This course aims to help students understand today's evolving, increasingly research-oriented customer profile, thereby enabling them to develop the competence to design customer retention strategies.

The course covers the reasons driving businesses toward customer relationships, the shift from the 4Ps to the 4Cs, the changing customer profile, and levels of customer relationships. It examines the benefits that customer relationships should provide, the factors influencing them, and the key to success in customer retention, along with the customer retention model. The concept of CRM (Customer Relationship Management), its initial steps, objectives, stages, and contributions to marketing activities, the opportunities and benefits it creates, and the characteristics required for a successful CRM project are addressed. The course also covers the fundamental challenges and misconceptions associated with CRM, the reasons why CRM projects fail, customer complaint management, and the service recovery paradox.