Principle of active communication: All the aspects during the ‘relationship’ should communicate with each other actively, exchange information and comprehend the situation, keeping in touch to find out the requirements and the change of values, also being active to offer service and to solve problems in order to enhance the cooperating relationship. For instance, the mobile phone network supplier will keep in touch with the customers after they purchase a new cell phone by phoning and sending letters. On other hand, customers need to cooperate well to get better service.
Principle of credibility: To win the credibility from the other side during the ‘relationship’, both sides from the relationship marketing should make a series of promise and sign a contract, behaving like once promised. Take Phones 4 U for example, they make clear promise on the contract that if the customers find the same products cheaper within a 5 mile radius, they will refund 120% of the difference. More over, they even promise a return in 14 days if customers change their mind. They always do as they said.
Principle of shared benefits: The benefits of a relationship marketing approach go both ways that and your client views you as a valuable consultant, rather than a cost centre and your potential for increased revenues and a long-lasting relationship is real, (Claudia Temple, 2002).It is important to satisfy the benefits from both sides during the relationship marketing under a fair, public situation and the mature high-quality exchange may make both sides benefit a lot.
Problems with relationship marketing
One of the promises of interactive marketing has long been its ability to create intimate relationships with the customers. As a promise, it has been largely unfulfilled. The consumer experience of these relationships is typically lacklustre, and the marketers’ gains have been on the whole unremarkable, (Matthew Syrett, 2004). The first problem is that many marketers make a misunderstanding of relationships between people. They careless that what the customers need to feel is not to have an economic parity but to gain at least as much as they are giving in the relationship. Still another instance from the mobile phone network supplier, they offer the customers different talking plans and promise that the plans can be shifted after a period. But few customers feel satisfied with their various needs to such obstinate plans, so that they may turn to another supplier although the situation is almost the same. Sometimes marketers failed to maintain long-term relationship with consumers because of their carelessness of the consumer-centric value. Another wide spread problem comes out that more and more marketers depend on an obsession with body counts rather than the ultimate value of the relationship marketing. They argue that it is a great success that hundreds of thousands of consumers registered on their websites. Actually, although they visited and registered from the website, after that, they may seldom return or even never come back anymore. Everyone has such experience. There is still another problem that marketers can not avoid invasion of customers’ privacy when they are doing a necessary data collection. For instance, if a marketer asks for a customer’s zip code directly, he may hardly get truthful answer. What is worse, the customer maybe fear that he is being used, even fleeced. Once the customers are losing because their fear, anger, or unsatisfaction, what they bring away is not only the current profits but also the future. They might even abuse the company to others so that there is an awareness of losing potential customers. So the consequence is disastrous but once marketers realize the problems and make right decision, the demise of relationship marketing can be prevented in the future.
Long-term Relationship
Relationship marketing emphasizes retaining current customers rather than getting new ones. So it is important to establish long-term relationship with customers, depending on creating trust and credibility. Approach comes from making existing customers happy and satisfied so that they can become loyal repeat customers. There is an example in China. In Da’lian, the marketers of Tianbai Shopping Centre did a serial of research and found that the key to win customers’ trust was to solve the problem that they wanted to return the unsatisfied products. So they made a promise to the customers from 1994 that, ‘return the products whenever you fell unsatisfied’. And several years later, the sense of ‘everyday-shopping at Tianbai’, ‘safe shopping at Tianbai ‘ had been established through out the customers. So customers are the basic for firm to survival and develop. Without them, the marketing becomes river without a source or a tree without a root. Take McDonald for another instance. They have done very successfully to realize the long-term relationship with millions of customers from all over the world. And now they never give up their efforts. They present new sorts of fast food and build entertainment facilities for children, which creates family happiness and pleasure. People do not swarm to McDonald’s outlets solely because they love the hamburgers; other restaurants make better-tasting hamburgers. People are flecking to a system, not a hamburger. Throughout the world, this fine-turned system of suppliers, franchise owners, and employees delivers a high standard of what McDonald’s calls QSCV quality, service, clearlineness and value, (Philip Kotler,1991). McDonald has become a kind of culture and such special culture maintains and develops the relationship between firms and consumers.
Customer Loyalty
Nowadays marketers are focusing on customers possessing rate, economic range and customer loyalty. Different from the brand loyalty, customer loyalty emphasises the communication during the relationship marketing. It is the customer’s promise to corporation or employees. Drawing an analogy between relationship marketing and marriage, transaction is only to propose and the real marriage just begins. Like a marriage, the customer loyalty also has five procedures of acquaintance, observing, development, promise and removing from the relationship. There is a process to establish the customer loyalty. The initial relationship is nothing but a potential customer relationship. And then it develops to different levels such as customers, principals, supporters and faithful supporters who are not only the loyal repeat customers but also the key to spread active influence. To reach that goal, credibility must be sustained for customers. Deliver what you promise-on time and in a visible fashion, (Theodore Levitt, 1983). Firms should offer extremely high-quality products and service, and take care of customers’ benefits. In China, the Shen zhen Pin’An Insurance Corporation offers their customers consumer card and VIP card, which can bring a discount whenever they do shopping. Such humanistic policy is indeed an affective way in developing the customer’s loyalty.
