Total Relationship Marketing Third Edition Marketing Management Relationship Strategy CRM and A New Dominant Logic For The Value Creating Network Economy Evert Gummesson PDF Download
Total Relationship Marketing Third Edition Marketing Management Relationship Strategy CRM and A New Dominant Logic For The Value Creating Network Economy Evert Gummesson PDF Download
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Total Relationship Marketing
This book is dedicated to the future of our daughters Charlotte and Madelene.
Total Relationship
Marketing
Third edition
Evert Gummesson
Marketing strategy moving from the 4Ps – product, price, promotion, place –
of traditional marketing management to the 30Rs – the 30 relationships – of
a new marketing paradigm incorporating service-dominant logic, B2C,
B2B, C2C, CRM, many-to-many marketing, and the value-creating
network society
Permissions may be sought directly from Elsevier’s Science and Technology Rights
Department in Oxford, UK: phone (44) (0) 1865 843830; fax (44) (0) 1865 853333;
email: [email protected]. Alternatively you can submit your request online
by visiting the Elsevier web site at http://elsevier.com/locate/permissions, and selecting
Obtaining permission to use Elsevier material
Notice
No responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons
or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use
or operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein
References 345
Index 365
This page intentionally left blank
Figures and tables
Figures
Figure 1.1 – The basic marketing relationship 5
Figure 1.2 – A network of relationships 6
Figure 2.1 – The three forces of the market economy which together can create
marketing equilibrium 61
Figure 3.1 – Internal and external FTMs and PTMs 77
Figure 3.2 – Principal components of the marketing function of a
manufacturer of industrial equipment 79
Figure 3.3 – FTMs and PTMs in a consulting firm 81
Figure 3.4 – The service encounter: the customer perspective 83
Figure 3.5 – The service encounter: the contact person perspective 85
Figure 3.6 – The service encounter: the support staff perspective 86
Figure 3.7 – The service encounter: the management perspective 86
Figure 3.8 – Relationships between the many-headed supplier and the
many-headed customer 92
Figure 3.9 – Networks of relationships 94
Figure 3.10 – The death of the enduser 98
Figure 3.11 – The physical proximity to the customer versus the distant
relationship via market research reports 101
Figure 3.12 – Alternative relationships to the dissatisfied customer 108
Figure 3.13 – The relationship between payment of taxes and public
services and the customer/citizen 139
Figure 3.14 – The company and its relationships in the green network 149
Figure 3.15 – The law-based relationship as a substitute for burst social
and business relationships 156
Figure 4.1 – Different types of relationships that constitute an individual’s
social network 173
Figure 4.2 – The real ‘customer ’ can be found in a non-market
network above the market 179
Figure 5.1 – Market mechanisms are brought inside the organization 211
Figure 5.2 – Relationships between internal customers, internal suppliers
and external customers in a hierarchical structure 215
x Figures and tables
Tables
Table 1.1 – The 30 relationships of RM – the 30Rs 37
Table 3.1 – Examples of power organization effects on relationships 112
Table 3.2 – Drivers to deal with green and CSR issues 152
Table 8.1 – Contributions to the shaping of RM/CRM 320
Table 8.2 – 4Ps and more Ps 323
Table 8.3 – Selected definitions which emphasize different aspects of RM 329
Table 8.4 – Selected definitions which emphasize different aspects of CRM 331
Table 8.5 – Comparison between categories in multi-relationship approaches 332
Table 8.6 – The characteristics of my RM/CRM concept and its contribution
to a paradigm shift in marketing 336
Preface and acknowledgements
to the third edition
Revising and updating is a wonderful opportunity to test the viability of one’s own ideas
and to bring them to others. It is an obtrusive reminder that markets, customers, companies,
society and technology keep changing. Relationship marketing (RM) and customer
relationship management (CRM) have become accepted – and debated – parts of marketing.
We still have a long way to go to separate unrealistic theory and research, advocacy, rhetoric
and hype from what can lead to hands-on action in a true relationship spirit. As before, my
effort to sort this out is expressed by the title of the book: Total Relationship Marketing.
