Roles of Marketing Relationship in Business Markets - Coursework Example

Relationship Marketing Name: Institutional affiliation: Date: Relationship Marketing Summary This paper investigates the roles of marketing relationship in business markets. Relationship marketing is defined at the initial stage of the article. The overview of its development and integration into business practice and the growing significance in the field follows. The report also shows the scope of practice of marketing relationship and the best practices that would give the best outcome. The case of introduction this concept in the coca cola and the apple companies is also discussed to show further how the strategy benefits the organizations that employ its application. Also, a review of different pieces of academic articles on their viewpoints and any inconsistencies they show relating to the industrial use of relationship marketing. Introduction Relationship marketing is a one of the series of customer relationship management that concentrates mainly of loyalty of customer and long-term engagement of customer rather than short-term goals such as acquisition and individual sales. It was first defined to a be a form of marketing developed from direct oracular answer marketing campaigns which emphasize retention and satisfaction of customer in preference to a focus on sales transactions (Peppers & Rogers, 2004). The goal of relationship marketing is to promote a stable, even emotional, connection with the customer to a brand that can result in a continuous business, free word of mouth dissemination of information about a product, brand, product line, or the company from the customers that can give rise to leads. Relationship marketing is different from the other forms of marketing since it does recognize the long-term value of the relationships with the customers and extends the potential for information exchange beyond disturbing advertising and promotional messages on sales. The enhancement in the shift toward this marketing approach that is more personal is due to the rise in demand of consumers who are interested in knowing that the brands they work with do not just offer services or products of quality but also do care about them (Mueller, 2011). Customers want to realize that there are real faces behind the business logo and that their concerns are taken care of and the company is willing to go beyond and above to satisfy them. The approach of the traditional marketing is that with the focus on raising the number of individual sales. In this traditional model, the gain coming on customer procurement cost may not be sufficient. A patron may be convinced to make a purchase of that product one time, but if the relationship marketing strategy is not robust, the customer may fail to come back to that product in the future. Customer relationship marketing is commencing to play a more significant part for many companies, even as the organizations combine both the elements of both transactional and relationship marketing (Sinkovics & Ghauri, 2009). Effective relationship marketing is a combination of various intertwined technologies and strategies that assist to foster a stronger, long-term relationship with the current customers as well as attract more customers. Best practices for relationship marketing. Carry out polls and surveys regularly to supplicate feedback from customers Respect the feedback obtained and integrated it into the organization's business practices Utilize any and all the outlets on social media to create a connection with their clients. Put in place effective customer monitoring technologies. Employ clear policies that will dictate how the company workers should interact with the clients in both the negative and positive situations. Exploit the value of warm fronts that is, customers who have already shown interest in the company. Put in place strategy of customer relationship that is very comprehensive Conduct training sessions for the workers on a regular basis. Stay on the cutting edge of the offering of products. Do not let go quality for innovativeness. Maintain the satisfaction of customers at a high rate in all the quarters of the company. Make every effort to let the customers know how much they are appreciated. Relationship marketing mainly revolves around improving the internal operations of the organization (Debnath, Datta, & Mukhopadhyay, 2016). Many customers have left various companies no because they did not like the brands, but because they had been frustrated by the customer services at some point. If a company organizes its internal operations with the goal of satisfying all service needs of their clients, customers will be happier and continue to stream in and appreciate the business even when the products face problems. Technology also has an integral part to play in relationship marketing. The use of internet has provided an almost ready and accessible platform for the organizations to track, store, subject to analysis and use large volumes of information about the customers (Sinkovics & Ghauri, 2009). The clients get personalized ads, expedited services and special deals as a token of estimation for their loyalty. The social media sites give the business opportunity to engage their clients in an ongoing and informal way. It would not be possible to keep useful records about each single customer (Achen, 2016). The growth of mobile platforms and the Internet has made it easy for organizations to automate the marketing efforts. With the abundance of data on the web and the use of social communication channels that are flourishing, most of the clients have an expectation of natural and tailored accessibility to details concerning the brands and much more expect the opportunity to affect services and products through posts on social media and online reviews. Currently, relationship marketing involves the creation of a secure two-way communication channel between the business and the customers, following the activities of customers and availing tailored information to the clients on the activities they undertake. For consumers who are not connected digitally, analytical marketing can be employed to create a relationship network with the company, though tracking their preferences and habits prove to be hard. In such case, questionnaires, surveys and other more traditional relationship marketing and analytical marketing techniques can assist to unveil the