Managing customer lifetime value in client communities - Курсовая работа

Within the large body of scientific literature, there exist many different models for CLV measurement, but it is impossible to claim that exactly one of them is true and may be applicable to every business regardless of the industry, firm size, and organizational structure. The concept of CLV can be applied not only to E-commerce, but also to every business trying to collaborate with its customers by means of online interaction. One of the tools gaining popularity among today’s corporations in terms of such interaction is represented by client (or customer) communities. A client community of a brand is a special platform on the company’s website where customers can communicate with the firm’s representatives and with each other. In other words, client community is a new branch of the forums development with new tools (such as knowledge base, integration with social networks, analytics, etc.) for effective customer service, gathering ideas, discussing products and services (Vasuk, 2014). It is important to make a distinction between such terms as “client community” and “social network”. Despite the obvious difference that social network account is provided by external software distributors, while the client community is fully owned and managed by the enterprise itself, there are other sources of diversity that are not so evident at first sight. Like a social network, a client community allows customers to read, post, share, and respond to content by and for one another. However, an important objective of a client community (unlike for a social network account) is to bring resolution and outcome to what customers are saying, such as: resolve customer support issues, provide a forum to react to ideas, and answer pre-sales questions (Get Satisfaction, Official website). Another crucial distinction is the difference between a “client community” and a “brand community”. Put simply, a brand community is always but a client community: it can be based in various social media, messengers, or even offline (when customers meet each other and discuss different questions concerning the company’s products or services, quality of technical support, etc.). On the contrary, a client community is always considered to be a separate online platform, which allows customers to interact with each other and the firm’s representatives, post questions and respond to them, generate ideas about the organization’s development, etc. The aim of the study is to discover ways of CLV increase within client communities. In other words, it is anticipated to find interconnection between customer’s membership in the client community and higher CLV that he brings to the enterprise. Within this broad purpose, the following objectives are expected to be fulfilled: marketing client empirical implication Define CLV, client communities and show their role in strengthening customer relationships. Find examples of successful client communities that helped companies enhance their CLV. Identify the main impacts of client communities’ implementation on a company’s performance by means of content analysis. Conduct a research proving the interconnection between customers’ participation in client communities and higher CLV. Develop recommendations regarding client communities’ use to increase the level of CLV. The object of the current research is customer lifetime value. Within this object, ways of CLV enhancement in client communities will serve as a research subject. In the research, a combination of both qualitative and quantitative methods is used. Qualitative approach is actualized through the content analysis of sixteen case studies from the website of Jive Community (leading corporation in distribution of various client and partner collaboration tools), with eight categories of factors influenced by client communities’ implementation being obtained.