International Journal of Multidisciplinary Thought, CD-ROM. ISSN: 2156-6992 :: 05(02):391–400 (2015) CRM AND A QUESTIONNAIRE STUDY ABOUT LOYALTY CARDS IN GAZIANTEP͒ U÷ur Harbelio÷lu Zirve University, Turkey The industry, which has been progressing and renewing along with the technological developments in the last century, has played a great role in changing the ways of a transaction and consuming habits of the society. Marketing strategies of the producers have started to be in search of finding new ways in order to keep pace with the changing consumers. While the companies targeted to have more consumers and sell more products until 1970's; as a result of the change in customer behaviours, this attitude has been oriented towards selling more products to the existing groups by keeping currently available customer relations. The companies which are aware of this has launched “ Customer Relations Management” (CRM). In the meantime, they started to produce “ loyalty cards” and get the institutions to use these cards in order to have a good review electronically on customer commitments, transaction frequency, profit rates and transaction behaviours. This study includes the awareness of specific consumer groups about loyalty cards, a rate of usage, general information of user groups and which companies use loyalty cards in Gaziantep. The survey results have revealed that the consumers use loyalty cards basically because of financial reasons such as getting discounts and psychological reasons such as feeling valued. The consumers mostly do not aware of the goals of the producers by loyalty cards; however, it has been concluded that the loyalty cards under CRM has achieved their goals effectively. Keywords: CRM, Loyalty Cards, Customer, Customer Satisfaction. Introduction During the dates when people would meet their own needs producing by themselves, the basic shopping areas were raw materials and production tools. Nutrition, clothing and accommodation were basic consumption elements. As time goes by, the increase in requests other than basic needs has caused the traditional society to turn into consumer society and has brought out new products which are not used commonly and luxurious. The acceleration in the use of technology and mass production in Western societies has enabled the production of any kind of product. Meanwhile, media has altered the concept of consumption and has triggered the sense of buying more and more. As there were not more options in the industry until 1900, the market based on consumers was created instead of supply and demand. In terms of the features of economical activities, 1900's has a distinctive place compared to other centuries. The most distinguishing feature of 1990's is that the consumers set forth their power. It means that they have realized that they have words to say and need to be listened by the producers. Likewise, the producers have noticed that they are supposed to listen to the consumers in order to sustain competition in the market. The market started to have more products and having a variety of producers of the same products  391 392 CRM and a Questionnaire Study about Loyalty Cards in Gaziantep has leaded the construction of a society having alternative options. It has caused the present companies to face tough and complicated competitive market. This competitive market has enabled the composition of a unit named “Customer Relations Management”. Customer Relations Management (CRM) It is possible to say that there were not many difficulties in the sales of mass produced products in developing countries as well as advanced economies. During that term, the idea of “we could sell whatever we produce” was very common (Gel, 2002, p.9). However, this idea has been replaced by the question “how and where could we reach more customers?”. Farsighted companies, who believe in investing huge amounts of money in product introductions through advertisements, promotions, sweepstake and so on, has decided to set up a unit called as Customer Relations Management (CRM). Emergence of the concept of CRM has taken attention in academic world and new definitions have been put forward; Customer Relations Management is a business strategy which enables the companies to follow up their customers, income, and expenses. Also, it is a kind of marketing strategy enabling the companies to focus on target market opportunities (Doug, 2002, p.40). Customer Relations Management is a marketing approach which defines current or possible relations of the company with the customers in long periods by focusing on customers (Savasci and Ventura, 2001, p.40). Marlin (2001,p.8) defines it as a strategy to transform regular customers into profitable ones as well as captivating and keeping them on their side, Cirik (2001,p.100) evaluates CRM as a technological tool through which information could be sent just by one click. As known by the definitions of marketing experts, the focus of Customer Relations Management is customer and customer satisfaction. Specifically; the customers, who can provide profitable and easy sale and do not cause any problems after the sale, are seen as golden customers. By considering analyzed feedbacks and customer comments and complaints gathered in call centers, targeted groups are kept and they are provided conveniences. The companies, which do not have well-functioning CRM or do not understand its importance well, cannot make use of it effectively. Once a company handle CRM only for technological infrastructure, it will not be able to gain the expected profit unless it understands the logic of it (Private Label, 2004, p.8). In a study conducted by Reveries with 197 marketing expert, it is found that 28% of the companies prefer investing much of their budget on CRM, while 22% prefer investing on traditional media advertising (Reveries, 2002, May 14). It shows the reason why companies value CRM more than advertisements. Advertisements show a product in planned number and environment in return for a certain amount of money or service. It directs us to find out to what extend the advertisement stays in people's mind and whether it works or not after it is shown, how long it takes the decision point to be reached in sales hierarchy