Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Mitsukoshi Is Using Blogs For CRM Purposes


We all know blogs can become a powerful customer relationship management (CRM) tool when used properly. Many years ago, in 2006, Mitsukoshi, a Japanese department store, experimented the use of blogs for CRM purposes.

Mitsukoshi proposed to 50 of its best customers to open some blogs, and become the reporters of the store. The idea was to create some user based content, where customers talk about the news of the store.

The company provided to the participants some USB keys with RFID chips. The more they posted articles on the blogs the bigger the prize they received.

Was it a success? Did it develop a strong customer relationship? There is very few articles discussing about the results, and I would like to know what it was about. Anyways, this was an initiative taken at the early stage of the blogging boom. I believe this is a good example on how to use blogs for retails, as a CRM tool.

That will probably feed my thoughts on how to use web 2.0 for grocery retails.