Role of Customized Marketing in Retaining Customers

Running head: ROLE OF CUSTOMIZED MARKETING IN RETAINING CUSTOMERS
A Study on Role of Customized marketing in Retaining Customers – A Case
Study of Taj Hypermarket Suwaiq, Oman
JABI R ABDURAHIM
MIDDLE EAST COLLEGE OF INFORMATION AND TECHNOLOGY

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ROLE OF CUSTOMIZED MARKETING IN RETAINING CUSTOMERS
Abstract
The primary aim of this research is to identify how customized marketing can be used to
retain the current and potential consumers of Taj Hypermarket. Secondarily, this research will
also identify proper customized marketing strategies that Taj Hypermarket can implement to
acquire the best possible results. This research would be significant for two reasons. First of
all this research work would be highly important for academic purpose and secondly, this
research would be significant for professionals, including the management of Taj
Hypermarket. After reviewing the literature, it was found that the previous literature lacks the
understanding of the role of customised marketing in customer retention as well as attracting
new customers. Those researches has also failed to identify the relationship between the
customised marketing techniques for customer retention. The previous research has also
failed to analyse the factors influencing the customer retention through customised
marketing. These are the gaps of literature that will be bridged in the current research. The
data sources used for this research include both primary and secondary data. The primary
data is calculated based on the results of questionnaire and the customer feedbacks. The
secondary data incorporates the review of literature already done from peer-reviewed sources
from various trusted database, journals and academic websites. Descriptive statistics will be
used for analysing the primary quantitative data collected from 100 respondents. The analysis
will be presented using charts and graphs.

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ROLE OF CUSTOMIZED MARKETING IN RETAINING CUSTOMERS
Acknowledgement
I would like to expresses my deepest gratitude and appreciation to the committee chair
Professor __________, whose substance of genius and attitude has convincingly and
continually conveyed the adventure spirit in regards to scholarship and research in my fellow
classmates and me. Without his orderly guidance as well as help persistently I would never
have been completed the dissertation possibly. I am grateful to all the associated faculty
members and staffs that helped me in my research process. I would like to thank my friends
and peers without whom this research would be in vain. Finally, I would like to thank my
parents without whom I could never have completed this research.

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ROLE OF CUSTOMIZED MARKETING IN RETAINING CUSTOMERS
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction.....................................................................................................6
1.1 Introduction.................................................................................................................6
1.2 Background of the Research...............................................................................6
1.3 Research justification..................................................................................................8
1.4 Research Rationale.................................................................................................8
1.5 Significance of the research................................................................................9
1.6Research Aim............................................................................................................10
1.7 Research Objectives.............................................................................................10
1.8 Research Questions..............................................................................................10
1.9 Structure of the Dissertation.............................................................................11
1.10 Summary......................................................................................................................13
Chapter 2: Literature Review........................................................................................15
2.1 Introduction..............................................................................................................15
2.2 Previous Research.................................................................................................15
2.3 Concept of Marketing...........................................................................................17
2.4 Concept of Customized marketing..................................................................20
2.5 Advantages and Drawbacks of Customized marketing...........................21
2.6 Customer Retention..............................................................................................24
2.7 Strategies of Customer Retention with an example.................................28

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ROLE OF CUSTOMIZED MARKETING IN RETAINING CUSTOMERS
2.8 Relationship between customized marketing and customer retention
..............................................................................................................................................31
2.9 Conceptual Framework........................................................................................33
2.10. Hypotheses..................................................................................................................34
2.11 Conclusion..............................................................................................................34
Chapter 3: Research methodology.............................................................................36
3.1 Introduction..............................................................................................................36
3.2 Research onion.......................................................................................................36
3.3 Research philosophy.............................................................................................36
3.4 Research approach...............................................................................................37
3.5 Research methods.................................................................................................38
3.6 Research strategy..................................................................................................39
3.8 Data collection types and methods................................................................39
3.9 Sampling techniques......................................................................................................41
3.10 Research timeline.........................................................................................................41
3.11 Ethical considerations..................................................................................................41
3.12 Summary......................................................................................................................42
Chapter 4: Research analysis and findings...............................................................................44
4.1 Introduction....................................................................................................................44
4.2 Primary quantitative data analysis and findings.............................................................44
4.3 Primary qualitative data analysis and findings...............................................................42

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ROLE OF CUSTOMIZED MARKETING IN RETAINING CUSTOMERS
4.4 Summary........................................................................................................................42
Chapter 5: Conclusion and recommendations..........................................................................44
5.1 Conclusion......................................................................................................................44
5.2 Linking with objectives..................................................................................................45
5.3 Recommendations..........................................................................................................46
5.4 Future scope of the study...............................................................................................51
5.5 Limitation of research....................................................................................................52
References...........................................................................................................................53
Appendix...............................................................................................................................57
Survey Questionnaire..................................................................................................57

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ROLE OF CUSTOMIZED MARKETING IN RETAINING CUSTOMERS
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Introduction
The chapter of introduction has provided a brief background that is necessary for the details.It
is very important for contextualizing the study for the overall research as well as creation for
interest that usually aims for showing why the topic of the research has been selected.It has
also provided a reason why the topic for the current dissertation is very
essential.Additionally, the chapter of introduction have narrowed the focus after defining the
research scope in the general interest area.The current chapter has provided pivotal study
around the research along with the research rationale. The research scope and been if focused
on providing essential information for practical application.The current chapter has also
helped in understanding of the overall scholarly topic.The significance of the research has
also been provided along with the research objectives, questions and aims which has been
formulated for the current dissertation. An overall structure of the dissertationhas also been
provided and it is followed by a summary of the entire chapter one for introduction.
1.2 Background of the Research
Customized marketing that is also known as personalized marketing is a
popular marketing strategy that entirely focuses on targeting marketing
initiatives and sending a message to individual existing or potential
consumers (Csikósováet al. 2014). Individual or personalized marketing
entirely depends on data analysis techniques along with digital technology
(Shen 2014). On the other hand, this marketing technique is also known
as one-to-one marketing technique and as the name suggests, in this
marketing technique needs of every single customer is customized
(Shankar et al. 2016). For implementing, a successful customized

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ROLE OF CUSTOMIZED MARKETING IN RETAINING CUSTOMERS
marketing an organization needs to collect personal information about its
existing or potential consumers (Guelmanet al. 2015). After collecting
personal data, this data is then analysed and leveraged to deliver
customized, targeted offers, recommendations and messaging designs to
appeal to every customer based on the previous attitudes, buying
behaviours, interests and other data (Tucker 2014). The best medium for
customized marketing is digital media through which it is highly possible
to track information with the help of cookies, beacons or interactive
feedback tools on a website (Boyle et al. 2014).
This dissertation will not only focus on customized marketing as it will also
focus on the retention of customers through customized marketing (Sun
et al. 2014). According to Jahromiet al. (2014) customer retention,
strategies include activities and actions that organizations implement to
minimize the number of customer defections (Ennewet al. 2015). The
primary goal of customer retention programs is to retain as many
customers as possible (Tauniet al. 2014). Now, for retaining customers
and to increase customer loyalty, several marketing techniques are used
that include but are not limited to digital marketing, social media
marketing, e-mail marketing, direct marketing, search engine optimization
and customized marketing (Tripathiet al. 2014). This particular research
work will focus on how through customized marketing it is possible to
retain customers.
In order to find out the role of customized marketing in customer
retention, which is the aim of this study, a hypermarket chain is selected