ASSESSMENT DESCRIPTION:

Answers should be between 500 and 1000 words long. Then the students will discuss their answer with another student and revise their answer accordingly. The students are required to submit individual answers for marking at the end of the lecture.

The weekly question are provided below.

Chapter 2: Understanding relationships

Identify four generic strategies for increasing the lifetime value of a customer.

Chapter 3: Managing the customer life cycle - customer acquisition

List five popular techniques for acquiring new consumers and rank them in order of which technique is most likely to result in high lifetime value customers; provide an explanation for your ordering.

Chapter 4: Managing the customer life cycle - customer retention and development

Loyalty programmes such as those run by airlines do not create loyalty and retain customers. Once all competitors offer similar schemes, all that happens is that marketing costs have risen in that industry. Argue for or against the proposition that loyalty programmes are effective customer retention strategies.

Chapter 5: Customer portfolio management

What is activity-based costing and why is it important for customer portfolio management?

Chapter 6: How to deliver customer-experienced value

Major car manufacturers tend to have long-term strategic relationships with core sub-assembly suppliers (e.g. drive train - engine, interior furniture, electrical systems, etc.). Using Williamson's Transaction Cost Economics theory, identify two reasons why each party (the manufacturer and the supplier) would wish to have a privileged relationship rather than rely on the marketplace (pure price-based tendering) for their buying and selling.