$3)$ Finally, Patricia develops a customer categorization pyramid. One day when she was walking around in the Gentry$$s flagship store, she noticed that there was a woman that took up two hours of a sales associate$$s time and then did not purchase anything. She watched while other customers were frustrated and left Gentry$$s because they were not being serviced. While Gentry$$s prides itself on customer service and does not want to ignore anyone, Patricia knows that there are $$lead$$customers that are taking up too much of Gentry$$s associates$$time$.$ She asks sales associates to rank their top $10$ customers, and to also identify $5$ customers that require too much time and don$$t make any purchases, or even worse, take information and then make their purchases online through another retailer. Patricia puts this information in the customer database. She sets up special promotional campaigns for the top customers. She also works with store managers to institute a rule that sales associates spend no more than $15$ minutes with difficult customers. If these customers complain, they are to be referred to a member of the store$$s management team.

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Patricia knows that it is much more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain a current one. She also knows that in Gentry$$s smaller markets, it is harder to recruit new customers at all. She hopes that these investments in customer retention and loyalty programs lead to higher sales and profits over the next several years.

Gentry$$s knows that customer $\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_$Blank is a better growth option than customer acquisition.

Multiple Choice

organization

identification

transition

retention

opposition