Tips - Assignment II - Engaging with External Environment

Dear all, I am writing my second assignment for E.E.E. I know, I know, I should been enjoying Easter break, but I prefer to enjoy my summer much better, then working hard now to have time for dissertation later on, finishing till the end of July...

I am writing to exchange some ideas with you about this assingment. Firstly, let's understand the question set:

• To what extent is the organisation currently using relationship marketing ?

In this section, we need to identify the level of relationship the company has with current customers. This seems to be the easiest part of the assessment, but this will determine the success of the assingment. You can figure out this point asking some questions for your chosen company:

- How often do you visit your customers ? Do you keep records about customer's complaints and suggestions ? Do you keep records of solutions adopted for customers ? Do these solutions used as a base for benchmarking ? Do are these information spread out to all members of the company ? Do you have a life time value customer study ? How do you select customers to maintain a close relationship ?

- Here would be great to demonstrate your literature knowledge about the topic. How can you identify a relationship strategy, without to know well what's it ?

• What at the current strengths and weaknesses of its current approach?

- Here, if your chosen company has a selling Culture (transactional culture) it is easier to find weakeness than strengths. I think to be allright to find just negative points and to point out which are the opportunities they are missing not adopting a Relationship approach.

· Where, on the ladder, should they be aiming to move their customers?

Once again, it is important to understand the Relationship ladder and the characteristics of each rung: suspect, prospect, customer, client, team member, advocate and partner. You should pay attention to the characteristics, otherwise you can fall on a mistake.

I've spoken with Caroline about this theory. She didn't remember the source, and I couldn't find the source, as well. If, one of you find, please let me know. I think to be an adaptation of several concepts...I've already seen this in some negotiation books.

· What approaches should they be using?

This section is about the marketing tools they should be using, if they are not using yet. The approach depends of the rung customers are setted. For instance, if customers' rung are Client, what to do for moving to Advocates ? First, the company should identify profitable customers to invest in a relationship, then to study customer's needs and characteristics, then apply some techniques such as: promotions, events, etc.

· What recommendations do you wish to make for this organisation?

In this section, we should recommend some actions or techniques to create loyalty, to invest in relationships after present the benefits in previous sections. Sometimes, the company just need to adjust their communication with customers: For instance, to establish frequent communication with customers highlighting benefits delivered during the relationship.

Please, if you have different viewpoints on this, send me an email and I will post on here ! Thanks !

Bibliography

Books

CHERNATONY, L & M MACDONALD. (2003) Creating Powerful brands, 3rd ed. Great Britain: Elsevier

DONALDSON, B. (1998) ‘Sales Management: Theory and Practice.’2nd Ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

DOYLE, P. (2002) Marketing Management and Strategy, 4th ed. Great Britain: FT Prentice Hall

EGAN, J. (2004) ‘Relationship Marketing: Exploring Relational Strategies in Marketing’. 2nd Ed. New York: Prentice Hall.

LITTLE, E. and MARANDI, E. (2003) “Relationship Marketing Management” London: Thomson Learning.

MITCHEL, R. and GOFFIN, K. (2005) “Innovation Management: Strategy and implementation using the Pentathlon Framework”. England: Pelgrave.


Journals

Guenzy, P. and Pardo, C. and Georges, L. (2007) ‘Relational Selling Strategy and key account managers’ relational behaviours: An Exploratory Study’. Industrial Marketing Management. Vol.36. p.p. 121-133.

Gronroos, C. (1997) ‘From Marketing mix to relationship marketing – towards a paradigm shift in marketing’, Management Decisions, 35(4) p.p. 322-339.

Berry, L.L and Shostack, G.L and Opah, G (1983) ‘Emerging Perspectives on Services Marketing’. Chicago, I1: American Marketing Association, p.p. 25-28.

Reichheld, F.F. and Junior, W.E.S.(1990) ‘Zero defections: Quality comes to Services.’ Harvard Business Review. Sept-Oct. pp. 105-111.

Narayandas, D. (2005) ‘Building Loyalty in Business Markets’. Harvard Business Review. September, p.p. 131-139.

Morgan, R., & Hunt, S. D. (1994). ‘The commitment-trust theory of relationship marketing’. Journal of Marketing, July Vol. 58, p.p. 20−38.

Payne, A. (1994) ‘Relationship Marketing: Make the Customer count’. Managing Service Quality. Vol.4,6. p.p. 29-31.