The main subject of the chapter is to explain how perception of people works and how looks a way from our senses to interpretation of its signal from marketing perspective. It also describes how marketers use our perceptional behaviors to position different brand.

I find the chapter very interesting because it clearly explains important things in a simple way. What is more, inside this part of the book you can find many practical examples as well as pictures from marketing world which helps you to better understand theoretical knowledge.

Review of article from a Proquest data base:

The market of alcohol beverages is very profitable and sophisticated as exists on them huge competition. One of the most desirable consumers are young students who just begin their adult life, The article tries to explain why youth from colleges and universities start drinking, what are their main reasons to do so and how often they used to drink during their studies. All the answers are based on random group of people from biggest American universities.

In my opinion the article itself is not as interesting as of its subject. The language is very specialized and should be understood for people dealing with statistic research rather than marketing behaviors. The main topic is not to explain reasons why college students start drinking but if the results answer some hypothesis given at the beginning. Positive side of the article is huge bibliography on which it is based on so everyone who is interested in this kind of research can easily extend his or her knowledge by reading other publications mentioned in text.

ABC about company

Waste management on the range of business activity of the Communal Union “Dolina Redy i Chylonki”, has been given to Eko Dolina. The Communal Union associates seven neighboring municipalities: Sopot, Gdynia, Wejherowo, Rumia, Reda, Kosakowo, Wejherowo municipality (about 400 000 inhabitants).
Communal Union „Dolina Redy i Chylonki” was established in 1991.

Tasks of the Communal Union

· Water supply of municipalities,
· Receipt and waste water treatment,
· Central heating,
· Waste management system,
· Ecological education and information,
· Maintenance of order and cleanness,
· Environmental protection – air, nature and soil,

In this range Union performs public tasks instead of municipalities. The Communal Union together with municipalities is co-owner of three companies:
· “PEWIK” Ltd in Gdynia, which operates in water management system
· “OPEC” Ltd in Gdynia, which operates in (heating system)
· Eko Dolina Ltd in Łężyce.

System MIX associates organizational, legislative and educational activities for implementation of modern waste management system.

Customer Relationship management

As a company is built on capital of local municipalities, its main customers are people who live there. The main aim of customer relationship policy is maintaining good relations between local people and company which area of activity like collecting garbage may be onerous for inhabitants living near to that place. That is why company decides to do a pro public policy which main aspects are:

Activities for Łężyce

In addition to the statutory tasks of the company, Eco Valley has taken and is taking a number of investment for the residents of Łężyce. These activities aim to raise standards of living and improve the ratio of local communities to business.
In February 2000 an agreement was signed between the municipality Truro, and the Department of ECO VALLEY.
Under the agreement with residents of Łężyce in April 1999 Eco Valley has committed to:

1. Construction of rural roads in Łężyce over a distance of 600 – 800 m, the road will be reinforced, asphalt with the necessary infrastructure (shoulder, culverts, etc.). The local roads will determine the conduct of land-use planning.

2. The organization of municipal waste water treatment system from the site of Łężyce. Was planned execution of the sewerage network with a length of 4,000 m from the discharge of waste water treatment plant to “Dębogórze” by collector sanitary Department VALLEY ECO.
3. The construction of deepwater wells supplementing the existing mains water-supply system.

4. Implementation of the modernization and complete the street lighting continuous part of the village Łężyce in length to 800 m.

5. Building of pitches, changing rooms and the playground

6. The modernization of the existing bus stops and building new ones in the quantity of 9 pc

7. Implementation of planting greenery interest (green areas, hedgerows) and building ecological corridors with a total area of 7.7 hectares.

8. Routing and pre-compression of roads over a distance of around 2,300 meters – as described in the draft plan for the management of spatial strings

Ensuring and implementing:

1. Systematic monitoring of the environmental tests of air, water, land and ensure access to the inhabitants of the examinations and their results – a task performed on a regular basis.

2. Maintaining the environment Eco Valley, Łężyce and rural access roads in the purity and order, as well as assistance in organizing winter road maintenance No 1404G – a task performed on a regular basis.

