Customer Relationships: Operations, Marketing, and Mass Customization

This report delves into the critical aspects of customer relationships, focusing on their benefits and the impact of mass customization. It highlights the roles of operations and marketing within Virgin Mobile UK, examining their strategies and how they collaborate to achieve business objectives. The report analyzes the advantages of building strong customer relationships, including increased revenue, customer loyalty, and enhanced brand reputation. It also discusses the pros and cons of mass customization, such as higher customer attraction and reduced overhead costs. Furthermore, the report explores various operational and marketing strategies employed by Virgin Mobile UK, like corporate, customer-driven, and product strategies, along with pricing and promotion strategies. It also examines the extent to which marketing and operations work together to beat the competitors, emphasizing the importance of coordination and communication. The report concludes by summarizing the key findings and emphasizing the importance of customer relationships for long-term business success.

Customer relationships

Customer relationships
Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................3
Benefits of building customer relationships and Pros and cons of mass customization...............................3
Role of operations and marketing in Virgin Mobile UK..............................................................................4
Operations and marketing strategies............................................................................................................4
Examine the extent to which marketing and operations work together........................................................5
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................6
References...................................................................................................................................................7
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Introduction
The major objective of this report is to outline and explain the pros and cons of mass
customization as it also highlights how operations and marketing play a major role in Virgin
Media. Virgin media UK provides mobile products and services to the customers across the
world. The paper also reveals the benefits of building good and strong customer relationships.
The conflicts and concerns that are raised between operations and marketing also have been
explained in the task.
Virgin mobile UK is known as mobile from Virgin Media Company that provides mobile phone
services to the customers across the world. The firm was incorporated in 1999 by Virgin Group
as the world’s first biggest mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) (Virginmedia, 2018).
Benefits of building customer relationships and Pros and cons of mass customization
It has been examined that long term customer relationships is needed to earn more revenue and
profitability. It is significant to nurture and cultivate customer relationships because it helps in
gaining loyalty, belief and moral of the customers. This can be done with the help of mass
communication. There are enormous benefits of customer relationships. Network opportunities
are gained by building sold and strong long term customer relationships (O’Donnell, 2017).
Solid customer relationship is also unique and vital to introduce change in the competitive
market. It also improves and enhances the marketing adeptness and effectiveness. If Virgin
media UK looks clients or customers correctly and effectively, they are more likely to be
satisfied with service that increases and improves the chances of them encouraging and
promoting the business in the global market. Effective and strong long term customer
relationships also are vital to raise awareness and improve the brand reputation and image
(Keller, Parameswaran and Jacob, 2011).
Higher customer attraction and retention is one of the benefits of mass customization in Virgin
Media UK. It also reduces overhead costs and mass communication helps in providing mobile
products to the customers at suitable time. It also helps in streamlining the production facilities
of the company. The customer orders can be placed easily with the help of mass customization
(Smith, 2017). If Virgin media wants to increase sales and revenue then it needs to focus on the
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satisfaction level of the customers. It reduces extra marketing efforts and helps in gaining
competitive benefits globally. Forecasting is one of the biggest issues in mass communication
and it takes lot of time and efforts.
Role of operations and marketing in Virgin Mobile UK
It has been studied that operations and marketing play a major role in Virgin mobile UK for
selling the mobile products to the customers across the world. An effective and exclusive portion
of operations engage for mobile operators in order to improve and enhance the effectiveness and
competence of network activities and sales operations. The exceptional and effective operations
also improve and enhance the capability of the firm and workers as well. From an operations
point of view, operations at Virgin Mobile UK are needed for providing irreplaceable and
dynamic services to the customers across the world (Yu, Ramanathan and Nath, 2014).
On the other hand, the marketing is vital for Virgin Mobile UK for promoting the products in the
international market. In business to business market, the marketers focus on the selling of mobile
and internet products for gaining competitive benefits in the competitive market. The company
can easily develop a strong and reciprocal relationship with customers by conducting marketing
efforts (Mu, 2017).
Operations and marketing strategies
It is investigated that operations and marketing strategies help in managing the customer’s
relationships effectively. The operations strategies include corporate strategy, customer driven
strategies, product and services development strategy (Richards, 2018). On the other hand, the
marketing strategies include product strategy, price strategy, place strategy and promotion
strategy. Virgin Media UK uses all these strategies to stand out over the competitors in the global
market. By using operations and marketing strategies, Virgin Media is able to identify and
analyze the choices, needs and demands of the customers for boosting sale and returns. The
company can get full knowledge and information about the competitor’s products and prices by
implementing operations and marketing strategies. All these strategies help the management of
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Virgin Media UK to build and enhance good relationships with customers (Thakur and
Workman, 2016).
There are several corrections need to be made to these strategies. Firstly, Virgin Media UK
analyzes and evaluates the prices of competitors to attract and retain wide range of customers.
Therefore, various improvements are done by the company in prices to attract majority of the
customers. The company will use competitive pricing strategy to fight and struggle with
competitors. Moreover, various corrections are made in corporate strategy to decide and set the
dynamic corporate goals and objectives (Sashi, 2012).
The company needs to make the changes in corporate strategy, customer driven strategy, product
strategy, promotion strategy, place strategy and price strategy. An effective team is appointed by
Virgin Media UK to keep an eye on the price, product and strategies of the competitors. It will
help the company to cope up with rivals in the international market. Virgin Media UK also needs
to focus on the corporate strategies including growth, stability and renewal strategy. By making
changes in all these strategies, the company can serve the customers in a better way and it will
also help to increase and augment the productivity and competence (Thompson, 2018).
Examine the extent to which marketing and operations work together
It is true that marketing and operations work together to beat the competitors and maximize the
outcomes. Marketing has a several impact on both the consumers and cooperation as well. As for
Virgin Media UK, marketing plays a major role in brand building, cooperate culture,
communication, value spreading, so does it connect a brand with target customers to make the
company more credible and dynamic and for customers, marketing is considered as a window to
reveal them new products in the global market. Marketing helps in providing right guidance to
the company for operating business effectively and smoothly. In this way, marketing and
operations work together to stay in the competitive market. The marketing managers maintain
coordination with operations managers to run the business activities successfully. Without
operation management, the marketing cannot be done. Thus, marketing and operations help in
making distinctive decisions to build good and strong customer relationship (Alon, Jaffe, Prange,
and Vianelli, 2016).
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Marketing and operations are directly interconnected in Virgin Media UK. If there is any conflict
between operation and marketing team, then the company has to bear huge loss. It will also
affect the quality of mobile products. Lack of feedback and confusion over authority issues are
being faced by operations and marketing department (Smith, 2017). These issues can be reduced
by making good and open communication at the workplace. The executive and managers should
be in the feedback loop and regular meetings with marketing and operations managers can help
to handle and manage the feedback issues in two departments. Along with this, operation and
marketing department should focus on the choices and preferences of the customers to handle
and resolve the conflicts. If there is any conflict arises with customers then they resolve and
prevent these issues effectively (Malthouse et al, 2013).
Conclusion
It is concluded that strong customer relationship leads high revenue and profitability. It also
helps in striving with competitors in the international market. It is analyzed from the above
discussion that Virgin Media UK makes sole and dynamic policies to build strong and dynamic
customer relationships.
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References
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