Textprobe: Kapitel 2.1, Customer Relationship Management (CRM): Customer relationship management has its roots in relationship marketing. The bases are relationship orientation, customer retention and achieving a high customer value created through process management. CRM is defined as the "values and strategies of relationship marketing - with particular emphasis on customer relationships - turned into practical application". Hereby IT is one key element. A data warehouse, where information about customers is stored, enables retailers to collect data, learn about their customers and tailor future marketing initiatives. Thanks to technology, customer management has become an easier task. A company can now assess a customer's profitability on an individual level. Many service companies such as airlines, telecommunication companies and financial institutions use customer relationship management software to increase the lifetime value of a customer "by matching products and levels of service more closely to a customer's expectations". Usually, the usage of CRM systems has lead to firms "cherry-picking only profitable customers" and concentrating all their marketing efforts on the most valuable customers. The emphasis has been on maintaining long-term relationships with these customers. Companies treat valuable customers like royalty or the cream of the crop and go to great lengths to retain them. Take for example the airline company Lufthansa. In 2004 travelers, who collected 600,000 frequent flyer miles over the course of the last two years could join the HON circle program. These clients enjoy perks such as limousine pick up, guaranteed booking, and check-in at special first class terminals. However, only a small minority of customers are truly profitable. A well known fact, the Pareto Principle, states that 20 % of the customers are responsible for 80% of the sales revenue. Companies in both B2B and B2C markets have a large base of so called "unprofitable customers". A company's client is unprofitable if he possess a "negative contribution margin" which is the generated revenue minus the direct costs and cost-to-serve. This means that an unprofitable customer costs more than he is worth. A survey conducted in the German mechanical engineering sector showed that about one fifth of the companies possess a customer portfolio in which more than half of their customer are unprofitable. In a business-to-consumer setting, a German retail bank identified 26.8% of its customers to be unprofitable. Yet, management of unprofitable customers has mainly been reduced to "demarketing" or termination of the relationship. Many authors suggest termination as "the way" to deal with unprofitable customers. Termination is when a company severs ties to a customer. The seller no longer wants to engage in business with a certain customer because he no longer sees a value in continuing the relationship. It can make sense not to keep customers who don't pay bills on time, or who constantly call the service hotline. The same would be industrial firms who change their mind on quantity or quality of deliveries. Zeithaml et.al. see firing customers as a possibility to increase profitability because a company no longer has to use their resources to serve these customers and instead can employ them more effectively.