and how much effective it is. John Norkus, CRM Applications' partner of Deloitte Company (Reveries,2002); justifies that CRM is more profitable investment by saying “ Some producers spends 2%- 20% of their budget on advertisement, they do not know where the dollars gone.” CRM is a kind of management system enabling modern companies keep their customers and fastening their reach over to the target communities. With the assistance of the technological systems, this system receives, save and evaluate customer preferences and shopping habits in a detailed and speedy way which is not possible verbally and human power. The installation of CRM infrastructure and the usage of required technological software composes the huge amount of companies' budgets. The companies who perform this investment smoothly are able to earn much more than they invest from the customers. Known as Pareto effect, the situation that companies get the 80% their income from 20% of their customers can be a good example why Customer Relation Management.According to a survey (Capital,December, 2001), the reason why most of the business internalize CRM is accomplishing get to know customers at all, develop a better service and keeping them as long as possible. With this aspect, Uğur Harbelioğlu 393 CRM has three aspects aimed at updating business strategies. These are increasing customer content and loyalty, enhancing the long term profitability of management- long-term profit maximization, minimization business expenses. While applying Customer Relation Management, there are four vital task to realize. Ersoy (2002, p.8) put these into a order as following; obtaining information related to customers and defining them according to these data, classifying which decides the customer segment group and analyzing profitability, detecting costumer priorities, creating marketing strategies which are applicable to these priorities and directing customers. Customer Relation Management is used and applied in various fields of business. These fields such as finance, tourism, education, health, entertainment, food, media, internet, vehicle marketing, retail can demonstrate how wide CRM works in business life. Relational Marketing Basically, relational marketing is a strategical tendency focusing on keeping profitable customers rather than finding new ones and constructing relations with them (Ozturk,1998, p.180). The understanding of relation oriented marketing or relational marketing approach can be summarized as; “Find the most appropriate customer for the company, achieve this customer, keep him/her, increase the income and profit” (Ersoy, 2002, p.4). Having a relationship with customers is giving promises. And maintaining relationships with customers is keeping your word. On the other hand, developing and enriching customer relations are about giving or offering new promises rather than keeping previous words. This technic known as direct marketing, relationship marketing, micro marketing, or customer relationship management is a thought of changing conduct and behavior purposefully intended for what the individual customer says to the company and what the company employees should know about the customers. The purpose is building a healthy, effective, profitable, confidential and long-term relationship between the customer and the company. (Odabaúõ, 2000. p.19.) Loyalty Cards Loyalty card, also known as store card, is a technological use in sale automation. With this technic, companies can access the flow of information in all branches on a single click with the help of a system. The biggest advantage of loyalty cards is that they can store all the information on the shopping of the customers centrally. By means of databases, the shopping information in loyalty cards can provide more certain and exact information than one-to-one questionnaires done by some staff, content or complaint forms or detailed observations. Moreover, if the answers in one-to-one questionnaires reflect the truth about the shopping habit of the customers is not certain. This makes the databases used by loyalty cards more important. Customer databases have organized and extensive geographical, demographical, psychological and behavioral information related to individual customers or possibilities. And database marketing is an approach on using customer databases or other databases. (Kotler, Armstrong, 1999:508) Types and Benefits of Loyalty Cards Limited or open Loyalty Programs may find usage area in different types of companies in terms of their superiority over each other. The advantages of limited loyalty cards are; x x The help of membership fee to meet the costs, The help to focus on target group, CRM and a Questionnaire Study about Loyalty Cards in Gaziantep 394 x x x x Providing a more effective communication, Low costs because of the limited number of members, The database including only the customers providing profit above average, Membership fees increasing the expectations, so management’s effort to increase the value of the Loyalty Program permanently. And the advantages of Open Loyalty Programs are; x x x x x Wider customer network, Data with fewer mistakes, Easier accessibility to potential customers and competitors’ customers Guiding section specific communication and section with perfection of database Helping to reach the critical mass who makes the loyalty program more cost-effective (Butcher, 2002. P. 50-52). Similar Researches The main aim of loyalty cards is to increase customer commitment. Data obtained from loyalty cards are consisting of the frequency of shopping, the cost of shopping, most frequently purchased item type and these are collected in the database, analyzed and arranged for the customer accordingly. The first country to try to keep their customers and have started working accordingly is the USA. The use of CRM has been spread with the recognition of its importance. The USA and Britain being the pioneers, customer loyalty programs are increasing in all over the world. It has been observed that half of the adults living in the USA and %80 of British household are participating in at least one customer loyalty program (Fowler, M., 2004). 