Betriebswirtschaft: International Marketing & Sales
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Nowadays, the area of customer management strives for omni-channel and state-of-the-art CRM concepts including Artificial Intelligence and the approach of Customer Experience. As a result, modern CRM solutions are essential tools for supporting customer processes in Marketing, Sales and Service. AI-driven CRM accelerates sales cycles, improves lead generation and qualification, and enables highly personalized marketing. The focus of this thesis is to present the basics of Customer Relationship Management, to show the latest Gartner insights about CRM and CX, and to demonstrate an AI Business Framework, which introduces AI use cases that are used as a basis for the expert interviews conducted in an international B2B company. AI will transform CX through a better understanding of customer behavior. The following research questions are answered in this thesis: In which AI use cases can Sales and CRM be improved? How can Customer Experience be improved with AI-driven CRM?
Companies develop and implement strategies with the aim to address the needs of their customers. Acquisition is one market expansion strategy that companies can use to acquire new market access, technologies and/or to grow organically. In recent years, Chinese companies have been active in acquiring companies all over the globe to develop their strategic position. This caused certain contra reaction in Europe and as well in the Swiss media against cross-border acquisitions of Swiss companies.
Swiss companies and particularly the Swiss-MEM (Machinery, Electrical and Mechanical) industry is highly export oriented and their value proposition builds on attributes like knowledge, technology, and differentiating products. Among them are many “hidden champions” and niche players who successfully dominate the market segment.
As observed with Chinese companies, Indian companies also started to become more active outside of their domestic markets by increasing their foreign direct investments into Europe, Asia and North America, over the last decades. The lasting and good relationship of India and Switzerland might trigger the wish for Indian companies to acquire Swiss and particularly Swiss-MEM companies for acquisitions.
This Master’s Thesis assesses how often Indian investments into public and privately owned Swiss-MEM companies by acquisition happen, how are the attempts of acquisitions perceived by the stakeholders and what measures Swiss and Swiss-MEM companies can take, to protect themselves from being acquired. To access the research topic, several sub-questions will be analysed with the aid of primary and secondary research to assess the situation.
The research topic is of particular interested to the author since he spent over 20 years working in the Swiss-MEM industry, involved in international affairs and in recent years specifically with India. The observation of Chinese acquisition activities and insight into the size and potential of India were the drivers for researching whether India might follow China’s example.
In conclusion, Indian companies are not explicitly targeting Swiss and Swiss-MEM companies, but there are reasons to believe that it would make sense for Indian companies to look into the acquisition of Swiss and Swiss-MEM companies. The perception of such acquisitions varies, but there are arguments for and against them. Companies must take strategic and organisational measures in order to prevent themselves from becoming the target of an acquisition. However, it is known that the state should not interfere in the market and a discussion at a political level, planning how to deal with cross-border acquisition, is needed.
Further areas for research based on this Master’s Thesis could be the review of how the targeting of Swiss and Swiss-MEM companies by Indian companies would look, and also the topic of the succession planning in Swiss secondary sector in conjunction with Indian targeting for acquisitions. A third area to research might be investigating the political aspects involved in the research questions.
In today’s world, companies feel the urge to disguise from competitors and to connect emotionally with consumers in order to foster a meaningful and long-lasting relationship. Simultaneously, stakeholders demand an increase of companies’ social responsibility. Cause-related marketing (CRM) is a marketing tool that addresses the change in societal values and the rising expectations from stakeholder groups. The increasing number of companies that choose to partner with a non-profit organization highlights that linking a charitable cause to the company's brand is an effective marketing tool. Authors illustrate that CRM, as a form of showing corporate social responsibility, will become even more important in the future. This master thesis examines the relationship between CRM, emotions, and culture. The research goal is to identify if CRM programs are effective in evoking emotions in consumers and if the cultural background of a consumer influences the evocation of certain emotions. The empirical findings outline that CRM programs are effective in evoking emotions. Other-focused emotions evoked by CRM programs are stronger expe-rienced by members of collectivistic countries than by members of individualistic countries. Likewise other-focused emotions evoked by CRM programs are stronger experienced by high interdependent selves than by low interdependent selves.
