面向客户的项目管理过程

客户关系作为项目管理过程中的重要方面需要引起项目实施团队的高度重视,面向客户的项目管理过程是在项目实施中管理客户关系的有效方法。本文探讨了客户关系在项目过程中的重要性,根据客户在项目实施过程中的角色及项目过程中项目团队与客户间的常见冲突,结合项目实施的五大管理过程提出在项目实施过程中进行客户关系管理的主要工作。     

Customer Learning Processes,Strategy Selection,and Performance in Business‐to‐Business Service Firms*

Learning about customers takes place through relevant dialogues with those customers, also known as customer relationship management (CRM). As relationships develop, information about the customer is gathered in the firm's customer information systems (CIS): the content, processes, and assets associated with gathering and moving customer information throughout the firm. This research develops a measure of CIS management capabilities based on learning organization theory and measured by the ability to get, store, move, and use information throughout the business unit. This measure is then used to analyze customer learning processes and associated performance in the context of marketing strategic decision making. This study of 209 business services firms finds that generic marketing strategy positioning (low‐cost and differentiation) and the marketing tactics of personalization and customization are related to CIS development. Customer information systems development in turn is associated with higher levels of customer‐based performance, which in turn is associated with increased business growth. Since the strongest association with customer‐based performance is strategy selection, the long‐term benefits of the knowledge gained from the CIS may be in the ability to assist in measuring customer‐based performance, rather than in the ability to immediately contribute to performance. Finally, for these firms, customization and personalization are not directly associated with performance and thus may not be necessary to support every firm's marketing strategy.     

基于顾客参与的定制满意度研究

随着顾客个性化需求的提高,定制化生产已经成为企业满足顾客需求的有效途径之一。实行定制化生产,顾客必须参与产品的形成过程,因此,顾客参与生产过程与顾客满意度之间存在密切的联系。通过对定制个人计算机用户的问卷调查,分析定制化生产过程中顾客参与程度对顾客满意度的影响。建立了基于顾客参与的定制满意度模型,并分析了该模型的特性。提出了要实现顾客满意度最大化,企业应该鼓励顾客更多、更早地参与产品的形成过程的观点。同时,指出完全定制化生产是企业生产模式未来的发展趋势。     

Examining the role of cross-cultural factors in the international market on customer engagement and purchase intention

Customer engagement (CE) refers to an organization's effort to develop relationships with individual customers through personalized interactions using multiple available channels. The goal of such CE is to gain new customer and to retain loyal customers. In the last decade there have been many studies on CE, particularly in the domestic or local market context, which lack generalizability. Also, there is only limited research on CE in the international market context focusing on the cross-cultural aspects of customers. Thus, there is clearly a research gap. Therefore, the aim of this study is to examine the role of cross-cultural factors in the international market on CE and their influence on customer purchase intention. After reviewing existing theories and literature, a conceptual model was developed. Later, the model was validated using structural equation modeling with a sample of 432 customers of different countries in Asia and Europe. The study found that there is a significant impact of cross-cultural factors in the international market on customer engagement, which in turn impacts customers' purchase intention in the international market. This study also proposes and examines a rival model to determine the efficiency of the proposed model.     

Foundations and Implications of a Proposed Unified Services Theory

Diverse businesses, such as garbage collection, retail banking, and management consulting are often tied together under the heading of “services”, based on little more than a perception that they are intangible and do not manufacture anything. Such definitions inadequately identify managerial and operational implications common among, and unique to, services. We present a “Unified Services Theory” (UST) to clearly delineate service processes from non‐service processes and to identify key commonalities across seemingly disparate service businesses. The UST defines a service production process as one that relies on customer inputs; customers act as suppliers for all service processes. Non‐services (such as make‐to‐stock manufacturing) rely on customer selection of outputs, payment for outputs, and occasional feedback, but production is not dependent upon inputs from individual customers. The UST reveals principles that are common to the wide range of services and provides a unifying foundation for various theories and models of service operations, such as the traditional “characteristics of services” and Customer Contact Theory. The UST has significant operational corollaries pertaining to capacity and demand management, service quality, services strategy, and so forth. The UST provides a common reference point to which services management researchers can anchor future theory‐building and theory‐testing research.     

