Customer Relationship Management and Marketing Strategies at Morrisons

This report delves into Morrison's business environment, focusing on its customer relationship marketing (CRM) strategies. It examines the importance of relationship marketing and consumer retention, evaluating the consumer relationship managerial process and the application of the IDIC model (Identification, Differentiation, Interaction, and Communication). The report also analyzes Morrison's customer chain and value proposition, incorporating a Buttle CRM Value chain analysis. The report compares Morrison's approach to that of competitors like Sainsbury and Tesco, highlighting their customer identification, differentiation, interaction, and communication strategies. It further explores the benefits of CRM, such as improved customer service, cost reduction, better customer retention, and increased profit. Recommendations are provided to enhance the effectiveness of Morrison's marketing strategies, emphasizing the importance of customer feedback and employee training. The report concludes with an overview of Morrison's retail business, its mission, and its global presence, including its value proposition and market capitalization.

Contents
Question1....................................................................................................................................................2
Introduction.............................................................................................................................................2
Relationship marketing and consumer retention......................................................................................2
Evaluation of the consumer relationship managerial process..................................................................4
Conclusion and recommendations...........................................................................................................6
Question 2...................................................................................................................................................8
Introduction.............................................................................................................................................8
Morrison’s customer chain and value preposition...................................................................................9
Buttle CRM Value chain analysis........................................................................................................9
Recommendations.................................................................................................................................12
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................13
References.................................................................................................................................................15
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Question1
Introduction
This report examines the business environment of the Morrison and the customer relation market
is the main focus. An organization is an established mechanism and has an organizational
structure for achieving its purposes. Effective organizations have strategies to mark and maintain
a viable and feasible market for their products and services. For fulfilling its aims which
generally include profit maximization, an integration strategy is a must and is of various types
and forms. For most organizations, the dynamic process of adapting to market changes and
uncertainty of the market environment, organizational reorganization and integration is an
important tool in effectively maintaining and efficient alignment with the ever changing
environment. The main features of an organization in terms of their business and environment
are that the organization work after evaluating the factors to an extent to which a certain market
may be influenced by government. So, the government policies followed in the export countries
need to be assessed to introduce the product and to be compared with the government policies
followed to enhance the compatibility. For instance, the imposition of new taxes or duties may
change the entire structure of revenue generation. The other factors are also taken into account
like trade tariffs, taxation policies, fiscal policies etc. and, its impact on the business environment
are to be evaluated (Goodwin, 2011).
Relationship marketing and consumer retention
The main area of problem is the way marketing and handling of customers is carried out. The
target area should be customer satisfaction and for this the value and demands of the customers
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should well studied and focused on. It is of utmost importance to understand the way customers
think and what they require in order to keep them happy and satisfied. So the basic problem lies
in recognizing the needs of the customers and fulfilling them through proper market techniques
and practices (Srivastava, 2013). The solution to this problem would be effective marketing
techniques, realizing the long term life time developments. Another way to solve this problem
would be to come up with ways that are less formal and those that consume less time. There is a
need for the organizations to speed up their inside management and to make the learning process
regarding the needs of the customers properly explained to all employees (Leverin & Liljander,
2013).
There is an approach used to build the relationship marketing and that approach is the IDIC
model which is used by many companies. This model is based on the four parameters- customer
identification, differentiation, interaction and communication.
Customer Identification: - This approach is helpful to identify the customers through the cookies
or visiting to the sites by asking them to log in. This process has also involved in the drip
irrigation, which means to verify, update the old information about the customers and use them
again for building the good customer relations (KumariAdikaram & Yajid, 2016).
Customer differentiation: - This feature of the IDIC model builds a profile to target the segment
customers. The services are developed for the each customer in the different segment. This will
help to identify the top customers as well as the non profitable customers (Eco-Skies, 2013).
Customer Interaction: - These are the queries of the customers through online and the companies
listen to their needs and queries and respond to the major customers. The interactions involved
through email, posts, and phones.
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Customer Communication: - This refers to the dynamic or mass response to the customer
interactions or the queries according to the segmentation. This stage of the IDIC model involves
the market research (Urbanskiene & Žostautienėe, 2008).
Evaluation of the consumer relationship managerial process
Customer Relation Management is the term that refers to the strategies, practices, methods and
technologies that many organizations and company’s use in order to manage and study their
relations with their customers along with different ways of interacting with their customers. It
deals with the management of data of the different customers throughout their lives of being
customers. The main goal or aim behind this method is to improve relations with the customers
and also to improve and ensure growth of the organization as a whole. These systems are
specially designed so as to carry a large amount of data and information of different customers
through different channels such as the company’s website, telephone, live chat, direct mail,
marketing materials and lastly social media (Mollah, 2014).
