Evaluation of customer relation management formation in the retail trade enterprises in the Baltic countries

The sphere of retail trade has always played significant role in every country national economy. The grounds of success of a retail trade enterprise is formation of customer satisfaction and loyalty to the enterprise. Process of attracting new customers involves spending more money and energy. In order to retain existing customers and ensure their loyalty, one of the basic tasks of the enterprise is to know the factors the influence their satisfaction and the satisfaction level itself. Market globalization influences retail trade enterprises ore and more, this make them look for possibilities to ensure and raise their competitiveness. To identify factors of competitiveness the authors put forward the goal to research the measurement methods of satisfaction and loyalty in retail trade enterprises. To reach the goal the authors employ the monographic method to explore the theoretical background of the satisfaction and loyalty; besides that the authors analyze the tendencies of the retail trade in Latvia and by the means of the expert interviews, the customer and manager surveys help the identification of the application level of the satisfaction and loyalty research in the retail trade companies in Latvia. The present article will give the retail trade enterprises understanding of necessity of research in the process of customer satisfaction formation and its specific features in the retail trade sector. The authors have summarized the existing approaches and defined their approach to application of satisfaction and loyalty measurement. The authors conclude that by using customer satisfaction and loyalty research, it is possible to manage the customer attitude formation, and this can be one of the instruments for ensuring competitiveness.