民航顾客资产驱动因素与顾客满意感和忠诚感关系的实证研究

作者在我国17个民航公司进行了一次实证研究,探讨顾客资产驱动因素和子驱动因素与顾客满意感、归属感和忠诚感的关系。聚类分析与罗吉斯蒂回归分析结果表明,资产价值不同的两类顾客对各类顾客资产驱动因素与子驱动因素的评估存在显著的差异,对民航公司的满意感、归属感和忠诚感也存在显著的差异。顾客对民航公司的满意感、归属感和忠诚感主要是由各类顾客资产驱动因素和子驱动因素决定的,而并非是由顾客的人口统计特点决定的。因此作者指出,民航公司可根据顾客重视的顾客资产驱动因素与子驱动因素细分顾客,针对不同的顾客采取不同的营销策略。     

MODELING CUSTOMER SATISFACTION IN TELECOMMUNICATIONS: ASSESSING THE EFFECTS OF MULTIPLE TRANSACTION POINTS ON THE PERCEIVED OVERALL PERFORMANCE OF THE PROVIDER

The ability of telecommunication operators to focus successfully on the customer has proven to be one of the most competitive issues toward the end of the 20th century. The services management literature is short of theoretical and empirical studies on customer satisfaction measurement in the telecommunications industry. This, however, is contrary to the industry practice since almost all major telecommunications companies around the world gather information about customer satisfaction and other related information about the quality of their services. Our research focuses on the customer satisfaction function of residential customers of a major European telecommunications company. Customer satisfaction is seen as the overall performance of the telecommunications company stemming from adequate service provision, value for money, loyalty, and relationship management. The antecedents of the performance of the organization are obtained from the contact points between the customers and the service points of the telecommunications company.     

The systemic perspective of service processes: underlying theory,architecture and approach

As competition in the service industry grows, delivering high-quality service to meet customers’ needs and expectations becomes paramount. In order to achieve a thorough understanding of customers, companies are increasingly adopting Customer Relationship Management (CRM) initiatives. However, CRM does not have the process vision necessary to cope with complex and cross-functional processes. This problem is better handled by Business Process Management (BPM) initiatives, which, by their turn, struggle to built-in customer intelligence in their systems. Based upon systems theory, we discuss the roles of CRM and BPM in an integrated approach to deliver customer fulfillment. As the evolution of service-oriented approaches requires us to consider both customer interactions and experiences as key elements of service processes, we present a broader perception of service processes involving these two perspectives. Also, we discuss the architecture of a customer-facing system comprising customer processes that are aimed at better dealing with customer interactions.     

Diagnosing Customer Value: Integrating the Value Process and Relationship Marketing

The concept of value and, more specifically, customer value is of increasing interest to both academics and practitioners. This paper undertakes a substantial review of past and current literature on value and categorizes this considerable body of research into nine streams of literature. Building on the emerging relationship marketing paradigm, it then proposes a framework for relationship value management. Nine core streams of value literature are identified and discussed: consumer values and consumer value; the augmented product concept; customer satisfaction and service quality; the value chain; creating and delivering superior customer value; the customer's value to the firm; customer‐perceived value; customer value and shareholder value; and relationship value. To date, the core focus of most of this literature has been on the nature of value from the perspective of the organization and its customers – the customer–supplier relationship. However, it is argued that the emergence of the relationship marketing paradigm has emphasized the role of other stakeholders in building relationships. An existing multiple stakeholder model of relationship marketing, the six markets model, is introduced and is integrated with key concepts from the value literature to produce a conceptual framework for relationship value management.     

顾客异质性对顾客满意度指数测评的影响

顾客具有异质性是市场营销领域的共识,当前的顾客满意度指数测评体系隐含了顾客具有同质性的假设.为了考察该假设对顾客满意度指数测评的科学性和公平性的影响,模拟了4种类型的顾客,并设计蒙特卡罗试验,发现在测评数据负偏时,通过目前的测评体系得出的某品牌的产品/服务顾客满意度指数将能代表该品牌真实的顾客满意程度.但是.目前顾客满意度测评中,测评数据负偏仅是一个经验特征事实,在中国存在经济差异、文化差异和城乡差异的情况下,这一经验特征事实尚有待验证.模拟研究还发现,当对异质的顾客群进行满意度测评时,如果部分测评数据出现正偏倾向,即部分顾客倾向于用低分数表达自己的满意时,顾客异质性对顾客满意度指数的科学性和公平性都将产生显著影响,此时需要时测评方法进行改进.     

