Abstract
Due to the changing in the way that technology is used, marketers will have to deal with changes in customers’ behaviours and expectations, in ever more complicated market settings, across both developed and emerging economies. Realising the potential of the Emerging Markets (EM) requires insightful customer knowledge and market information.
This research examines the role of Customer Intelligence (CI) in EM for IT multinational corporations in the Middle East region in a Business to Business (B2B) context, thereby bridging knowledge gaps in literature and practice. The knowledge gained is used here to develop a conceptual framework to reflect the impact of CI on developing existing markets and opening new markets in the ME / B2B world.
This research followed a qualitative approach and data were collected through semi structured interviews addressing the key areas identified in existing literature and prevalidated by experts in the field. The researcher conducted interviews at two sites in the region, Dubai in United Arab Emirates and Amman in Jordan. Thirty-five elite interviews were conducted with purposively selected leaders, directors, and managers with the average of 20.8 years of experience in the field, working for 32 international organisations based in the ME including all the industry leaders. A total of interview 1140 minutes ensued, with an average of 32.5 minutes per interview. Thematic analysis using NVivo software resulted in 1678 codes, interpreted inductively to yield eight main themes and 46 influential factors that enclosed 150 variables.
The main findings of this research revealed that CI and DT are mutually interactive and have a reciprocal relationship with a changing business model, that encompasses characteristics of emerging markets, marketing activities, partner eco-systems, customer segmentation with the use and the value of marketing systems and tools. However, there were indications that many firms, due to lack of CI strategy and investment, fail to reap the benefits of using CI for market coverage. A conceptual framework and model for identifying market potential and the role of CI was developed and validated by elite practitioners. This “Chandelier Model” is presented as a tool to enable practitioners to make more effective use of CI to enhance the development of emerging market