Essential approaches to the success of relationship marketing
After evaluating the problems during relationship marketing and grasping the concept of long-term relationship and customer loyalty, marketers should make proper decisions. To approach the success of relationship, first of all, the satisfaction of customers must be created. Listen to customers face to face. They will tell the marketers what they need if marketers just take the time to listen and make them feel comfortable. The web and e-mail are typically not used for effective customer follow-up. Most websites especially e-commerce web sites are on a “treadmill to hell”, (Roger C. Parker, 2000). Secondly, keeping in touch is also a key step. The easiest way to keep in touch is to publish a newsletter or to post a mail. It may contain such things like ‘Thank you notes for orders, referrals or continued business’, short notes about position meeting or phone calls, a newspaper or article about a customer service, a notice of a special sale or offer et. For instance, Bank of Scotland sends their customers a newsletter after they open an account. In includes an introduction about the latest Chip and Pin system which is used to protect customer’s benefits. Internal marketing is another aspect of approaches to successful relationship marketing. Martin et al, (1991) claimed that customers are only a small part of relationship marketing and that referral markets, employees, internal markets and suppliers are equally important. The target of internal market is to make employees turn to focus on relationship marketing and to develop the company’s culture. It is necessary to encourage employees to develop and operate the strategy of relationship marketing and make them believe that it is wise to recommend relationship marketing. If the firm can not satisfy employees’ requirement, they will turn to other jobs before the long-term customer relationship has been established. Still another important aspect comes to the new structure and awarding system of companies. Under the influence of relationship marketing, the change of organization’s structure based on customers become more and more sensible. The managers of customer relationship are arranged to build long-term relationship. They know very well about their desire and they are related to the firm on finance, socialization and structure. Take IBM for example, they have owned an excellent customer relationship administration team. They are awarded on the standard and benefit rate from taking care of a customer. More over, technology also plays an important role to the success of relationship marketing. The twenty-first century is the century of technology! Various sorts of new technology such as internet, voice and data telecoms, wireless, satellite TV, desktop publishing etc. are applied in people’s ordinary life. All these technology helps firms to be successful during the relationship marketing. Amazon and E-bey are two examples of success in web-based relationship marketing that developed web technique helps them win a great number of loyal customers. Still another instance comes from Vodafone. On one hand they go on improving the high-quality talking network, on the other hand, they make use of the mass media by the way of responding for the worldwide famous Mans United football club, through the satellite TV and internet, making people all over the world notice and remember their brand. At the same time, many Mans United fans become their loyal customers. So beyond the face to face relationship, such way in building and maintaining a long-term relationship using new technology is exactly more effective. Finally, related firms should emphasis cooperation nowadays and explore market together. According to the theory of relationship marketing, different companies are possible to cooperate and sometimes it works better to reach the marketing goals. At the very beginning when Honda from Korea referred into the field of automobile industry, they cooperated with famous corporations from America and Japan, maintaining and developing such kind of B2B( business to business) relationship. Then during the next nearly ten years, Korea had turned to be the main automobile export country and Honda became the world-known brand.
Conclusion
Relationship marketing is the process of attracting, maintaining, and enhancing relationships with key people, (Leonard Berry,1983). In a word, the modern relationship marketing is not to simply produce, promote and retail anymore, but to focus on establishing and maintaining satisfied long-term relationship. Marketers should always satisfy their customers and try their best to reduce the distance with them. Furthermore, the rapidly improving technology plays a significant role in this case. To survive in the enhancing competitive environment, markers have to learn how to create credibility to enhance customer relationship and have a good cycle with them.
References
Dwyer et al, 1987, “Basic Marketing”, Ninth, America, pp. 235-236
Philip Kotler, 1991, “Building Customers Satisfaction Value and Retention”, Marketing Management, pp. 59-60
Leonard Berry, “Relationship Marketing,” in Perspectives on Services Marketing (Chicago, Illinois: American Marketing Association, 1983)
Claudia Temple, 2002, “Steps to Relationship Marketing Success”
Matthew Syrett, 2004, “Why We Fail at Intimacy: Falling Short at the Promise of Relationship Marketing”, CRM Today
Theodore Levitt, 1983, “After the sale”, in the Marketing Imagination, New York: Free Press
Roger C. Parker, 2000, An Introduction to Relationship Marketing