Integration of IPA and QFD to assess the service quality and to identify after sales service strategies to improve customer satisfaction – a case study

Customer satisfaction is considered very essential nowadays as it shows how firms are dedicated to afford quality products or services to their customers. Retaining the existing customer and acquiring the new customers are the basic objectives of any organisation and after sales service (ASS) has acquired a strategic role as a mean to achieve customer satisfaction. Importance–performance analysis (IPA) and quality function deployment (QFD) are the powerful tools successfully applied in many fields. However, studies on application of these tools in investigating the ASS quality and customer satisfaction seems to be scarce. This article investigates linking of IPA, which is a simple and effective customer satisfaction tool and QFD in the improvement of ASS attributes in an effort to determine the appropriate ASS strategic action plans to be adopted with the objective of enhancing customer satisfaction. In this study, a customer-driven model is proposed to examine the importance of the various ASS attributes and the performance of the organisation via questionnaire survey, and through the IP analysis, the areas to be focused are identified to help the decision makers in devising suitable policies, to improve the ASS performance. This is achieved through the employment of QFD that will help decision makers in the strategic planning to attain better customer satisfaction. A case study is carried out to exhibit the effectiveness of the developed model in a firm involved in manufacturing the home appliances.     

Customer–supplier relationship management in an intelligent supply chain network

Outsourcing is leading to more and more complex industrial organisations. This can be attributed to the fact that several decision centres interact. As a consequence, changes in customer–supplier relationships can be noticed. In recent years, these relations have strongly evolved to lead to better internal management of each partner and a better general performance to satisfy customers. These evolutions created a new approach to the relationship between companies, called ‘industrial partnership’, in the form of a network. Networks induce a need at customer–supplier relation control level. The contribution and participation of each of the partners are thus fundamental to make supply chain management (SCM) a successful project. The control system of each actor partner must thus be adaptable enough to satisfy the production requirements. Our contribution to the improvement of customer–supplier relationship is a decentralised self-organised control model based on the concept of holon. In this model, the decision system manages a group of actors’ operations who are in a partnership. In this paper in particular a process for the evaluation of the suppliers network is discussed.     

行业竞争力导向的在线大规模定制产品族规模优化方法

客户导向的产品族规模优化方法在与竞争对手产品族相比时并不一定能使在线定制服务提供商获得竞争优势,还需要考虑竞争对手产品族对其产品族规模的影响。产品族规模优化应该在满足工程技术约束和制造规模经济性的基础上,引入产品功能配置元和结构配置元,结合客户需求强度和偏好分析,构建了行业竞争力导向的在线大规模定制产品族规模优化方法,最后结合案例证明该方法的有效性。     

The joint effects of customer participation in various new product development stages

The notion that customers provide distinct inputs that help tackle unique tasks in each new product development (NPD) phase leads firms to engage customers concurrently in various NPD stages rather than involving them only in one NPD stage. Involving customers in diverse NPD stages is based on the belief that the constructive effects of customer participation in each NPD phase could be supplementary. However, little is known about the joint effects of embracing customers in multiple NPD stages such as whether customer participation in a certain NPD stage enlarges or undermines the returns of customer participation in another NPD stage, and whether customer participation throughout the entire NPD process is really beneficial. Drawing upon the knowledge management perspective, this research investigates in which combination of NPD stages (ideation, development, and launch) engaging customers creates a synergistic or destructive impact on new product market performance. The results reveal that involving customers in both ideation and development stages and in both development and launch stages yields synergistic returns, whereas customer participation in both ideation and launch stages does not create any additional gains. Furthermore, customer participation across all three NPD stages does not improve new product market performance beyond the sole and joint effects of customer participation in two NPD stages. These noteworthy findings imply that the joint effects of customer participation do not always lead to synergistic impacts and depend on the value of customer knowledge and the difficulty of knowledge management of transferring and integrating customer knowledge gathered in various NPD stages. In a certain combination of NPD stages, where the difficulty of knowledge management becomes higher, customer participation cannot generate supplementary returns, and thus, firms can achieve a similar level of new product market performance with customer participation in limited NPD stages.     

基于客户价值的客户序位评价研究

客户关系管理是目前管理研究的热点,企业对客户价值的序位评价是其基础问题之一,其有效性是实施客户关系管理的基础.基于价值的客户序位评价是根据客户的价值大小来定位客户.本文首先在现有的客户价值评价体系的基础上结合客户生命周期理论设计了一种新的客户价值评价指标体系,从客户的生命周期阶段和客户发展潜力两个方面来评价客户价值.然后根据该指标体系的指标特性,选择神经网络作为评价方法.最后根据客户价值评价结果进行客户序位,并对每个类别的客户特征及其相应的营销策略进行了分析.     

Customer integration,fairness perceptions,and silent endurance in digital versus human service interactions

Growing digitization is accompanied by a concomitant increase in customer integration, making the customer an even more integral part of service settings, to the extent that customers even may replace employee labor. Customer integration can have positive effects for service firms and customers, but it also threatens some negative effects that have not been studied closely. This study proposes silent endurance as a neglected outcome of customer integration, caused by violations of customer fairness perceptions. In line with fairness heuristic theory, providing more input for the same output may reduce perceptions of distributive fairness. Four studies test this theorizing (one critical incident study and three experiments) to investigate the effect of being integrated on customers’ distributive fairness and silent endurance. Stable results across studies show that distributive fairness mediates the link between customer integration and silent endurance; offering monetary advantages can offset integration-induced losses of fairness perceptions. These findings thus have both theoretical and managerial implications.     

