The Harrahs Marketing Strategy - Article Example

Harrah’s not only gained customer loyalty but also rewarded it from time to time which established long-term relations with its customers.
On the contrary, Harrah’s competitors had been very stereotypic in their marketing approach by spending frivolously on hotels and building properties without paying any attention to capturing a greater customer base which ultimately swept them away from the competition.
Total Rewards Program at Harrah

Harrah’s total rewards program, earlier known as Total Gold is a customer loyalty program that retains and tracks the information of Harrah’s customers and also rewards them based on careful segregation of the most profitable and active customers. In the context of business intelligence, this program retains every entry, exit, or gaming information of all Harrah’s customers and classifies them based on their loyalty and activeness. The customers have rewarded points for their activities which they can redeem anytime against the privileges granted. For the company, it helps understand who the most profitable customers are and how to manage the costs incurred on each class of customer, thereby assisting the thedecision-makingg process (Forgionne & Gupta 2003, p.166).

Closed-loop marketing system at Harrah
The closed-loop marketing system at Harrah made use of its total rewards program and evaluated the value of a customer based on his expenditures at Harrah’s games and properties. As such, Harrah’s was enabled to infuse positive changes in its customer behavior through its data-driven marketing and business approach. The closed-loop marketing system also tracked individual customer profitability against market value which helped it modify its marketing tactics and generate greater returns on its investments.

Challenges faced by Expedia
The use of business intelligence and a web-based KPI scorecard system suddenly created hiccups for Expedia when the rudimentary balance scorecard generated at Expedia could not attain the state where it could deliver answers to queries. So much data and numbers made employees inquisitive but no data to support the queries. As such, attaining a single version of the truth became very difficult for Expedia. This made revenues and other strategies go in different directions as per individual interpretations of customer data.

Efficiency and effectiveness of the solution
The steps taken by Expedia in correcting its KPI and balanced scorecard initiatives proved to be far more accountable, consistent, and culturally fit because Expedia now made all the objectives available to all its employees and also aligned individual behavior with corporate goals. Measurements were made more transparent and financials were given greater attention (Wolfskill 2007). It is generally an uncommon experience with other organizations because they fail to establish and manage the KPI teams and monitor their financials concerning the revenue cycle performance and customer satisfaction arising from this data. Read More