The activation of individual customer intimacy towards a financial organisation through personalised marketing in South Africa

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dc.contributor.authorVisagie, Marné
dc.date.accessioned2022-09-23T08:17:02Z
dc.date.available2022-09-23T08:17:02Z
dc.date.issued2021
dc.descriptionA research report submitted to the Wits Business School, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Management (in the field of Strategic Marketing) by combination of coursework and research, 2021en_ZA
dc.description.abstractSouth African financial organisations face challenges to emotionally connect with a diverse, financially vulnerable consumer market. It is well-researched that building customer value drives growth and profitability. This study explores the concept of customer intimacy – a value discipline presented by Treacy and Wiersema (1993) – as a marketing strategy focused on perceptions of value to create, communicate and deliver emotional experiences. It investigates personalisation as the leveraged customer information and one-to-one customer relationship to individually target and activate a customer’s feelings of intimacy during digital interactions. In this context, when a customer feels understood and appreciated, they experience intimacy, a warm feeling, or a sense of belonging. Social connections might draw attention, motivate engagement, and positively influence attitudes and behaviours to build emotional connections. A neuromarketing experiment observed the personalised experience and intimacy effect to predict an emotional connection. Adapting to remote research during the Covid-19 pandemic required three instruments: facial coding, an interview, and a survey. Two groups were selected; existing clients (emotionally connected) and non-clients (not connected). They joined an online video meeting to interact with two different email communications. Recorded emotional responses were analysed with facial expression software, themes, and statistics. Results reveal a positive relationship: personalisation as an intimate experience is significant in predicting the customer’s attitude towards the organisation. The two critical intimacy influencers are the accuracy of the organisation’s customer knowledge and the quality of the financial adviser relationship. Two surprising findings were extracted; the emotionally connected responded insignificantly, while non-clients reacted significantly. Also, the customer knowledge an adviser holds might have an adverse effect on the experience. Findings suggest that personalisation and multiple intimate interactions support the activation of an emotional connection. Implementing and activating individual customer intimacy requires individual targeting, close relationships, and personalised marketing campaignsen_ZA
dc.description.librarianCK2022en_ZA
dc.facultyFaculty of Commerce, Law and Managementen_ZA
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10539/33307
dc.language.isoenen_ZA
dc.rights.holderUniversity of the Witswatersrand, Johannesburg
dc.schoolWits Business Schoolen_ZA
dc.subjectIndividual customer intimacy
dc.subjectCustomer knowledge
dc.subjectCustomer relationship
dc.subjectCustomer- intimate experience
dc.subjectPersonalized marketing
dc.subjectOne-to-One marketing
dc.subjectPersonalisation
dc.subjectEmail marketing
dc.subject.otherSDG-8: Decent work and economic growth
dc.titleThe activation of individual customer intimacy towards a financial organisation through personalised marketing in South Africaen_ZA
dc.typeDissertationen_ZA
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