Relationship Marketing
Date: 2020-10-27
Source: https://craigwright.net/blog/economics/relationship-marketing
In the field of service marketing, relationship
marketing is gradually experiencing more common deployment. To some, it would appear
as if it were new. But, as Morgan and Hunt (1994) have demonstrated,
relationship marketing and a ‘commitment-trust theory of customer relationships’
have been around for decades. Christopher, Payne, and Ballantyne (1995)
described a similar concept when talking about the need to integrate quality
and customer service in any marketing delivery or product offering.
More recently, authors such as Gummesson (2017) have started explaining the need to extend the scope of relationship marketing. It is not fragmented and isolated actions, aimed at short-term results, that bring the best outcomes. Instead, long-term stewardship leads to continuous growth and increased benefits—for shareholders, customers, and the entire community that people live in. When people plan hardwood forests, they are not creating something that they will see the harvest of, and yet, they contribute. In many ways, such a form of stewardship is needed for relationship marketing. Even when it costs an organization in the short term, building relationships with customers, by ensuring long-term symbiotic relationships, benefits everybody.
More importantly, research is starting to
demonstrate that corporate social responsibility coordinates with an effective
marketing strategy (Luu, 2019). Corporations do not need to choose between
profitability and accountability; corporations can have both. The marketing of an
organization’s position forms an essential component of the strategy, in the sense
that it is necessary to market the organization’s strategy and stance to effectively
capitalise on the investment in society. If your clients do not know that you
are acting responsibly, they won’t treat you as if you’re working conscientiously.
As Boateng (2019) describes, customer loyalty needs to be earned, and to earn
it, corporations need to signal not only their current position; they need to
signal the long-term stance.
References
Boateng, S. L. (2019). Online relationship
marketing and customer loyalty: a signaling theory perspective. *International
Journal of Bank Marketing, 37*(1), 226–240. doi:
10.1108/ijbm-01-2018-0009
Christopher, M., Payne, A., Ballantyne, D.,
& Pelton, L. (1995). Relationship marketing: Bringing quality, customer
service and marketing together. International Business Review, 4(4),
538–541. doi: 10.1016/0969-5931(95)90007-1
Gummesson, E. (2017). From relationship marketing to total relationship marketing and beyond. Journal of Services Marketing, 31(1), 16–19. doi: 10.1108/jsm-11-2016-0398
Luu, T. T. (2019). CSR and Customer Value
Co-creation Behavior: The Moderation Mechanisms of Servant Leadership and
Relationship Marketing Orientation. Journal of Business Ethics, 155,
379–398. doi: 10.1007/s10551-017-3493-7
Morgan, R. M., & Hunt, S. D. (1994). The Commitment-Trust Theory of Relationship Marketing. Journal of Marketing, 58(3), 20–38. doi: 10.2307/1252308
Image: Hardwood Forest; Image Source: [https://www.flickr.com/photos/wackybadger/7327382958/in/photostream/; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode]