How marketing communication related customer insights are created and exploited? Case: A Finnish Telco
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
Ask about the availability of the thesis by sending email to the Aalto University Learning Centre oppimiskeskus@aalto.fi
Authors
Date
2018
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Marketing
Language
en
Pages
63 + 2
Series
Abstract
Companies have an increasing amount of customer data available, but the challenge is to analyze it into actionable customer insights. Customer insight has become an important way to get competitive advantage when organizations strive to use it e.g. to build long-lasting customer relationships, targeted marketing communication and automated marketing processes. Data-driven marketing has also an important role in justifying the marketing actions to the rest of the organization. The purpose of this thesis is to shed light on the customer insight creation process and exploitation of the insights in marketing communication decision making. The aim is to resolve which factors either facilitate or impede the creation and exploitation of customer insights. Theoretical framework, which regards the customer insight generation as an organizational capability is developed based on existing literature. The empirical part of the study was conducted as a qualitative single case study and the data was collected through 10 semi-structured interviews. Case company is a Finnish Telco and the interviews were arranged with employees from its Customer Insight and Analysis unit and Marketing Communication unit. The informants were directors, middle-level chiefs and operative level employees of the both units. The main findings of the study are presented as five themes that affect to the generation and application of customer insights. These are organizational culture and organizational learning capabilities, organizational structure, linking of analytics and marcom processes, customer insight strategy and confrontation of insight specialists and marketing professionals. The first four have support in earlier researches, while the last one is a new emerging theme. According to the study, organization culture that does not fully support the pursuit of being data-driven and has weak organizational learning practices was recognized as one significant reason for the poor exploitation of customer insights in marketing communication. Regarding organizational structure, the physical distance between analytics and marketing communication unit, as well as the perceived approachability of analysts, affect to the exploiting of customer insights. The study suggests that the customer insight generation process has to be planned in a way that analytics process and marketing communication process are linked together. The study stresses the importance of linking the processes, since separate processes might prevent the exploitation of insights due to timing challenges. The study agrees with earlier researches of customer insight strategy in regard of three important issues. First, insight specialists have an important role in enabling the effective application of customer insights. Second, the customer insight initiatives should be tied to business objectives, and thirdly, dissemination and exploitation of customer insights should be tracked. Confrontation of the analytics and marketing communication units emerged as a new theme affecting the creation and application of customer insights. This study suggests that the relations of the two units can be problematic due to the different educational background. The cooperation between the units could be improved by developing common practices, rules and objectives.Description
Thesis advisor
Lindblom, ArtoMitronen, Lasse
Keywords
customer insight, data-driven marketing, organizational capability, marketing communication