16 retailers in Europe in 2000 have spent about 1million dollars, it has even been observed that some supermarket chains have spent 150 million dollar share of their yearly budget (Kumar and Shah, D., 2004, p.219). Tan (2005) has concluded the following results from customer loyalty programs.    53% of all the grocery customers in the USA have at least one loyalty card. According to the data of 2004; each person in the USA has 4 credit cards while in Turkey each person has two. 89 million people in the world are members of a loyalty program of an airline company and 74 million of these people live in the USA. The saved flight miles of this program has reached 14 million TL, and that the half of it is received from the purchases. A study done about loyalty cards have shown that 61% of the participants have three, 24 % of them have two, 2% of them have one loyalty card of a loyalty program and from this perspective loyalty cards have remained incapable of maintaining customer loyalty (Bellizi, J.A. and Bristol, B., 2004, p.147). There are various customer loyalty programs in Turkey. Migros Club Card, Kamil Koc Bus Management CustomerCard, Tansaú Consumer Rights, AtlasJet JetMile program are some of these. Migros Club Card application that has 4.5 million members with 9 times call on to the store and is forming 80% of total endorsement (Buyuk, S.S., 2006), and that at the end of a program applied by Tansaú supermarket, the store has profited 800 million from 100 million loss have shown that customer loyalty applications are in support of the company (Yurdakul, M., 2002, p.193-202). There has been a study conducted about loyalty cards in Gaziantep before, data from loyalty cards of a supermarket from recent years were analyzed and Ozguven et al (2013) found out that two third of customers in Gaziantep are men, but women spare moe time for shopping, they stop by the malls more during the week and come with their partners at the weekend and that they shop more than men on different dates. It has also been concluded from the card data that supermarkets should give more importance to sales strategies between September and December. The information gathered shows what Uğur Harbelioğlu 395 kind of information loyalty cards provide for the companies and when and how to target what kind of customers. Aim of the Study The aim of this study is to determine the knowledge of the experimented participants about loyalty cards, to find out which store cards they use, use of card and gender, to check whether there is a connection between occupation and age and to analyze the effects of loyalty cards. Methodology and Survey Questions This study has been conducted as a written survey and it has 7 questions. Since the first question is answered with a number that indicates the participant's age clearly, there is no range of age. The gender question is expected to be answered with two options. The profession question is limited to 5 options as “ Educator, Civil Servant, Private Sector, Housewife, and Student” and it covers all kind of professions. Monthly income question has options starting from 0-1000 TL, 1000-5000 and more. The reasons of card use is a multiple choice question with the options of “sale-points-reputation-don't know”. The question that asks with what aim the loyalty card is used by producers/suppliers has two options as “know-don’t know”. The 8th question that asks which store’s loyalty card is used is an open ended question. Since analyzes will be shown through a diagram, the study is quantitative and for the aims of the use of loyalty cards will be analyzed whether they have succeeded or not, so the study is also qualitative. Limitations The data of this study have been gathered between the dates 6th - 26th December. The survey has been applied at Zirve University, Tu÷can Hotel and around District Police Department Service Building. To reach more and various masses and to get a more heterogenic group, the survey has been reached also to students' parents. The fact that not only the guests at Tu÷can Hotel but also the staff has answered the survey has prevented a more accurate specific participant scale that shows the choice of card use. Against the possibility of not recognizing the sore cards as loyalty cards, it has been explained before the survey that a loyalty card is a card we use at Migros, Tansas, Gratis etc. 200 people have answered the survey in total. Percentage Data and Participants Information %16 of the participants were aged between 18 and 22. Likely %16 of them were 23-26. %22 them were ranked from 27 to 30 years old. People whose ages were between 31 and 40 were holding %19 proportion. The group of people from 41 to 55 years old was number maximal one with a %25 rate. The least group with %2 was between 56-65 years old. %58 of the participants were male. Most of the participants who also were the major group with %33 were private sector employees. This situation can reveal the shopping tendencies and conditions. %22 of people were in the education circle. Moreover, %19 were from government officers. Other %14 composed students, in addition to that the last %12 comprised housewives. While %59 of attenders in Gaziantep were using loyalty cards actively, other %26 stated that they didn't use any of them, the rest of the survey people with %15 expressed using loyalty cards sometimes. 