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Top1. Introduction
Marketers should know about their customers well in today’s competitive business scenario (Röding, Steinmann, Schmitz, & Schramm-Klein, 2022). Marketers should understand customer requirements and preferences well to be able to serve them properly. They should build fruitful relationships with their customers. A shift in two dimensions is needed to revitalize relationship marketing: from “share of wallet” to “share of heart” as the relationship marketing objective and from “managing customer relationships” to “managing contractual or virtual joint ventures with customers” as the process of relationship marketing (Sheth, 2017). Research has also shown that organizations should be oriented towards providing superior customer services and should have a customer service perspective to succeed in the competitive business environment. An organization and its leadership must adopt a customer orientation and show more attention to its demands (Palazón, López, Sicilia, & López, 2022). Companies also need to understand the key antecedents and consequences of relationship marketing across different industries (Verma, Sharma, & Sheth, 2016). Companies will not be able to understand what the customers want and what will keep them satisfied unless they have knowledge about their customers. Wants, needs, and expectations of customers change quickly. Therefore, what would have delighted and surprised them a short while back might not satisfy them at present (Carmen & Marius, 2016). Companies may not be able to provide superior services to their customers and may not be able to build relationships with them unless customer expectations are known. To provide better service to their customers, companies need to collect relevant and up-to-date information about their customers (Micheaux & Bosio, 2019). Companies collect data about customers and store them in databases from which they can retrieve the data as and when required to conduct database marketing. Companies utilize the data stored in such databases to generate relevant information and customer insights. Such insights help companies to develop and to maintain long-term customer relationships.
Development and maintenance of customer databases, database marketing, and customer relationship management are imperative for companies to succeed in the competition. It is imperative for companies to understand the connections and inter-connections among these three aspects. However, few studies focus on the connections and inter-connections among these aspects. A thorough analysis is required to understand these connections and inter-connections. The present study aims to address this research gap.
The objective of the study is to conduct a conceptual analysis of the connections among customer databases, database marketing, and customer relationship management. Research papers published in reputed academic journals on the topics and containing the latest literature on the topics are referred to conduct the analysis. The research question is: What are the roles of customer databases and database marketing in customer relationship management?
The methodology adopted is a conceptual analysis of the literature related to customer databases, database marketing, and customer relationship management. Literature available in research papers which are published in reputed academic journals related to the topic are analyzed. Conceptual analysis may provide deeper insights about how customer databases and database marketing play roles in customer relationship management. Primary data is not collected and empirical analysis is not done. The limitation of the method is that only conceptual analysis is done and empirical analysis is not done.
The contributions and the novelty of the study lie in the fact that a conceptual analysis of the connections among customer databases, database marketing, and customer relationship management is done. The discussions done in the study will sensitize both academicians and practicing managers about the importance of maintaining customer databases, practicing database marketing, and developing customer relationships. The discussions will help academicians and managers to appreciate the various issues in customer databases, database marketing, and customer relationship management. The discussions will also help them realize that maintenance of customer databases, performing database marketing, and developing customer relationships are not the solutions for all issues related to customers.
The study is structured as follows.