Marketing

Customer Relationship Management: How Casinos are Taking Advantage of Technology to Improve and Retain Customer Relations

Chang-tseh Hsieh

University of Southern Mississippi Hattiesburg, MS 39406 601-266-6124 e-mail: Hsieh@cba.usm.edu

Michael D. Barnes

University of Southern Mississippi Hattiesburg, MS 39406 601-266-4653 e-mail:Michael.Barnes@usm.edu

ABSTRACT Customer Relationship Management, or CRM for short, is a rapidly growing business practice used today in the gaming industry. As competition increases and customer bases and markets grow larger, it is becoming more important for companies to maintain and grow their market share. Gaming has championed the practice of customer relationship management. For years since the advent of the player’s card, a casino can keep track of a customer’s name, address, average bet, and win loss theoretical based on length of play. With CRM, casinos can take the customer relationship on a much larger scale. INTRODUCTION Customer Relationship Management is a new marketing practice in business today. Companies want to get more information about their customer in order to maintain market share and build customer lifetime value. Later in this paper we will discuss the importance of customer lifetime value, particularly in the casino industry. Many industries use a form of CRM in one way or another. In the airline industry, many companies utilize frequent flier programs in order to cater to their best customers to ensure their loyalty to the company (Esse 2003). Financial institutions gather millions of bytes of data on customers in order to market and promote their services to the most valued customers (Alton and Wiryawan 2004). The hospitality industry, casinos in particular, truly values the importance of customer relationship management. In the hospitality industry, you are always in contact with the customer. With such a large customer base, casinos really to need to get to know their customers on a more personal...