End-to-end process management: implications for theory and practice

The term ‘end-to-end’ process management is now commonplace in the language and practice of operations. Managers are encouraged to migrate from functional process management to end-to-end process management to realise a range of performance improvements. However, these improvements are often elusive; the specific challenges associated with such a migration are under-researched. This paper uses a cross-sector study to identify the challenges of end-to-end process management and to generate practical managerial guidance. Three areas are identified that demand particular managerial attention: the need to move beyond process mapping, the role of IT in process management and maintaining the process infrastructure as a strategic asset. More significantly, the findings highlight the need for greater conceptual clarity regarding the end-to-end concept itself. The existing literature suggests that scope is the primary differentiator of the end-to-end process – the requirement to manage an extended boundary from customer order through to customer fulfilment. However, this research suggests that the end-to-end concept is more complex, comprising of three core constructs with seven dimensions: scope (boundary conditions, sequence/flow and controls); scale (resources and input/output transformation) and complexity (interrelationships and orientation). End-to-end process management involves much more than an extended boundary. It requires a systemic perspective and clarity regarding controls and transforming resources.     

From Customer‐Oriented Strategy to Organizational Financial Performance: The Role of Human Resource Management and Customer‐Linking Capability

Drawing on the organizational capabilities literature, the authors developed and tested a model of how supportive human resource management (HRM) improved firms’ financial performance perceived by marketing managers through fostering the implementation of a customer‐oriented strategy. Customer‐linking capability, which is the capability in managing close customer relationships, indicated the implementation of the customer‐oriented strategy. Data collected from two emerging economies – China and Hungary – established that supportive HRM partially mediated the relationship between customer‐oriented strategy and customer‐linking capability. Customer‐linking capability further explained how supportive HRM contributed to perceived financial performance. This study explicates the implication of customer‐oriented strategy for HRM and reveals the importance of HRM in strategy implementation. It also sheds some light on the ‘black box’ between HRM and performance. While making important contributions to the field of strategy, HRM and marketing, this study also offers useful practical implications.     

Interface management research in supplier–customer relationships: findings from a citation analysis of international literature

Currently, the terms interface and interface management in the context of interorganisational relationships between suppliers and customers are under intensive discussion. Central issues are the emphasis placed upon the coordination of activities at business interfaces, and the conviction that the concept can make business operations more efficient and thus more effective. That interface management in supplier–customer relationships is discussed in various academic disciplines and characterized by various thematic approaches makes this field complex. Thus the first goal of this article is to investigate the state of interface research, identifying select topics that promise further significant research in the field of interface management in supplier–customer relationships. In addition, based upon a comprehensive citation analysis of 176 journal articles or 4,654 references, the publication development, the important players and the most important academic journals in interface management research in supplier–customer relationships will be briefly presented. Finally, five clusters in interface management research that provide a framework for additional research activities are, based on a co-citation analysis, defined and briefly analysed.     

通过顾客关系服务化来强化顾客价值过程--顾客关系时代的营销新命题

本文建立在这样一个全新的观念基础之上,即营销资源和活动必须与企业所面临的目标顾客相互一致,同时,顾客价值不是由制造商或服务提供者创造的,而是由顾客在其价值创造过程中创造的.企业的资源、流程和能力并不是企业的生产(如产品)、管理(如网站)、财务(如结算)、法律(如顾客申述的处理)及其它活动过程的结果,而应当被视为顾客价值创造过程的投入要素.因此,供应商的作用是通过向顾客提供恰当的资源要素,如产品、服务、信息、服务补救、个性化关怀等来支持顾客价值创造过程,并与顾客资源形成互动,惟此,顾客才会感知到价值被创造出来.要以此方式运营,企业必须将自己看作是服务企业,而且真正地为顾客服务.为强化顾客价值的生成,企业必须将其客户关系中的所有要素"服务化"(Servicizing),无论是与制造或服务相关的,还是管理、财务或者法律等常规活动.这些常规活动通常属于"隐性服务"(HiddenService),它们在价值创造中的潜力没有得到应有重视.相反,这些要素对顾客价值的生成过程常常起到破坏而不是支撑作用."服务化"意味着要将所有与顾客关系相关的要素,不管它们的类型和特性如何,转化为顾客价值创造过程中的投入要素.最后,本文还探讨了在顾客关系管理时代,如何配置企业营销资源及营销规划等问题.