Harrah’s Entertainment Inc.

Harrahs Entertainment Inc. Philip G. Satre, CEO of Harrahs Entertainment Inc. , had steered the company to a new direction and created a new warlike improvement for the company. In 1998, Gary Loveman joined Harrahs as chief operating officer (COO) and helped the company to change from operations-driven company that had its properties operate as standalone business, to a marketing-driven company that focused on the target nodes and build inscription under Harrahs brand.By December 1999, Harrahs had 50% growth in revenue and 100% growth in stock price and profits, which the results were significantly better than the industry. However, Satre had twain questions for Gary Loveman and his team. He wanted to know how much percentage of the marketing dollars was accounted for this success and was these marketing efforts sustainable. Phillip Satre became CEO of Harrahs Entertainment Inc. in 1984. His first sustainable competitive advantage was to focus on customer.The first CRM system w as the Winners Information Network, which collected and analyzed data based on customers play. The strategy was a success until mid mid-nineties when there were more competitors entered the market with better and flashier properties. The company launched the Total Gold program in fall 1997, which focused more on increasing customer royalty. After Gary Loveman joined the company in 1998, the data he analyzed was showed that customers had little loyalty to the company, so the companys main focus was to increase customers loyalty.In rear to succeed, Loveman introduced three major plans changing the organization structure/ building the Harrahs brand, delivering extraordinary service, and exploiting relationship marketing opportunities. The new CRM was recreated and consisted of two components Database Marketing (DBM) and the Total Gold Program. DBM could just predict customer worth how much the casino expected to win from a customer. This system helped Harrahs to identify its potentia l great customers.It also helped Harrahs to develop customer centric approach to direct marketing, which comprised 3 phases to a customer relationship new business, loyal and retention. The Total Gold Program was created to assist and support the cross-market run patterns of the customers. The Total Gold Program increased Harrahs cross-market revenues from 13% in 1997 to 23% in 2000. It also helped Harrah to create true royalty program which motivated customers to groom goals and explained clearly for how to achieve them.Harrahs main focus was to increase customers loyalty, so the metrics that could be used to assess its performance were customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. As far as how much percentage of the marketing efforts had contributed to the overall performance which could be measured by using return on investment metric. This competitive advantage probably sustained until the competitors introduced similar programs, which Harrahs might have to come up with new inno vations. However, Harrahs had excelled in customer intimacy and also did very comfortably in product leadership, which put Harrahs in better position than its competitors.