Modelling Customer Relationships in e-Business
Alexander Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur · 2003
The goal of this paper is to provide an ontological approach to modelling customer relationships, which helps managers optimize channels, improve customer acquisition, retention and add-on selling. The advantages of a systematic approach are multiple. Modelling and mapping customer relationships allows a better understanding of the way a company interacts with its customers. A formal description is also communicable between the various stakeholders. Further, conceptually seized customer relationships are comparable to the customer relationships of competitors. We illustrate the model with two examples of the mobile industry. The customer relationship ontology presented in this paper is part of the more general business model ontology of Osterwalder & Pigneur (2002).