated feedback in

3. In the chapter you read about several Big Data sources. For each Big Data source listed

below, identify an organization that you believe uses (or could use) that data source and

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Students should be able to provide a variety of organizations based on their personal

experience as consumers. Some examples follow.

a. Social media platforms

Chick-fil-A uses Facebook and Twitter for a variety of promotional and customer

service functions. Questions: Do our guests (customers) like our new Spicy Chicken

Sandwich? Should we keep it on the menu as a regular offering across all of our

stores?

b. Customers’ Internet-connected devices

The WalMart app offers customers the ability to pay from their phone, see the store’s

weekly ad, refill prescriptions, order online and pickup in the store the products they

c. Mobile applications

Sports equipment manufacturer ASICS offers an adaptive running app that athletes

can use to create a customized training plan, based on their fitness level and training

d. Commercial entities

Most large consumer companies (like Marriott as an example) use data brokers like

Axciom (https://www.acxiom.com/) to either create or enhance their database of

customer and prospect information. This data can be used to more efficiently and

effectively reach out to prospects who are likely to be interested in a company’s

e. Government agencies

Fast food companies such as Five Guys, likely use U.S. government census data as a

starting point to assess which cities and towns would be good candidates for a new

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further filter the initial list with other criteria such as income levels, competitors and

of course, the cities where Five Guys already have a store.

4. Select an organization that employs a highly personalized approach to selling products or

services to its customers online. Ideally, this is one that you have used in the past so that

you are more familiar with it.

Most students will quickly choose Amazon, so it may be best to eliminate that choice to

get students to think of other options. Another example is the clothing company Stitch

Fix.56

a. What are some different ways that the selected organization employs personalization

in its marketing efforts?

All customers fill out a personalized style profile. This becomes the basis for a

“curated” set of 5 clothing selections to be delivered to the customer upon request.

b. What are some specific actions/behaviors that customers engage in on the

organization’s website that enable personalized marketing efforts you identified

above?

c. What are some specific actions/behaviors that an organization could collect data on

that might provide evidence that the personalization efforts identified above have had

a positive effect?

The most obvious behaviors for Stitch Fix would be 1) the frequency with which

customers ask to have the curated products sent to them and 2) the number of those

products that they customer keeps vs. those they send back.

d. Which type of marketing analytics approach(es) discussed in this chapter would be

best suited for establishing the value of personalization for the organization?

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Diagnostic Analytics – As an online company, there is a rich set of analytics provided

by search engines like Google to help determine the effectiveness of search-based

advertising. Other analysis can be done on the placement of banner ads appearing

on relevant websites. This analysis can help determine which investments have had

the highest return and should be either continued, expanded or discontinued.

Predictive Analytics – Stitch Fix could use this approach to try to determine which

email marketing message is the most likely to get prospects to sign up for the

5. Pick a firm that interests you and for which you have some knowledge of its offerings.

a. How would this firm benefit from a marketing dashboard approach?

Alignment of Marketing with the Firm – A marketing dashboard aligns marketing

objectives with the company’s financial objectives and corporate strategy through the

selection of critical metrics and sharing of results.

Development of Internal Relationships with Marketing – The marketing dashboard

not only creates organizational alignment within marketing by linking all

expenditures back to a smaller set of focused objectives, it also clarifies the

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information” is a dramatic reduction in time spent in highly politicized arguments,

which greatly speeds decision making in organizations.

Enhancement of Marketing’s Ability to Contribute – A dashboard creates

transparency in marketing’s goals, operations, and performance, creating stronger

b. What elements would you recommend it put onto its dashboard? Why do you

recommend the ones you do?

Goals and Objectives – These are the goals of the company, translated into a set of

marketing objectives. All ideas, initiatives, and metrics should be considered in light

of these.

Initiative ROI and Resource Allocation – An important part of a marketing

dashboard is measuring the incremental cash flows generated by marketing programs

and action plans in the short term. In addition, the dashboard is an excellent tool to

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c. How could the firm avoid some of the pitfalls potentially associated with marketing

dashboards?

Over-reliance on “inside–out” measurement. Having too many internal measures

puts the focus on what you already know instead of on the unpredictably dynamic

external marketplace. A focus on monitoring external factors likely to cause

significant changes to the marketing plan is what makes a dashboard especially

valuable.

Too many tactical metrics; not enough strategic insight. Because of the focus over

the past decade on holding marketing accountable for financial results, a

MANAGEMENT DECISION CASE

Outline India: Enabling the Jump from Data to Decisions

This case helps students get to the essence of marketing analytics. By using a company in India,

where the multi-billion-dollar data infrastructure available in much of the west is absent, it may

be easier to boil down your discussion of analytics by focusing on the core problems that Outline

India is solving.

One basic concept most students will overlook is the difference between “helping to ensure

accuracy” and “ensuring accuracy.” It is a rare circumstance where one can ensure accuracy.

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and expect the data to have the same levels of confidence but don’t “have the time” to

understand the limits of data collection realities. An analyst’s job includes proper framing of the

results so executives can make truly informed decisions.

Questions for Consideration

1. What general and specific types of market data would you need to perform an analysis of the

Indian market? Which of these data might be less available in a developing country?

If we think of the highest generic categories of data one may use to analyze a market, there

are three categories we can use to start the discussion. For each of these, I’ll contrast

available data in the United States with the problems Outline India faces. The professor may

substitute any specific data element that has already come up in the class as a substitute. But,

the process of analysis – finding meaningful patterns in data – remains the same.

a. Quantity attributes: Just how many people and households are there? Usually,

basic quantity data on a market comes from governmental sources (e.g., a

national census). Marketers use these data, along with supplemental data (see

b. Quality attributes. What are the demographics, needs, buying power of my target

market? While basic counts are similar between countries, questions asked (such

as how the household access water) indicate significant, and expected, differences

between the two countries’ quality of life. As supplemental data, the US gathers

c. Speed attributes. How quickly does messaging occur? How quickly can products

be moved to the marketplace and exchange occur? To answer these questions, a

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the more questions you have about an area (because the data are sparse), the less

likely it is you will be able to get the answers. Infrastructure clearly affects many

forms of promotion and distribution, but also product speed-to-market can be

affected by delays in getting needed parts to assemble. All of these, of course,

have an impact on price.

In the US, much data is available in secondary form for all of these categories. In India,

however, only the quantity data are widely available for most attributes.

Another important discussion point for students is the problem statement. This is as relevant

in marketing analytics as it is in marketing research. Outline India got its start by trying to

2. If you were faced with the problem Outline India faces—trying to gather not only a large

amount of data, but making sure that data is of high quality—how might you go about

helping to ensure that the data are accurate and complete?

One way to look at this problem is to consider the resources available. Labor is one resource

India has in relative abundance when compare to the US. As such, it is more economically

feasible to redundantly gather data to help ensure its accuracy using, effectively, a test-retest

3. What are some non-technological barriers Outline India may face when trying to gather data

in the field?

Language – There are 22 languages listed in the Indian Constitution as being officially

recognized for conducting at least regional government business and the exams for public

service within each region. If that wasn’t complex enough, there are dozens of additional

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languages and hundreds of dialects spoken in various pockets of India, making it more

difficult to gather data.7 Compared to the US, where most surveys are in English or Spanish

(unless they are targeting a specific community who speaks, for example, Chinese), Indian

data gatherers have a much more difficult task.

Conflict – There are areas in India where armed conflicts occur. Gathering data in a war

zone is too dangerous for a company like Outline India to undertake so these areas may be