396 CRM and a Questionnaire Study about Loyalty Cards in Gaziantep Tables Uğur Harbelioğlu 397 398 CRM and a Questionnaire Study about Loyalty Cards in Gaziantep Analysis The maximum number of people were aged between 41 and 55, and the participants whose ages between 27 and 30 followed as a second maximum group. There was male numerosity, yet when that cosmetic and personal care products companies have more loyalty cards alternatively was taken into consideration, it may have effected as a decrease in number. So if gender distinction had been equal, there would have been an increase from the female side of customers. %22 of attenders were educators. This group varies from education center teachers to lecturers, however; they have similar shopping behavior. That's why they were classified together and concluded that they didn't use cards as much as housewives and private sector workers. %14 percent of the students are believed to use cards for friend recommendation, sense of belonging or being popular in the society. The reason is that they chose the most popular young clothing and technology brands among the company choices. While %59 of the customers use loyalty cards, %26 of them don’t use that cards and %15 of them sometimes use the cards. Therefore, it causes the possibility for the producer data system to collect imperfect data because of the fact that they can’t follow the whole shopping done by the people who sometimes use the loyalty cards. Moreover, the biggest reason for not using or carrying the loyalty cards all the time is that it doesn’t have any encouraging discount or special offer for the users, and the users don’t have the adequate knowledge about how to use that cards. The most successful and systematical shopping mall in Gaziantep is Metro, the reason is that their method is based more on ‘wholesale’ and it is known as a mall that gives commercial cards to the companies and shops. Moreover, it not only saves the customers' information to give them permission to shop later for personal and retail shopping, but also it lets customers shop with a disposable card. The reason for asking the customers’ economical income is about the single use. Because retail and discount are not the only reasons for the use of loyalty cards, but the other reasons are prestige and group identity. Income ranges are divided into five groups with a-thousand Turkish Liras ranges. The percentage of the majority group is %45, and the income is between two and three thousand Turkish Liras. It also shows the salary of the worker groups. That the other ranges are not same with the majority group reveals that the present study is more about the shopping habit of the income group mentioned above. It is found out that the biggest reason for the use of loyalty cards is a discount with the percentage of %48, which shows that loyalty cards are offered as an economical opportunity to the customers. When loyalty cards are offered by cashiers to the steady customers, they feel eager to take the cards, and use it to benefit the discounts. At the same time, the shopping malls can collect data about their customers without spending any energy or money. The money point card users that have the percentage of %28 use their cards more for fuel companies. As the need of fuel is permanent, they want to use such kind of cards to collect money point all the time, so they go to the same gas station for it. In this way, the producers get the customers adopt a permanent shopping habit. On the other hand, the biggest fuel companies such as Opet and Shell indicate that using the same product for the cars prolongs the life of their cars and enhances the performance of the cars to grab the customers’ attention to their companies. The collecting money point is an encouraging advice activity. It is done for not only selling their products permanently but also checking the customers’ data about their shopping easily. The firms that are relatively difficult in reaching and brand ownership produce cards for client satisfaction, and by doing this, they both introduce themselves, and give an abstract service to their clients. An unexpected result of the study is the number of participants who don't know why they use loyalty cards, with a percentage of 13%. This number represents 26 people in 200 people. This number explains how attractive loyalty cards become, or how vulnerable clients are during shopping or how unconscious their spending behaviors are. The answer to the question of “why are loyalty cards used in view of producers” is not known with a percentage of 54%. 46% of participants explained they knew it. It is not asked what they know exactly in Uğur Harbelioğlu 399 the questionnaire. The aim of this is to reduce the questionnaire time and to ensure to make the evaluation more statistical. Hence, it is not known what 46% of participants know, however, it is considered that some of them don't know that loyalty cards are for monitoring clients’ shopping behaviors. The most commonly used cards in Gaziantep are not many in type. It can be drawn that popular firms are similar and big firms don't give a chance to other firms. The reason of this is that Oli Center, Opet, and Migros have many branches and success in advertising. One of the surprising results of the questionnaire is that although there is no loyalty card in Starbucks in Turkey, and there are only 2 branches in Gaziantep, participants claim that they have the card of this brand. Other than this brand, also Beymen, Mavi, Kõ÷õlõ, Cergibozanlar, and Carrefour were stated, but they were not added to graphs, as they were not repeated enough. Conclusion This study was designed to search frequency of loyalty cards use, percentage and consciousness of using the cards. The group which is reachable and voluntarily participating is mostly men. This situation shows that men in Gaziantep are more open to questions about spending and shopping. It can be drawn that patriarchal life style is focused in the city center. That used cards are mostly about supermarket shopping shows that spending focuses on the food sector. That petrol stations' cards are used enables us to draw that CRM could get extensive knowledge in petrol sector. In supermarket brands, we see that Oli Center (29%) passes Migros (23%). That a local brand is preferred more than a national brand which is widely used and giving advertisements shows that local spending in Gaziantep could be successful. We could comprehend that some groups use loyalty cards in view of creating ownership feeling (prestige). Producers could want to control all kinds of clients with these cards and also communicate with a specific group when they want to. The reason of using loyalty cards in view of firms is that they are mainly not known and majority of participants use at least one card and their shopping is monitored and their shopping is controlled by at least one firm. This leads us to a conclusion that loyalty cards are used efficiently in Gaziantep in order to tract customer data, and it constitutes an important role to succeed buyer's satisfaction for this area of Turkey. 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