Customer relationship management and an implementation in retail sector

In today's business world, customer acquisition costs have risen up because of the increase in the number of businesses delivering goods and services to the customers and the limited number of consumers in the marketplace. With the increasing level of education customers got more conscious, their needs and wants and also their expectations from businesses were increased. Businesses started to implement projects focusing on improving customer relations as a result of increasing customer acquisition costs and customers' needs and wants. Those businesses with the objective of retaining current customers and creating customer loyalty, adopted Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in order to create high customer satisfaction and to deliver personalized service. Because loyal customers are spending more, less sensitive to prices and serving them costs less to the firms, those customers are more profitable. Especially in the sectors in which firm value is measured based upon the number of customers, profitable customers are playing a vital role in these businesses' success. CRM is an important strategy to create lasting relations with the profitable customers within the current customer base, making the other customers more profitable and winning more customers by the positive word of mouth of the satisfied customers. In this study, customer relationship management concept which was emerged as a result of the changes in the business life and the customers is described and functions, processes and the technological solutions of CRM are mentioned. The differences and the relations among the customer loyalty, customer satisfaction and customer retention terms are explained. Also, the effect of customer relationship management on business profitability is searched. In the implementation part of the study, the CRM project implemented by a supermarket chain operating in retailing sector is studied. Keywords: Customer Relationship Management (CRM), customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, customer retention, retailing sector. Xll