Determinants of Customer Relationship Development

Customer relationship development is the focus of any business. It is increasingly found to be at the top of organisations´ agendas, aiming at creating and enhancing relationships with customers in order to improve both business profitability and satisfaction of customers. Measuring customer focus can be helpful in understanding this effort by providing a valuable framework for customer relations assessment. In this context our research offers an integrated approach for understanding the customer relationships. The aim of our article is threefold: we aim to indicate and explore the determinants for improving customer relationship development in tourist sector, to propose measures for assessing customer focus in tourist organisations in Slovakia and to explain relationship between customer relationship level and business performance. This will be achieved by determining the subcategories of the customer management processes and by identifying determinants affecting business performance. In order to translate customer focus into specific activities designed to increase business performance, the determinants were made operational applying quantitative analysis. Results of the research reveal that tourist companies in Slovakia adopt customer oriented approach and try to optimize their relationships with customers. However, there is a space towards continual improvement. In our article, factors with insufficient performance have been discussed and solutions proposed to improve the results. Finally, a framework for determining the strength of the relationship between business performance and customer focus variables is introduced.