Augmented Customer Strategy

13The Dark Side of Customer Relationship Management Practices in the Data Age: Managing Resistance and Perceived Intrusion for Responsible Practices

Relationship marketing, the basis of customer relationship management, aims to develop lasting business relationships and strong emotional ties between companies and their customers. Despite this “virtuous” principle, a relationship with a company is fuelled by paradoxes (Table 13.1). As Fournier et al. summarize well [FOU 98]: “Relationship marketing is powerful in theory but troubled in practice” (p. 44).

On the one hand, the customer is often encouraged to develop their average basket and/or their frequency of purchases through promotional offers or cashback and can therefore make unnecessary or too expensive purchases in relation to their budget. In addition, an exclusive relationship, a critical objective of loyalty actions, would deprive the customer of their freedom and lock them into an often unbalanced commercial relationship. This is all the more true since the Pareto law (20% of customers generate 80% of turnover) encourages companies to allocate more resources and profits to the “best” customers. However, as budgets are limited, let alone constant, this valuation is to the detriment of other customers, giving rise to feelings of frustration and injustice. Finally, although customer knowledge is one of the fundamental pillars of customer strategy, its conduct is sometimes perceived as opaque and intrusive: lack of transparency ...