Cultural Due Diligence
(2020)
Much research has been conducted in recent years to discover the reasons for the high failure rate of M&As, whereas one frequently cited reason is the incompatibility of the corporate cultures. In order to minimize this risk and to be able to react to these differences already at an early stage, Cultural Due Diligence offers itself as part of the due diligence process. Unlike existing, more general research, I emphasize the cultural challenges companies face when investing transnationally with this thesis. Using the results of a single case study with inductive character, I answer the question how to conduct Cultural Due Diligence in cross-border M&As and propose an appropriate model. The findings reveal that especially in cross-border M&As, cultural incompatibility poses a risk for failure. I was able to find out that companies that seek to grow internationally with M&As deal with similar issues in terms of corporate culture as pointed out in existing Cultural Due Diligence methods. The present study, however, shows that national culture has a great influence on corporate culture, which is why it is essential to include it in the cultural assessment in cross-border acquisitions. This provides information about why there are differences, besides the fact that they exist. Only this understanding puts a company in the appropriate starting position to recognize differences, understand them, assess whether these differ-ences are acceptable, as well as to develop appropriate strategies to address them in the integration phase.
Digitalisation poses great challenges for regional tourism management. However, many organisations are currently undergoing a transformation from a marketing to a destination management organisation (DMO), which is why only a few have managed to adopt new digital approaches and to assert themselves as DMOs within the destination and against ever growing global platforms.
The presented master thesis therefore deals with this issue and aims to pave the way for DMOs to develop and use digital business models themselves.
The objective of the thesis is to develop a systematic process for the development of own DMO business models and to evaluate whether the establishment of a multi-sided platform as the recipe for the success of global platform providers is also suitable for DMOs. For this purpose, an extensive literature research was conducted and semi-structured expert interviews were evaluated. In addition, the Anchor Point Canvas was developed as a supporting framework for the modelling of business models for companies with historically grown structures and constraints.
Today, industrial B2B manufacturers face a rapidly changing environment, exacerbated by increasing globalization and associated shifts in the competitive landscape. Digital transformation and the emergence of new innovations and technologies are forcing companies to rethink their business models and offerings to integrate digital services to strengthen competitive advantages. Suppliers are becoming more deeply involved in customer processes through digital after-sales services, with the aim of exploiting efficiencies. Following the servitization transformation, companies intend to change their purpose from focusing on the pure physical product to becoming a service provider with emphasis on value creation and the capture of the customer.
To investigate how customer and supplier perspectives agree and what requirements each side has for digital after-sales services, exploratory qualitative research was conducted with customers and suppliers by means of one-on-one interviews. The thesis aimed to assess the status, progress, and future possibilities of implementing digital after-sales services and business models based on them. Research shows that the far-reaching establishment of product-accompanying services with strong connectivity and customer-centricity is primarily relevant. Disruptive business models still require a mind-shift and organizational readiness on the part of both customers and suppliers. In principle, digitization in after-sales interaction is beneficial and should be steadily advanced to make customer processes as well as further developments at the supplier level more efficient and well-founded through the analysis of real data. Overall, this thesis outlines important aspects that need to be considered while developing digital service innovations to deal with customer demands appropriately.
Keywords: Servitization, Digital After-Sales Services, Predictive Maintenance, Remote Monitoring, Digital Interaction, Digital Service Innovation, Digital Service Innovation Process
The research focused on the wood pellet market for private consumers in Germany and has the objective to understand the factors affecting the purchase decisions of wood pellets buy-ers. The aims of the research were achieved by applying the Engel, Kollat, Blackwell model of consumer behaviour, by conducting in-depth interviews and deriving the grounded theory. The application of EKB model revealed that the following groups of factors may influence the con-sumers: cultural (culture and social class), social (family influence), personal (age and lifecycle stage), psychological (believes, motives, attitudes) and unexpected circumstances. In-depth interviews with the buyers of wood pellets helped specify the influencing factors to finally an-swer the research question. The analysis showed that the buyers of wood pellets are influ-enced by family, personal believes and attitudes, and the unexpected circumstances. The most important factors for the buyers are the quality of the pellets and reliability of the supplier. If they are satisfied with the quality of product and service, they will be reluctant to look for an alternative. And on the opposite side, in case the quality of the product or the service is unsat-isfactory this is a limiting factor and will stop the buyer from purchasing this product. Price is an important factor for the buyers of pellets in bags. However, in the situation of volatile mar-ket and exploding prices, the price factor will play a bigger role. Thus, the strategic factors for marketing of pellets is to concentrate on quality and price communication, and to focus on the quality of pellet delivery service.
