Customer Relations Management (Crm) Demographics

Customer Relations Management (crm)

Demographics and Statistics - Understanding the BabyGifts101 Customer Base:

If the owner of the company is interested in truly understanding who her customers are, she probably would like to know their respective ages, their income, their geographic location, their degree of education and/or vocational status, their recreational interests, how many children they have, their children's ages, as well as whether they plan on having more children. She may also wish to know what type of vehicles they drive, what pets they have, where else (besides BabyGifts101) they have previously purchased the types of merchandise offered by BabyGifts101, whether they plan on continuing to buy any of those items elsewhere, what consideration factor into their related decisions, and whether they use BabyGifts101 for their own purchases or for purchasing gifts for others. Finally, she may wish to know the identity of the person in each family who is responsible for these types of purchases, whether they have specific professional sports team allegiances, and how long they have maintained those particular allegiances.

The primary method of collecting this type of information in a manner that is cost-effective would be through voluntary participation in customer surveys completed by the customer either after sale or after delivery. Provided it is allowed by the laws of the states involved, (and/or after obtaining any consent required from customers themselves), she may also wish to purchase more detailed information from a commercial information broker, such as credit reporting agencies.

In addition to providing much more detailed, comprehensive reports than likely to be included in voluntary surveys, commercial customer information would also enable her to compare the two types of data and evaluate the accuracy of data included in voluntary surveys. To the extent discrepancies become apparent, this comparison might also identify any common patterns (such as income inflation) for the purposes of adjusting the data collected according to any formula capable of adjusting the raw data to present the most accurate possible representation. Finally, she might like to know what magazines and newspapers her customers read, what television programs they watch, and where they first learned of her company.

Voluntary surveys are most likely to generate a response if they include some type of incentive, such as future discounts or discount coupons. The best choices for these incentives would be those items or services with the highest profit margin and/or lowest overhead costs associated with them. Typical examples might be free monogram services on purchases for which monograms are available at additional cost, because such services tend to yield the best profit margins, compared to actual merchandise. To the extent her customers patronize the sports-related paraphernalia, she may wish to know whether her customers' affiliation with their favorite professional sports franchises is long-term or merely reflective of the trend to "bandwagon" onto current success, because this helps project future demand from season to season.

Similarly, items with relatively high profit margins might be worth offering at a substantial discount (such as 50% off the second item), both as a way to generate more sales from existing customers as well as a means of reaching new customers, especially during the holiday season when these additional items are likely to be gifts, each one reaching a new potential future customer. Another possible cost-effective option to provide incentive for survey participation might be goods or services from other industries, such as free magazine subscriptions, if those arrangements are available.

To improve the degree to which she meets her customers needs, she may also want to provide an opportunity to make suggestions for future improvements to the site or to suggest additional merchandise and services not yet available through BabyGifts101.

Who Are the BabyGifts101 Customers?

BabyGifts101 customers are probably most likely to be relatively well educated married females with higher than average disposable income. This is probably a function of their computer literacy, the fact that two-parent households are much more likely to have more disposable income (and time) than single-parent households, and the reality that mothers are probably more likely to be responsible for purchasing non-essential baby-related products than their husbands, especially during infancy. They are probably more likely to own luxury vehicles and to patronize other high-end retailers and service providers, and to prefer brand names over generic brands, in general.