Customer Loyalty Migration Analysis Using the Recency, Frequency, Monetary (RFM) Method and Ethnography Approach to Develop Business-to-Business (B2B) Marketing Strategy at PT Aru Raharja

Abstract

The growing outsourcing industry has intensified competition among business-to-business (B2B) service providers, making customer retention and an understanding of loyalty migration essential for sustainable growth. This study aimed to analyze customer loyalty migration at PT Aru Raharja, identify the factors underlying these changes, and formulate appropriate B2B marketing strategies. A mixed-methods sequential explanatory design was applied to 38 corporate customers with complete transaction records for 2024 and 2025. The quantitative analysis employed the Recency, Frequency, and Monetary (RFM) method, tertile-based scoring, and cross-tabulation using SPSS, followed by an ethnographic approach involving interviews with operational managers and observations of business processes. The findings showed that 17 customers (44.74%) maintained their loyalty status, 12 (31.58%) experienced increased loyalty, and 9 (23.68%) experienced decreased loyalty; overall, 76.32% maintained or improved their business relationships. The qualitative findings indicated that loyalty migration was associated with service responsiveness, communication quality, workforce monitoring, administrative accuracy, cost efficiency, price competition, and regulatory compliance. These findings supported value propositions emphasizing fast, transparent, consistent, flexible, and technology-enabled services. The study concluded that integrating RFM analysis with ethnographic insights provided a comprehensive basis for developing differentiated B2B marketing strategies, including optimizing the Talenta application, assigning dedicated relationship managers, accelerating personnel replacement, improving digital administrative processes, and offering competitive pricing schemes without compromising service quality.