Customer Relationship Marketing & Management (CRM&M) Certificate Overview
CRM&M Overview | CRM&M Program Details | CRM&M Curriculum | CRM&M Course Descriptions
Marketing is defined as a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating exchange value with others. More than any other business discipline, the Marketing function maintains the ties between the organization and the customer through products, services, and brand offerings. However, many organizations are finding that today’s business environment requires less focus on products, services and brands, and more focus on the customer and customer relationships. The term customer relationship marketing and management (CRM&M) refers to the philosophy, strategies, and processes that organizations are applying to acquire customers and retain long-term, mutually beneficial and profitable exchange. It involves managing detailed information about individual customers and carefully managing customer “touch-points” in order to deliver superior customer value and maximize customer satisfaction and loyalty.
One of the most common challenges facing
today’s organizations is the speed of change, and nowhere
is the change
more striking
than in the
advances
in information
technology.
In their
book, Blown
to Bits1,
Philip Evans
and Thomas
Wurster,
refer to
this phenomenon
as “the new
economics
of information” and suggest that global connectivity
is redefining
the overall
relationship
businesses
have with
their customers,
suppliers,
and employers.
Evans and
Wurster suggest
that a company’s
sustainable
competitive
advantage
will be directly
related to
its ability
to effectively
capture and
utilize “rich” information
in a manner
that “deepen[s]
customer
relationships
and [builds]
brand equity.”2 Customer
Relationship
Marketing & Management is critical to the
optimization
of customer
satisfaction
and long-term
profitability,
and it is
equally critical
that employees
have a sound
awareness
and appreciation
for sustaining
customer
relationships.
The School
is therefore
proposing
to augment
its curriculum
with the
addition
of an undergraduate
certificate
program in Customer Relationship Marketing
and Management.
As producers of the workforce of the future, the School of
Business and Economics strives to educate a diverse student
population in a manner that enhances knowledge in specific
business disciplines to produce valuable individuals and employees.
To this end, the School continually reviews and evaluates
the curriculum and the methods of program delivery to ensure
that when the performance of our program and our students
are measured in the workplace, they will be among those distinguished
as successful. This proposal describes the
development and implementation of a Customer Relationship
Marketing and
Management Certificate Program that will impact the School’s curricula
and the University’s
interdisciplinary focus.
1Evans, P. and Wurster, T. S. 2000. Blown to
Bits: How the New Economics of Information Transforms Strategy. Harvard Business
Press, Boston, MA.
2Ibid, page 147.
