Understanding the customer: customer-perceived value from a customer relationship management perspective – Singa Karaoke

Abstract

An empirical case study for a Finnish karaoke-software company, Singa Karaoke, that understands how important customer relationship management is for successful business. However, the supplier and customers perceptions do not always match, leading to the customer feeling dissatisfied with the relationship. This can especially happen within the software industry, which is an abstract term, and thus, value is even more challenging to measure. The supplier should be aware of which factors create value for the customers in a b2b relationship because it is just as relevant for software companies to focus on the in- creased importance of a relationship between two companies. According to literature the customer-perceived value is very complex to understand especially within the software industry. The perceptions of value are also constantly changing meaning it is necessary to keep up to date of how customers perceive value, and companies must update the information on a regular basis. Value will be considered from the perspective of customer relationship management. Gap Model of Service Quality presents four gaps that have a negative impact on value delivery within customer relationship management, causing customer dissatisfaction. Qualitative research with semi-structured interviews will be conducted to Singa’s customers to find out whether Singa’s understanding of important aspects match with their customers perceptions, and whether Singa has managed to avoid the Gaps in their value delivery to appear. Results from the qualitative study match very well to the Gap Model of Service Quality, meaning that customer satisfaction is strongly tied to different value creating aspects. If any of these factors would be missing it would at some level lead to customer dissatisfaction, but often it seems like customers put more value on certain factors, meanwhile communication and customer involvement shows a bigger importance than what the theory reveals.