What’s new in this third edition and what stays put:
■ I’m proud to say that the 30 relationships approach, the 30Rs, stays fit after 25 years
when the ideas started to brew in my head and after 15 years since the 30Rs became
complete. Many liked the Rs from the start, others were puzzled, others joked about
them and yet others claimed that the Rs were too many. A commentary in The Times
Higher Education Supplement advocated that the traditional 4Ps (product, price,
promotion, place) are superior as students and executives can keep 4 things in their
heads but not 30. This is a gross understatement of their intellectual capacity. I know
numerous people – both students and CEOs – who have learnt the alphabet (26 letters)
and can handle multiple strategies simultaneously. Reality is complex – it is not a sound
bite or a one-liner – and marketing complexity has to be addressed with an open and daring
mind. I still do not hesitate to say that this is the most complete attempt so far to cover
RM/CRM on a strategic level and offer the beginnings of a theory. So the 30Rs stay.
■ Each R has been scrutinised for revision and updating. For example, information technology
(IT) keeps changing our lives and relationships. The general notion of e-relationships (R12)
stays but it is demanding to try to discern the big picture because of all new technology
and inventive service. Another example is the green relationship (R15), which in its
broadened sense includes corporate social responsibility, CSR. It is literally hotter than ever.
Specific elements of the relationships need to be adjusted but their core messages remain.
■ Theories, concepts and vocabulary change. Integrating the new ones with the text and
dropping the outdated ones turned out to be a challenge, no, a nightmare. I did not
xii Preface and acknowledgements to the third edition
have access to the Holy Grail and its miraculous power to make everything consistent.
But I want to be remembered for being one of the first to try, hoping that others can
improve it further. With the service-dominant logic, S-D logic, certain conceptual
dilemmas begin to get sorted out. The meaning of S-D logic will be explained and
integrated with RM throughout the text. In the third edition there is even more
emphasis on networks and network theory. In marketing, network thinking has almost
exclusively been applied in B2B. Through the concept of many-to-many marketing,
network theory can form the foundation of all types of marketing, B2B as well as
B2C. The customer-centric concepts of lean consumption and the customer value network
supplement the production-centric lean production and the conventional supplier-
centric value chain. Chain is replaced by network to show that events are not sequential
and linear but iterative and non-linear. Further, the customer centric view of marketing
is suggested to be broadened to balanced centricity, a trade-off between the needs of all
stakeholders of a network. As a consequence the former Chapters 8 and 9 have been
revised and merged into a new Chapter 8.
■ Marketing deals with the generation of revenue and revenue must exceed cost. Don’t
you ever forget it! Over the past 50 years I have seen numerous efforts to find general
models and indicators to get financial control over marketing. The cry for marketing
accountability and metrics is currently loud – again. The problem is to design metrics
that work in practice and provide genuine guidance. All the same it is essential to keep
the assessment of marketing effects, both quantitative and qualitative, on the agenda.
Chapter 6 is an updated effort to do so.
■ As in earlier editions, concepts and ideas are constantly accompanied by short cases
and examples to facilitate reading and make it easier to relate them to practice. Cases
and examples have been substituted wherever they have gone stale. In a five year
period some lose their pitch; they may have danced just one summer. Others change
and need updating but there are also those that are robust enough to stand the test of
time; they are classics. I have tried to avoid superficial hypes, however appealing they
may look at the time. At the end of each chapter a Questions for Discussion section has
been added to support classroom use.
■ I have been careful to include references, update them and give recognition whenever
possible. This is the first time I revise a book when Google, Wikipedia and other
Internet-based sources are both easily accessible and rich in information. It made
updating easier. As anybody can get into Google and find a host of sources on
any subject, I have found it practically impossible to give reference to websites or
information that is widely spread through the media. I have always checked several
sources and tried to assess the credibility of the information.
I’m grateful for this opportunity to prepare a third edition. I’m also grateful to a large
number of people who have stimulated my work over the years. We meet around the
Preface and acknowledgements to the third edition xiii
During the process of creating this third edition my long time colleague and friend
Chris Lovelock, pioneer in service and enthusiastic contributor to marketing renewal,
unexpectedly passed away. Chris, I’ll miss our dialogue!