driving force for their buying or failing to buy certain services and products. For instance, an e-business site might be able to track the activities of their customer by allowing the clients to create a user profile to save their information for future visits conveniently, and to (or “intending to”) getting more simple information pushed them from the site next time they visit the web page. The visitors of the page are also allowed to sign in through Gmail or Facebook or any other social media network, allowing the clients a simple user encounter and connecting them automatically to the company's social media presence (Brun, Rajaobelina & Ricard, 2016). Another important component of relationship marketing is branding. A company can be able to form a relationship with a client that lasts over a long time span if the customer feels that the product they purchase is a reflection of whom they are or who they would want to be. In that case, the customers are less likely to move to a different brand if they believe that exchange makes a declaration about their selfhood. The practice of relationship marketing has been facilitated further by the development and implementation of customer relationship management and marketing automation software that supports the strategy of relationship marketing by easing recording, monitoring and acting on customer information. The software allows tracking and analyzing complaints, tastes, dislikes and likes activities and preferences of each client. Scope of relationship marketing Relationship marketing has a very broad range that makes its application useful in many contexts. Many organizations have at least something to benefit them from their long-term relationship with their clients. Small businesses frequently serve a constant stream of regular customers and make little effort to win new customers. Imagine a small restaurant experiencing a steady and even flow of business from commute in the morning. The daily presence of the commute is a significant portion of the firm that restaurant does on a daily basis. More Major companies, however, invest a lot of money in conducting sophisticated relationship marketing and advertising campaigns. In some of the major companies, the strategy of relationship marketing is that which affects every department of the organization with the purpose of facing the clients (shipping, customer service, sales and so on). Leaders of various industries always face competition from new organizations that claim to be offering the similar product and goods with higher quality and better levels of service. Maintaining their existing customers is one major way they can employ to preserve their top position in the industry. This phenomenon applies to the businesses in all the industries (Sircar, Turnbow & Bordoloi 2000). Development and Implementation of relationship marketing strategy The bond market can entail a revision of the primary components of the manner in which an organization conducts its business. This process can be time-consuming, expensive and at the same time have grave consequences for both the employees and the customers. Following a comprehensive market plan is the only way to conduct a relationship marketing strategy in an efficient and thoughtful way. Sircar et al. (2000) Organizations, first of all, must look at the historical and the demographic data about their clients to comprehend who they are, what product they buy and over the long term plan for them. The company must, therefore, understand the reasons why a customer would come back for repeat business. The tendency to think that the customers always return because they are served well by the company are vague, since a client may go back to a store for its proximity to their home, or maybe the store is the only one around them that keeps stock of the product they want to purchase. Doing an analysis of the reason behind the loyalty of a customer is the best process of developing an effective marketing relationship strategy. With a comprehensive data on the customers, the company can start to segmentation of these clients and develop marketing plans that are unique for each segment. A consumer who recognizes the value of a product has different characteristics than the one who has experienced a helpful customer service. These clients become loyal for various reasons. Therefore, they need a simple relationship marketing strategies. Immediately after the implementation of the marketing strategy, it requires constant monitoring evaluation to found out its success. There are many hard merits that a company can use to measure whether they are clinging onto their clients. The smallest ones are the referring the business to a friend, signing up for new email newsletters, find out whether the customers are spending more, repeat sales and following on the social media networks. These are all indicators of the different types of loyalty of the customers Debnath et al. (2016). The importance of relationship marketing Retain long-term customers Various research pieces have shown that the clients who stay with a brand for a long time become valuable. When the organization starts to build relationships with their customers, they develop loyalty, meaning the customers are likely to stick to the brands of the company. Increase likelihood of referrals Many techniques are in use in marketing, yet word of mouth remains the most powerful. If the clients are satisfied with the products and services offered, then they are likely to refer their friends and family to the particular company. Makes the changes of price easier Many companies may abhor increasing the costs of their services because they fear to lose the customers. Price increases are to be considered depending on the economy. When the relationship with the clients is stable, the change in prices will not make them leave because of the loyalty Reduce acquisition cost When the customers are happy, they are likely to introduce the company to new prospects, hence lowering the need for the paid advertisement and the expensive marketing campaigns. The relationship marketing strategy when properly implemented gives the company opportunity for feedback that can assist the company identify its strengths and weakness and know the areas that need improvement. This approach will give the company a competitive edge and stay on of the needs of the customers. Brief Literature Review Mueller (2010) categorized this aspect business as being highly dynamic and argues convincingly for the adoption of a proactive approach by the organizations to remain competitive in the market. Sinkovics and Ghauri (2009) connect the high cost of direct sales with the need for engaging in relationship marketing. There is thus the need for information about different aspects of the business and the customers need for advertisement in the global market that will result in increasing the level of sales. According to Peppers and Rogers (2011), the global business in relationship marketing is a connection with a swift drift from the traditional to the relationship model. The article asserts that the satisfaction of the need of clients is not enough to the business grows over a long time. More to that, companies must try maintaining a long time relationship with customers. The paper states further that the organizations that do not implement this strategy risk losing their place in the global market shortly. The research by Brink and Berndt (2009) is an important work that gives a broad discussion on the role of information technology to facilitate customer relationship management. The book further provides information on the benefits that a business stands to gain by implementing the client relationship model. Introduction to Coca-Cola Company The Coca-Cola Company is known worldwide for its cola drink coke though the company distributes 400 non-alcoholic beverages around the globe with its operations supported in 200 countries (Holcomb, 2008). The company has been leading in the supply of its brands for over 120 years, and the products still stand firm in the market. Inter-brand 2015 Best Global Brand which alleviates the contribution of a brand to business, Coca-Cola ranks number three (Inter-brand 2016). The question is how the company has managed to build such a strong brand that excites people all over the world. The simple answer to that is that Coca-Cola invests consistently enormous of money in marketing relationship, and the company has been doing so for decades even before the term "relationship marketing" existed. The company's marketing campaigns repeatedly reflect around attaching its brands to things that are cherished by the customers, things that touch the hearts of the clients hence able to find a place at the center of who they are. The relationship between Coca-Cola and its customers is the kind that depends on the self-expansion principle (Greenfield, 2016). The result is that Coca-Cola is not just a soda brand for many, but it is a friend and a part of which the clients are (Greenfield, 2016). There are many campaigns produced by the company to help realize such a strong relationship with its clients. The campaigns are always customer focused with the aim of building a strong relationship with them. By employing relationship marketing, the company was able to achieve its objective of customer focus (Lee, Yao, Mizerski, & Lambert, 2015). Customer relationship management assists enhancing the existing processes as well as improving the new functions to the satisfaction of the customers. The client relationship management in the company deals with customer service support where one can talk directly to the people in the company about problems with the products. The Coca-Cola Company runs many types of services all around the world. The customer service is not only provided through telephone, email, and feedback but also through tracking and many other kinds of analysis. Coca-Cola offers efficient customer service through this elaborative customer relationship management thus gaining customer satisfaction. Coca-Cola has taken different steps to retain their existing customers and to win back the customers. The company created a fan page on Facebook which has become very popular with the customers, where the customers keep getting updates on the recent activities of the enterprise when they connect to Facebook. They can send group messages, get feedback from clients and provide solution online. Trough Facebook, the company, can advertise and gain more customers. This social networking site has helped coca-cola to be closer to the customers. The page that was created by a coca cola fan was used by the company in the third quarter of 2008 after much consideration, and by mid of 2009, the page had around 3.4 million fans worldwide (Austin, & Gaither, 2016). The Coca-Cola Company launched a friendly twist campaign by where they gave college first-year students in Colombia bottles of soda on their day one on campuses. The caps of the bottles could be opened only by clicking with another cap. Thus the students had to come together to open their bottles, and thus, enhanced conversations among the students who were strangers to each other and were lonely in that instance. For these participants, the product had the potential of establishing a significantly more meaningful connection. The campaign played a significant role in connecting the freshmen as well as reducing the awkwardness of the comrades’ first day in college. The company stood the chance of establishing a long-lasting relationship with the students for its initiation of meaningful friendships. We could continue further about the many ways through which coca cola touches people making them customers of the company. Be it through sponsoring events like the FIFA World Cup, music festivals the world over and through ad campaigns, the company consistently manages to do things that matter to its customers. And it does that for absolutely all types of people in the world. Introduction on Apple Apple Inc. instituted by Steven Paul Jobs, Ronald Gerald Wayne, and Steve Wozniak on April 1, 1976, is headquartered in Cupertino, CA. Apple designs, processes and trades personal computers and the associated personal computing, and devices of mobile communication. The products and services of the company include Macintosh computers, Xserve, Apple TV, iPad, iPod, iPhone, a portfolio of consumer software applications, third-party digital content, variety of accessories peripherals and iOS operating systems and applications via the iTunes Store and service and support offerings. The company sells its products worldwide through government and creative markets, enterprise, education, retailers, wholesalers, small and mid-sized business, and value added resellers to the clients. And direct sales force and online stores, third party cellular