For example- There are two competitors using the IDIC approach to the Customer relationship
management. These two competitors are– Sainsbury and Tesco in UK. These companies also
provide to their employees that deal with customer’s basic and personal information of the
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customers, purchasing history of the customers, buying preferences and concerns. The strategies
used by these supermarkets like Morrisons, Tesco and Sainsbury are different in nature to attract
the customers.
Customer identification: - There are many ways to identify the customers and Morrisons is
taking the part in the opportunities of capital light growth and engaged themselves with the
Amazon online store to identify the customers as compared to Sainsbury and Tesco. Sainsbury
took a step of acquisition with Argos and it was a good step taken by the Sainsbury for the
growth and for building the relations with the customers. Tesco also bought Booker to dominate
the other competitors in customer identification.
Customer differentiation: - The Morrison, Tesco and the Sainsbury are the companies that cover
the huge amount of the markets. The Morrison and its competitors always focus on the changing
shopping habits as well as the tastes and preferences of the customer. The customers can be
differentiated in many ways, according to their age, preferences, needs, etc. All these companies
Morrison, Tesco and Sainsbury are still battling to respond to the shopping habits of the
customers.
Customer Interaction: - The Morrisons retail store focus on the CRM capability from Capgemini
to meet the needs of the customers and to interact with them to know their queries and
requirements. Sainsbury gives away the cashless vouchers to satisfy the demands of the
customers, whereas the Tesco offers the rewards in the form of the coupons also.
Customer Communication – The Morrisons communicate with its customers by hiring the expert
staff and by interacting with the people. All these companies are using the social media,
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advertisement and the newspapers to communicate with the people. The Sainsbury is less into
advertisement as compared to the Tesco and Sainsbury (Mansuri, 2002).
Some of the benefits of the Consumer relationship marketing are as follows: -
As compared to any other organization that does not follow the technique of CRM the level of
customer service would be higher in any organization that would follow the method. The
personal information of the customers such as preference of buying etc. is provided to this
department and hence it makes it easier for the department to provide better services ultimately
leading to customer satisfaction (Yapp, 2015).
Cost reduction- In Customer Relationship Management, the main thing is making the customer a
partner in your business, not just a subject. As customers are doing their own order entry and
have the power to find the information they need to come to a buying decision, therefore less
order entry and customer support staff are needed.
Better customer retention- As all the data and information is handled by a system; therefore it
becomes easier to retain the customers along with their full details. In this way the organization
has access to the needs and requirements if the customers which is also due to this system easy to
handle and access.
More profit- Since the cost of handling the business is less it leads to more profit because of cost
reduction in the basic management levels (Johansson, 2002).
Conclusion and recommendations
Marketing is a business process in which the loyalty of the customers, relationship with clients
and the brand value of the company is established by using different marketing activities. These
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marketing activities are used to promote the business of the company and reach the clients in the
remotest areas and set up a relationship with customers which are long term in nature. Basically,
in this process, the strategies which are used are solely directed towards customers and their
needs and preferences.
The main idea in the article is taking feedback from customers. The marketing technique used by
the company is promoting the efficiency of the company through survey system. Through the
feedback received, the customer satisfaction is analyzed and tries to gain insight into customer
friendliness. The service of the company is very quick and if it is found that the customer is
dissatisfied, the very next day that the customer is approached to know the queries
(Ahadmotlaghi, 2012).
A company can reach great heights of success if a better customer feedback system is adopted to
reach the core areas of customer's queries and solve them keeping in mind the other prospects.
As we have seen in the case study the personnel are very serious when it comes to solving
queries of the customers and they have adopted the policy of speedy disposal of their queries.
We have seen in the case study a perfect feedback system can add to the turnover of the
company. The Company has received a recognition award due to the feedback system followed
by the company.
The main aim is to focus on what the customers required and how fast and quickly this service
was provided to them without any delay or headache. The employees are trained in the field of
only focusing on the needs and satisfaction of the customers. Although they aim at solving the
problems of their customers as their topmost priority, but other than that they gave a lot of
importance in receiving feedback of their customers. They should believe that it is feedback from
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their customers that help them to know where they lack and which areas need more
improvement. Without feedback it is according to them impossible to make improvements.
Another strategy that one should have is to give bonuses to their employees depending upon the
level of satisfaction that they provided to their respective allotted customers. This is a driving
force that led to even better performances on the part of their employees. Employee recognition
programs are held in the company to provide rewards to employees on the basis of their
performance.
