Reference no: EM132913123

Cat-o-Dog is a local business specializing on pets supplies such as pet foods, pet accessories, pet wellness as well as pet hotel services. The business has a few branches in Klang Valley and has been very popular due to its competitive price and service quality. Cat-o-Dog has put in sizeable investment to ensure all the necessary IT facilities are in place to support its operation. Their IT people are very competent and have so far provided a very good support for the business operation. Though the business is quite successful, it is still up against fierce competition with a few other pet shops, and currently from the popularity chart in the social media, Cat-oDog sits at number 10 most popular pet shops and pet hotel service in the central region. Naturally, the board members would want to see a better achievement. They are looking for ways in bringing Cat-o-Dog to a higher rank among consumers. Many approaches have been considered including keeping track and getting to know their loyal customers through the use of membership programme and being in touch with them with offerings such as discounts and occasional greetings via social media. During the COVID-19 pandemic, sales have gone down quite tremendously due to people being confined at home and unable to come to the shop to buy their pets supplies. Many customers have resorted to getting the supplies from businesses that have online shopping facilities and that have cause Cat-o-Dog to fall behind. With a slow down in revenue generating, the business has to be very careful with their expenditure, any big projects will have to be put on hold until the situation gets better. Now that the situation has gotten better and shops are allowed to operate again, Cat-ODog needs to work harder to bring in the sales, any issues that could further push the business behind such as poor customer service and poor product offerings cannot be tolerated. The CRM has recorded quite a number of complaints pertaining to service and product quality.

Based on this scenario, answer the following questions:

A. Identify an external factor affecting the performance of the business in this scenario

B. Explain the term "Customer Intimacy". Identify where customer intimacy applies in the above scenario.