Abstract
M.Comm.
It is vital that customers' value drivers are identified and understood by the
companies they buy from. The companies need to hone in on what is important for
their customers in order to ensure that the customers will become loyal advocates for
the company.
Value-based marketing must be implemented to identify the value drivers, commit to
servicing and offering value, create value added offerings, assess the value offered
and continuously improve value so that it stays relevant and current.
CRM will assist with the caring and maintenance of the relationship. Relationship
marketing ensures retention and loyalty. Customers want to be handled as if they
mean something to the company and modern customers also know that their loyalty
is important to companies.
Segmentation assists companies with identifying the most valuable and profitable
customers and serving them and their needs should be the uppermost priority.
Segmentation is dependent on the data that exist and the fact that psychographical
data is ignored by those who are applying different software to enable the company
to increase sales, save time and cost and simplify processes, does not assist
marketing to use the data for targeted campaigns. Value-based pricing is analysed and value cannot be created by simply increasing
prices to increase perceived value. Different value equations are discussed that
suggest how companies can measure value and value delivery.
Chapter 3 is an overview of the South African motor vehicle industry. The role
players, controlling authorities and aspects such as legislation, pricing, production
and exports, market size, manufacturers and dealerships, sales figures and financing
are discussed. A chapter is devoted to the research methodology followed to get to research
findings. Interviews and mainly secondary data from published books and websites
have been used that formed the basis of the research.
The South African motor vehicle industry does not seem to regard CRM and valuebased
marketing as necessary, since the demand for vehicles exceeds the supply
and sales staff does not need to do prospecting or need to put major effort into
selling the cars available at dealerships.
International motor vehicle manufacturers seem to use different kinds of systems to
achieve different kinds of objectives. None of these seem to be able to achieve-both
business objectives and marketing objectives. The customer is mostly disregarded
and besides saving sales staff's time, doesn't impact on customer perceptions. The
recommendations suggested in the last chapter attempts to add the missing link.