Question 2
Introduction
This report will explains the overview of the Morrisons and then it will outlines the value chain
prepostition. Morrisons deals with the retail business in all apparels, housewares, electronics and
food and non-food products and services. The successful operation of this organization makes
this store the world’s largest retail store chain and this company has approximately 11,453 stores
worldwide. This retail store is founded by legendary Willium Morrison in the year of 1899 and
before he started, Willium Morrison owned a chain of stores in the US. The main aim of
Morrisons is to offer the products and services according to the needs of customers either it’s
related to housewares, electronics, clothing and general services. Morrisons is serving more than
138 million people every week in the world. Morrisons main motto at the time of establishment
was ‘lower price anytime, anywhere’ and this is unchanged from 1962. Moreover, customers
used to call this store the Discounting Store. As per the records of the financial report in 2015,
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the company achieved revenue of $485.7 billion and approximately 1.8 million employees are
working in 50 states stores as well all the international stores in Argentina, Mexico, Brazil,
Canada etc. across the world. The market Capitalization of this retail store is around $195 billion
as of December 2015.
Mission: - The mission of the Morrisons is low price every day and also another mission is to
provide the best online shopping experience for the customers with the use of technology and to
give customers a huge variety of products at low prices with guaranteed satisfaction and friendly
service on convenient hours. William Morrison takes care of the quality work and the needs of
the customers (Morrisons, 2011). The main focus of Morrisons is to provide the best quality
services to its customers so that they will visit and shop in this departmental store again and
again. The goal of the Morrisons is to make the life of customers easy by the way of offering
quality services at reasonable prices and fulfill the needs of the clients whatever they want.
Morrison’s customer chain and value preposition
A value chain analysis and VRIN framework are used to analyze the strategic capabilities. These
help to identify the internal environment of the Morrisons company.
Buttle CRM Value chain analysis
A value chain analysis outlines the framework of the primary stages of the Morrisons and the
Support stages of the Morrisons to gain the competitive advantage to the business. Buttle in his
model introduces two stages:
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 Primary stages - These activities are the part of supply chain management as it includes
customer portfolio analysis, customer intimacy, network development, value preposition
and the customer life cycle etc.
Customer Portfolio Analysis: - The Morrisons company working all over the world with a
number of customers and focuses on maintaining the management of the customer needs and
identifying the needs by analyzing the data collected by the company (Fearne & Soosay, 2009).
Customer Intimacy: - Once the analysis of data is completed, then the next stage is to interact
with them and provide the services to the most valuable customers. The services provided by
Morrisons are better than its competitors to retain them. E-commerce sales are the most useful
technique used by the Morrisons to sell its ready products. The Morrisons company is on third
position of the retailers in the US in the terms of the e commerce business (Philips, 2012).
Network Development: - This stage of the Bustlee value chain includes all the suppliers,
investors, customers, retailers to build a strong network and influence the interaction of the
customers and the business of Morrisons (Kumar, 2016). There are the seven different ways of
Morrisons to sell their products in the market. These seven ways are retail stores, direct sales,
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online sales, third party resellers, wholesalers, retailers and the value added resellers (Kaplinsky
& Morris, 2000).
Value Preposition Development: - After the development of the network, the next stage is to
meet all the requirements, preferences and expectations. This stage involves the strategies that
focus to provide better services to the customers by reducing the costs and improving the
customer services to add more value.
Manage the customer life cycle: - The life cycle of the customer means the journey of the
customers starting from the need to the end of its consumption of the products or services.This
stage is focused on the satisfaction of the customers and to manage the customer satisfaction
level to build good relations to retain the customers.
Support stages: - These are the stages that support to the primary activities to attain the
profitability by the Morrisons. The supporting stages are leadership and culture, Data and IT,
people and processes. The culture and leadership in the organization help to manage the
customer services as the leaders are the persons provide the right direction and give priority to
the customer services as well as the culture of the Morrisons. Moreover, the Data and IT is
helpful in analyzing the customer needs by using the latest technologies on the Data collected by
the Morrisons. The people or the employees play a very important role to achieve the level of
profitability for the Morrisons (Kubi & Doku, 2010).
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Recommendations
It is very imperative to maintain the stock levels by the supermarkets to achieve the main
objective and success and become a famous supermarket store. The products like all the food
items offered by the Sainsbury, Walmart or other supermarket store needs to be healthy and safe
in nature. Supermarkets relied on the suppliers for its product items as well as the raw material.
There should be proper communication takes place between the retail store and the suppliers
regarding the tracking of the goods. The Inventory management process should comply with the
following aspects:
 The products and services offered by the supermarket store supposed to be in accordance
with the companies’ overall management course of action as well as the demand of
customers for food safety (Kalmarova, 2012).
 The supermarkets should be aware of the technologies. The updated technology should
be used to get the better results.
 Supermarkets should maintain its brand image and value by delivering the products or
services to the end user on time.
 Inventory management is highly influenced by the demand. So the demand of the
consumers should be analyzed to offer them the quality based products within the time
frame.
 Supermarkets should give surety about food safety and quality to their customers and also
guarantee great efforts to improve their management systems.
 Supermarkets also represent the framework for the concern and realization of
management goals and all these goals needs to be set up in the different departments of
the organization (Buttle, 2009).
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