4.

0 Managing the Customer Life Cycle Development of customer relationship over a time could be illustrated by customer life cycle. Customer life cycle embraces three major processes: acquiring new customers (customer acquisition), retaining existing customers (customer retention), and enhancing customer value (customer development) (Butler, 2009). 4.1 Customer Acquisition It would be impossible to carry out customer retention and development if you gain no customers. According to Paul Suggett (n.d.), customer acquisition is the process of bringing new customers to brand, product or service. 4.1.1 Types of New Customers 4.1.1.1 New-to-Category Those who have either discovered new need or pinpointed new category of solution for an existing need are known as new-to-category customers (Butler, 2009). In year 2011, HP has introduced HP Wi-Fi Mobile Mouse, a wireless mouse which does not require USB dongle. Instead, it connects through PCs built-in Wi-Fi receiver. Scott Pappan, director of Personal Computer Accessories of HP, says that it is very suitable for customers who have problem of insufficient USB ports in PCs (HP Introduces Wireless PC Accessories to Enhance the Computing Experience, 2011). The coverage is 30 feet range, and this mouse can works across the room (Chiappetta, 2011). It is also the first Wi-Fi mouse in the industry. 4.1.1.2 New-to-Company Customers who are won from competitors are classified as new-to-company customers (Butler, 2009). 4.1.2 B2C Prospecting 4.1.2.1 Advertising Advertising is the creation and delivery of messages to targeted audiences through the purchase of time or space in media owned by others (Butler, 2009). There are two types of advertising in B2C context, which are cognitive and affective. Basically, HP uses cognitive advertising. Cognitive advertising focuses on what audiences know, and therefore aims to raise awareness, develops understanding and create knowledge. HP offers technology products like laptops, tablets and printers. Technology products are normally complicated, and customers need to be told what features products of HP have, and what benefits they will get eventually. For example, HP Elite Pad Commercial and HP Spectre ONE Commercial adopt cognitive advertising method, in which advertisements illustrate the functions of both products. Through this kind of advertising method, customers would know what types of products they would purchase, based on their needs and features of products. Besides that, HP also attempts in doing mobile advertising. In year 2009, HP has its 30-second advertisement which promotes their two laptops (HP Envy 4 Touchsmart Ultrabook and HP Envy 23 Touchsmart 23-DO4OT)

through Spotify iPhone application (Johnson, 2012). Customers can study the reviews and the information about the laptops, and share via Facebook or Twitter. 4.1.2.2 Sales Promotion Sales promotion is any behaviour-trigerring temporary incentive aimed at prospects, customers, channel partners or salespeople (Butler, 2009). HP adopts discounts, which are temporary price reductions. Price reduction of products and services could actually attract new customers to purchase. For example, HP in Canada has done many discounts on products, such as HP ProBook 6570b Notebook PC ($30 price reduction), HP ElitePad (5%-10% price reduction), and HP LaserJet Pro 400 Colour Printer M451dn (19% price reduction). Besides that, coupons are also offered by HP to grant customers saving when purchasing products or services. They are redeemable on purchase, at the point-of-sale. There are lots of HP coupons in several websites available for customers to collect, like Tech Bargain, Coupon Pal, and Dealigg. Customers would have need to either print the coupon out, or directly get price saving from online purchase. 4.1.2.3 Buzz/ Word-of-mouth Word-of-mouth is interpersonal communication about a product or organization in which the receiver assumes the communicator to independent of commercial influence (Butler, 2009). Word-of-mouth has gained importance gradually. In year 2011, according to research of Nielsen, a global information and measurement company which provides market research on customer behaviour, 92% of people trust to recommendations from referrals (people they know), and 70% trust online consumer reviews (Nielsen, 2012). Realising the significance of word-of-mouth approach, HP has involved in this approach to attract new customers. Firstly, HP has introduced 31 Days of the Dragon, which aims to strike to blogosphere. 31 HDX Dragon Systems are provided to 31 selected bloggers, which then will be given away to lucky readers on blog sites over 31 days (one per blogger, and each one on a different day) any way they wished (Schofield, 2008). Each blogger helped in promoting the product in blogosphere, and came out with many contests to give the product away to lucky blog followers. Eventually, sales of HDX Dragon amazingly increased by 84%, and HP experiences 10% increase in their PC sales (Collier, 2008). Secondly, HP has set up its page in social networking sites, like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. There are approximately 2.5 million, 330K and 1 million fans in Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn respectively. Facebook and Twitter serve as social networking service regardless of professions, ages, family background; LinkedIn is purely for people in profession occupations. Setting up pages in social networking sites usually incur at only very low or no costs, but it is a very effective tool to spread the messages out to followers. Brafton (2013) has mentioned that its LinkedIn followers are 2.5 times more possibly to recommend HP to their colleagues, and 1.5 times more likely to consider buying HP products before other brands.