carriers of network and its retail stores (Shankar, Smith, & Rangaswamy, 2003). The company is a pioneer in providing iPhone with the biggest screen and other unique products that the customers need. Apple boasts recognition for a long time as an innovator and a leader in client services. More to that, the company can identify not only what the clients want, but also what they need before the customers even know they needed it. The company has grown to be one of the brands that stand firm in the global market, a fact contributed in large part to their team of marketers (Fotopoulos & Krystallis, 2003). Apart from the elegant designs, revolutionary product conception, and smart marketing attributed to the company's sales and dominance in the marketplace over the last half a decade, unparalleled level of customer management has also contributed to making Apple set itself apart from its competitors. The company has employed different customer management strategies that have seen it meet the needs of their clients beyond their expectation. Created a channel for the best customer experience Instead of leaving its primary customer interaction only to the workers of the big box stores, Apple did take an expensive and risky step of building its chain of retail stores that are devoted to selling products the company's products. Apple created an environment that gave them the opportunity to manage every detail of the client's experience and dictated the interaction with Apple as a brand. Create an environment for customers to "hang out." The majority of clients who enter an Apple store do not make any purchase despite fantastic profitability of the Apple stores. Instead, young professionals, middle-aged parents, and teenagers all gather to the Apple stores to only play around with the find products from the company. The staffs do not pressure the customers into sales but instead the clients meet passionate, knowledgeable and smiling employees who encourage them to experience the products. That way the company changed the computer and phone shopping into an enjoyable consumer experience. Bergvall-Kåreborn et al. (2013) View of customer management as being long term investment Apple has a policy that regards customer management as being a long-time investment aimed at building customer loyalty and enhancing retention. For example, Apple maintained a hustle free method to replacing broken devices and made a decision that is customer oriented by refusing to move offshore its North American phone support (Isaacson, 2012). Having a laser targeted business focus Apple makes just a handful of products even though it is the richest technology company globally. Steve Jobs did understand that Apple was not only delivering portable music players, phones, and computers but also relaxed, elegant and reliable products standing out of the crowd, allowing its users stand out from the rest. By focusing majorly on fulfilling this experience, Apple was able to create marvelous customer loyalty and satisfaction of the users. Apple brands its products making them different and is capable of choosing the target consumers. The company collects customer profiles enabling it to get information about the clients hence it maintains the loyalty of the targeted consumers. By offering innovative products and delicate services to the market, Apple improves its marketing relationships with the customers. In summary, Apple Inc. establishes its marketing relationship through the following three strategies: promoting the connection between consumers, maintaining the loyalty of clients and building the brand of Apple. Even after the successful building of the company’s brand, and maintaining an active relationship with its consumers, Apple nonetheless still deals with many challenges including strong competitors like Samsung, the high prices of its services and products and the left of its renowned leader. Conclusion Just like many other studies conducted have shown that relationship marketing leads to customer retention and satisfaction, so does this study. The goal of relationship marketing is to promote a stable, even emotional, connection with the customer to a brand that can result in a continuous business, free word of mouth dissemination of information about a product, brand, product line, or the company from the customers that can give rise to leads. The implementation of customer relationship marketing enhances the sales and marketing activities of a company because the strategy is customer focused. If there are no customers, the probability of a company or business operating for a long time is small. For a business to attract and retain clients, it must be in a position to identify the needs of the customers and be in a position to communicate with the customers on the ways in which the company can assist them to get satisfied. Acquiring a new customer through advertisement and other market campaigns may be expensive and time-consuming than retaining the existing customers who will end up advertising the company brands by referring friends and relatives. Customer relationship management systems give the platform for the study of the interaction between the customers and the company. The company can collect relevant data on consumer preferences analyze and interpret correctly hence meet the expectations of the customers. Satisfaction and trust have been shown by most of the studies to be important in maintaining customers as well as building the image of the company. From the case study on the application of the strategy by the coca cola and the Apple companies included in this paper, it is clearly that relationship marketing is central to the expansion of the industries and retention of new customers and acquires more customers. References Achen, R. M. (2016). The Influence of Facebook Engagement on Relationship Quality and Consumer Behavior in the National Basketball Association. Journal of Relationship Marketing, 15(4), 247-268. Austin, L. L., & Gaither, B. M. (2016). Examining Public Response to Corporate Social Initiative Types A Quantitative Content Analysis of Coca-Cola’s Social Media. Social Marketing Quarterly, 1524500416642441. Bergvall-Kåreborn, B., & Howcroft, D. (2013). ‘The future’s bright, the future’s mobile’: a study of Apple and Google mobile application developers. Work, Employment & Society, 0950017012474709. Brink, A. & Berndt, A. 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