Improve the situation in the social field:

1. Giving priority to employment in Eco Valley of residents of Łężyce.57 people are employed.

2. Taking over the period 1999 – 2001 graduation rates, improve job training for residents.

Funding social courses for local people :
- Exchange service cash registers – individual training,
- Exchange of drivers of vehicles equipped – trucks driven by combustion,
- Courses support the Windows NT operating system, word processor Microsoft Word 2000, Microsoft Excel spreadsheet 2000, and the Internet,
- The school of modern offices for secretaries, administrative staff,
- A course entitled. “Human resources, payroll, social security,”
With eighteen courses have benefited residents of Łężyce, so to increase their professional abilities and become more attractive in the labor market.

3. The granting of local operators within the limits permitted the public procurement law, the priority in obtaining contracts during the construction and operation of Eco Valley, in terms of services and works financed from national resources.

4. Providing a free collection and disposal of solid waste from residents of Łężyce (as at 30.04.1999r.) Throughout the duration of the operation of Eco Valley.

5. Propose a change in the name of BET in such a way that will not be used in the determination of associate village Łężyce waste management.
Announced a contest to change the name of the Association. Settlement of the competition is the name of “Eco Valley.”

6. Making donations to the Association of Residents of Łężyce – a task performed on a regular basis.
Eco Valley forward Residents Association of Łężyce measures to achieve the following objectives:

- Promoting measures in the sphere of environmental protection – an organization point of information, together with access to the Internet
- Other statutory activities.

IBM CRM solutions enable a better understanding of customer sets and expectations to improve interactions with your employees and online systems. We offer:

• Technology platforms that align business units across departments, enabling collaborative information sharing.
• Strategic alliances with world-leading application providers including Oracle, SAP, Avaya, Genesys, Infor, KANA, and Nortel.
• Extensive industry-specific strategy, implementation, integration and infrastructure expertise.
• The right mix of hardware, software and services that can help drive a successful CRM implementation at your company.

Our CRM solutions are based on customer-focused strategies, incorporate all necessary departments, and are built on a scalable architecture that can start small but adjust to growing volumes of data. We have technology integration and project management expertise to help ensure a successful, consistent implementation across your business processes. Let IBM help you turn customers into advocates, while driving profitability and growth across your organization.

From my opinion it is very important service to company because you can find all necessary information at companies homepage. Company where I work, they use this service all the time because it is convenient to customer to check the information by himself just putting the right information where it is needed. Everything is created very simple and easy to understand. Other thing is that customers can see promotions or other interesting information nearby the thing he is doing that moment. Very big companies usually can’t provide good call-center service and other thing is that often customers are asking the same questions over and over again, so at your website you can create FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) which customer can easily find. Some companies create even top 5 of them. In company where I work, they use the same system. You can find FAQ section and see the main questions. We have 24-hour helpline in case of problems and reservation telephone. These 2 are very important issues at my company.

People are willing to find any contacts in homepage if they have any questions or problems. That is very important that they can find it easily.

Some companies are providing person to person – electronic support like online chat. In my company we don’t have such things and we don’t need it. You can contact our company through e-mail and I think that it is enough. If you have some more important question, you can always find our telephone at homepage and call, but usually we solve client problems through e-mail.

RETURN ON CUSTOMER SURVEY:

Return On Customer

“Without Customers, You Don’t Have a Business.
You Have a Hobby.”

In their new book Return on Customer^sm, bestselling authors and renowned consultants Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D. address today’s most crucial business question: How do companies strike the right balance between maximizing current-period profits and building long-term enterprise value. The foundation of their findings is a customer-based value proposition that provides a practical and sound business metric to better manage your business – this quarter, this fiscal year, and for the foreseeable future.

Peppers and Rogers present a compelling case that long-term customer equity is an enterprise’s single most valuable asset. In Return on Customer the authors provide a deceptively simple formula for measuring customer profitability and provide the tools for analyzing what the proper balance of customer attraction, retention, and in some cases loss, is for your company. Determining how best to create long-term customer value is central to any successful business strategy.

In addition to offering a unique growth strategy, Return on Customer can improve your company’s everyday practices and provide a means to measure the results of those efforts. Peppers and Rogers offer insights from many of today’s brightest business success stories to illustrate that understanding how individuals within your customer base differ in terms of needs and values, and that creating learning relationships along with other customer-focused efforts, has led Best Buy, Amazon.com, Southwest Airlines, and Costco to profitability.

Simply put: To maximize the value of what their customers do for them, these successful companies have placed maximum value on their customers. In turn, we can see that maximizing the value of the customer base is equal to maximizing the value of the enterprise.