Effective lead management
(2023)
In the last few years the global interest on lead management has increased. This classic topic for marketing and sales departments is aimed at converting potential customers into sales. The following thesis identifies the challenges and solutions for marketing and sales departments in order to process effective lead management. Using data from a literature review and qualitative empirical research, conducted with representatives of marketing and sales departments, the results showed overall and task specific challenges and solutions. The research indicates that overall challenges and solutions regarding the gap between marketing and sales, new processes and data management including data quality, software and silos emerge. In addition task specific challenges and solutions concerning lead generation including purchased leads, lead qualification, lead nurturing and sales specific challenges and solutions conclusively the focus on existing customers, time famine and lead routing were identified. This thesis provides a framework for further studies regarding the challenges and solutions for marketing and sales departments processing lead management.
Throughout history, a variety of influences have changed the way we sell our products. Starting with the Industrial Revolution up to the first saturation phase in the 1970s. The question now arises as to whether the heating industry is currently back on an evolutionary development path with the increasing digitalisation of distribution. How the sales process in the B2B sector will change with increasing digitalisation and what effects this will have on sales personnel is only documented by a few sources which do not allow any conclusions to be drawn about the craft or even the heating industry. This results in a research gap which is to be closed in the context of this thesis. The aim of this research project is to find out the effects of a further digitalisation of the sales process on the sales force in the defined environment of the heating industry in Central Europe. For this purpose the following research questions are asked: Which steps in the sales process in the heating industry in Central Europe should be digitalised? How will the digitalisation of the sales process affect the sales force in the heating industry in Central Europe? A case study, according to Yin was chosen as the research method. The data were collected by means of in-depth interviews and analysed qualitatively, according to Mayring. The increasing digitalisation will have a large effect on the sales force, tasks will disappear, new tasks will be added and new ones will replace conventional working methods. In summary, automation will simply make tasks superfluous, software tools will improve quality and increase efficiency, and personal selling will become a premium skill. Companies will try to automate as many backoffice activities as possible and reduce the number of office staff if necessary.
The alarming degradation of the natural environment is leading many consumers to increasingly demand sustainable products. Since 2017, the global purchase intention of such products has increased by 63%. To respond to the increasing demand, more and more companies have started producing products from sustainable materials such as recycled products. However, purchase intention does not always result in actual behavior and can vary due to different products and in country-specific contexts. Hence, it is the purpose of this study to determine which factors influence the purchase intention of recycled products and whether these factors differ between a developed country such as Germany and a developing country such as South Africa. Furthermore, the study aims to discover whether there are differences in purchase intention with regard to different product categories, whether there is an intention-behavior gap, and whether there are country-specific differences. Finally, target groups of the corresponding countries will be derived. To answer the research questions, a quantitative study was conducted using an online questionnaire in Germany (n = 603) and South Africa (n = 692). The findings demonstrate that the purchase intention for recycled products is significantly higher in South Africa than in Germany, but no significant difference in the factors influencing the purchase intention could be found. However, the factors differ in terms of the extent of their influence. Thus, the factor “Attitude / Environmental Concern” has the strongest influence in South Africa, while the factor “Value / Accessibility” has the strongest influence in Germany. Likewise, a difference could be found concerning the products, with the purchase intention for mobile phones generally smaller than for t-shirts and toilet paper. In a country-specific comparison, however, purchase intention for t-shirts is significantly higher in South Africa than in Germany. An intention-behavior gap was identified for the sample, and it was found that the age groups 25 to 49 have the strongest purchase intentions and that the purchase intention increases significantly with increasing education level.