From Category Management to Customer Relationship Management - The Case of Henkel

Manufacturers of fast moving consumer goods (FMCGs) are struggling to identify how CRM practices should be applied to their industry. What makes their situation different from other firms and more difficult to manage is the fact that this industry is characterized by a detachment from the end consumer (retailers are intermediaries), and average per consumer expense in the individual categories is relatively low. However, manufacturers sense that existing category management practices are, for the most part, exhausted in terms of providing competitive advantage. Therefore, manufacturers like Henkel explore how to make the shift from category management to CRM, and more specifically how to make CRM work to their advantage.

The goal of the case study is to explore substantive questions such as: - how a manufacturer of FMCGs should approach CRM - how to arrive at a customer segmentation that enables the best targeting strategy - the role of individual level or segment level communication - investigating the economics of the proposed approach - exploring whether a partnering strategy with the retailer is critical or not