Relationship marketing

Résumé du document

As everybody knows, marketing is a science which studies how to deal with customers and partners in order to facilitate sales of goods or services. Currently, many people, especially consultants, stress on the marketing relationship between corporations and customers.

We can note that customer care has been the focus of business for many decades now. We may explore the development of relationship marketing since the 80s to understand how important relations are to business, and how one can work efficiently in a corporation. Firstly, we will focus on a definition of this new theory to understand what it involves.

Subsequently, we will be able to study the kind of relations established between consumers and companies, and what may be the links between communications and business. We could ask ourselves: what is the importance of relationships in establishing a marketing plan, or a business?

This expression is a concept which was originally described by Leonard Berry in 1983; he explained it as a form of marketing that evolved from direct response marketing. Relationship marketing is described as being oriented toward a long time horizon in contrast with the short-term orientation. The emphasis is placed on building long term relations with customers.

We could say that it is an alternative model which focuses on customers and relationships rather than on markets and products. Morgan and Hudt (1994) refer to it as all activities directed toward establishing, developing, and maintaining successful relational exchanges. The other end of this new concept is customer retention, which is an attempt to reduce customer turnover and increase customer loyalty. The way to achieve this is to improve relations with consumers; by doing so, many companies discovered new ways of selling their products.

The first example is the relative importance of new loyalty programs, such as those in the distribution. In the past few years, we have seen the development of many loyalty cards such as Airlines cards, or membership rewards associated with one's credit card, or when you shop in a store, etc.

Tags: relationship marketing, Customer loyalty, Customer retention

Extraits

[...] The development of commercialization by mail or by internet is a new kind of development which may meet new behavior. That's why we can examine if the predominance of communication will always be needed by each part, especially consumers? REFERENCES Kotler and Dubois satisfaire et conserver le client grâce à la valeur »Chapitre 2 Marketing Management Editions Publi Union Décisions Marketing «Les facteurs de réussite du marketing relationnel B. Ivens, U. Mayrhofer Décisions Marketing pages 7 to 16 Le marketing relationnel existe t-il ? G. [...]

[...] Thus companies are trying to improve their relations with consumers. This usually involves providing more personalized service and providing service quality that exceeds expectations at each step. We will study those aspects in the next paragraph, especially the link with communication. The development of this new conception has also touched all the organization of the firm, customer satisfaction becomes the responsibility of everyone in the organization. People in other departments must share the responsibility of dealing with customers. Companies must also make efforts to change their way of doing business if they want to correspond to these new criteria. [...]

[...] In fact, this is one of the biggest problems for a company: how to find the right offer for the targeted customers. One way to respond to this is to ask prospects directly, and by doing so, marketers' needs to talk to them. The first principle is to communicate with your potential consumers; without this it will be harder to reach what the customers are waiting for in a new product. This is also true for older goods. It is a really easy way to care about what may be arranged to satisfy the needs. [...]

[...] Marion Décisions Marketing pages 17 to 30 fidéliser sa clientèle, un objectif marketing prioritaire ? J.F Trinquecoste et rétention de clientèle et fidélité des clients D. [...]

[...] We saw the development of business as part of the growing complexity of our society. The changes were enormous between a society of production, where the demand is higher than the production, and a society of markets, where the suppliers don't find enough demand for their goods. But, one common thing is that during this change of habits, one thing has remained the same: the communication. It remains true that without it, it is practically unbelievable to run any kind of business. [...]