Retail customers in the petrol industry become ever more demanding. With an increase in price awareness and price sensitivity brand loyalty tends to fall. The presentation shall demonstrate that webbased communication can be a powerful tool to counter this trend.
In business-to-consumers, communication that is specifically targeted at the client's needs generates direct as well as multidimensional advantages for both the customer and the petrol company. Target marketing, i.e. web communities enriched by content, does not only generate customer loyalty, but is part of a multi-channelling concept.
The next step of personalization is 1-to-1 marketing that is preferably supported by an integrated electronic Customer Relationship Management (eCRM). This facilitates overall cross-selling which, in the past, especially in the field of business-to-business has often run into organizational constraints.
Continuous and strict eCRM is the instrument of choice to properly prioritize individual activities.
Web-based communication thus enables bundling and restructuring of a) sales activities in client-orientated structures, b) product and services development apart from sales c) sales office work in service centers.
The profit potential from business-to-consumer activities, that is from commercialization, commissions, sales, content selling and marketing with additional PR value, allows the efficient and value adding utilization of the entire web estate.
Business-to-business extranet functionalities, which are extensively interlocked with the business and IT processes of suppliers, partners and customers enable and improve long-term and profitable partnerships.
New ways of doing eBusiness open up two ways of profit maximization for companies. First, a turnover increase is achieved by direct multi-channelling, differentiated customer relationship as well as service improvement. Beyond that, internally and externally aligned process improvement leads to higher efficiency.
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Aral is the leading retail and fuels brand in Germany, having been established in Bochum, Germany in 1898. Its history of over 100 years has always been based on quality, service and innovation. The first flight over the Atlantic Ocean from east to west in 1928 was fuelled by Aral gasoline, the first automatic hydrogen filling station in Germany was situated at Munich airport in 1984 by ARAL and the first petrol company to publish the differing prices of the fuels at every single station in Germany via internet and mobile telephone was ARAL in 2000. The case study will show the variety of webbased approaches and