Why Return on Customer^sm
After writing the successful and highly influential One to One book series, Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D. had a somewhat radical idea. They started thinking about how customers can help businesses. They wanted to break away from previous theories and business strategies. In talking with many business leaders they realized that not everyone was thinking like they were. When they asked executives what the primary source of their revenue is, most answered that it is sales of their product. Too few realized that the ultimate source of their revenue is their customers—today and in the future. Don and Martha charged themselves with the mission to let executives know that every function across an enterprise, from hiring, training, accountability, etc. should revolve around their most valuable resource—customers.

Larry Kudlow, Host of CNBC’s “Kudlow and Company,” has offered highest praise for Return on Customer: “Finally! A business metric that can drive better management and a higher stock price. I predict soon you’ll be hard pressed to find a company that isn’t tracking ROC^sm.”

Read more industry praise for Return on Customer^sm

Knowledge Management programs are typically tied to organisational objectives such as improved performance, competitive advantage, innovation, developmental processes, lessons learnt transfer (for example between projects) and the general development of collaborative practices. Knowledge Management is frequently linked and related to what has become known as the learning organisation, lifelong learning and continuous improvement. Knowledge Management may be distinguished from Organisational Learning by a greater focus on the management of knowledge as an asset and the development and cultivation of the channels through which knowledge, information and signal flow.

There is a broad range of thought on Knowledge Management with no unanimous definition. The approaches vary by author and school. Knowledge Management may be viewed from each of the following perspectives:

• Techno-centric: A focus on technology, ideally those that enhance knowledge sharing/growth.
• Organisational: How does the organisation need to be designed to facilitate knowledge processes? Which organisations work best with what processes?
• Ecological: Seeing the interaction of people, identity, knowledge and environmental factors as a complex adaptive system.

In addition, as the discipline is maturing, there is an increasing presence of academic debates within epistemology emerging in both the theory and practice of knowledge management. British and Australian standards bodies both have produced documents that attempt to bound and scope the field, but these have received limited acceptance or awareness.

Knowledge Management has always existed in one form or another. Examples include on-the-job peer discussions, formal apprenticeship, discussion forums, corporate libraries, professional training and mentoring programs. However, with computers becoming more widespread in the second half of the 20th century, specific adaptations of technology such as knowledge bases, expert systems, and knowledge repositories have been introduced to further enhance the process.

The emergence of Knowledge Management has also generated new roles and responsibilities in organisations, an early example of which was the Chief Knowledge Officer. In recent years, Personal knowledge management (PKM) practice has arisen in which individuals apply KM practice to themselves, their roles and their career development.

The Customer Life Cycle (CLC) has obvious similarities with the Product Life Cycle (PLC). However, CLC focuses upon the creation of and delivery of lifetime value to the customer i.e. looks at the products or services that customers NEED throughout their lives. It is marketing orientated rather than product orientated, and embodies the marketing concept. Essentially, CLC is a summary of the key stages in a customer’s relationship with an organisation. The problem here is that every organisation’s product offering is different, which makes it impossible to draw out a single Life Cycle that is the same for every organization.

CRM is a term that is often referred to in marketing. However, there is no complete agreement upon a single definition. This is because CRM can be considered from a number of perspectives. In summary, the three perspectives are:

• Information Technology (IT) perspective
• The Customer Life Cycle (CLC) perspective
• Business Strategy perspective

The American Direct Marketing Association defines direct marketing as follows:

Direct marketing is an interactive system of marketing which uses one or more advertising media to effect a measurable response and/or transaction at any location.

Bauer and Miglautsch (1992) offer an alternative definition, accepted by the UK’s Direct Marketing Association:

Direct marketing is a cybernetic marketing process which uses direct response advertising in prospecting, conversion and maintenance.

Direct marketing is not a mass medium: it communicates with consumers as individuals, rather than as a group of segments (Bird, 1993), and it is interactive, meaning that consumers respond directly (and measurably) to direct communications. The communications are targeted (as far as possible) only to those individuals who are likely to be interested in the offering.

Direct marketing relies on having good, up-to-date information about the individuals it seeks to approach. This implies using computer-based systems (sophisticated databases) to record information about potential customers. The other way in which computers contribute is in desktop publishing; tailored, personalised and high-quality communications can be sent out to prospects.