Among others who have contributed to my thinking and helped to create a dialogue
in their home countries and globally and are: in Australia Adrian Payne, Louise Young
and Ian Wilkinson; in Canada Ulrike de Brentani, Michèle Paulin and Ronald Ferguson;
in Germany Friedhelm Bliemel, Anton Meyer and Bernd Stauss; in Ireland Stephen
Brown, David Carson, Tony Cunningham, Damien McLoughlin and the late Liam Glynn;
in Latin America Jaquie Pels and Javier Reynoso; in New Zealand Rod Brodie, Richard
Brookes, Nicole Coviello and Brendan Gray; in Poland Kazimierz Rogozinski and Richard
Nicholls; in the UK Michael Baker, Keith Blois, Douglas Brownlie, Martin Christopher,
Bob Johnston, Michael Saren, Michael Thomas and Nikos Tzokas; and in the US David
Bejou, Len Berry, Mary Jo Bitner, Stephen W. Brown, Shelby Hunt, Jay Kandampully,
Parsu Parasuraman, Atul Parvatiyar, Roland Rust, Jag Sheth, and Pat and Joan Townsend.
A special thanks to the team at Elsevier who has made this third edition possible.
Evert Gummesson
Stockholm University School of Business,
SE-10691 Stockholm, Sweden
[email protected]; www.fek.su.se/home/eg/
January 2008
Introduction
1
Relational
approaches to
marketing
In this chapter
INTRODUCTION
The chapter presents the purpose and outline of the book, and the concepts of relationship
marketing (RM), customer relationship management (CRM), one-to-one marketing and
many-to-many marketing are defined. The ideas of a new general marketing logic, the
service-dominant logic (S-D logic) are discussed together with certain basics of marketing,
among them the problem with customer centricity and the need for a broader stakeholder
focus, balanced centricity. Although marketing attempts to be scientific, the importance
of tacit knowledge emerging from reflection, experience, common sense and intuition
is brought to the fore. The reader is urged to see marketing through the ‘relationship
eye-glasses’ and to adjust to a paradigm shift in marketing. To help in this process the
general characteristics of relationships and a summary of the 30 specific relationships of
RM, the 30Rs, are introduced.
Another significant experience occurred during the 1980s while I was working as a
consultant to Ericsson. The then CEO, Björn Svedberg, commissioned one assignment with
the following words: ‘Evert, explain to us what we are actually doing in our marketing
and selling!’ Ericsson is known for being a leading supplier of telecom equipment and
systems and for its mobile phone operation in alliance with Sony. At that time each sale
was large, complex, high tech and long term. A major marketing strategy – although
it was not officially perceived as such – was the creation and maintenance of long-term
relationships with a few large telecom operating companies, as well as the cultivation of
relationships with research institutions, own suppliers, government agencies, politicians,
banks, investors, the media and others. The relationships concerned many people in
several tiers and functions within the customers’ organizations and also within Ericsson’s
own organization.
Ericsson’s success over its 130 years of existence has been based on
a combination of state-of-the-art technology and a well-developed
network of relationships.
These two experiences taught me a very obvious and common-sense lesson: when
your current real world experience clashes with your previous experience and received
theories, rethink! I found that my textbook knowledge and experience of marketing
management and consumer marketing was not adequate. Simply put:
INSIGHT When – after careful scrutiny – you find that the terrain differs from your
map, trust the terrain and your own judgement!
Aren’t these experiences just history in the third millennium? No! And are the lessons
applicable to smaller businesses? Yes! Grönroos tells the example of rice merchant Ming
Hua in ancient China, many thousands of years ago.1 He developed an initially slow rice
business to become the local market leader. What did he do? He did relationship marketing!
1
Grönroos (2007, pp. 29–30).
Relational approaches to marketing 5
So did the milkman in sociologist Odis Simmons’ study from the 1960s.2 From this case,
Simmons who was not a marketing scholar but had practical experience from work as a
milkman, developed a theory of RM based on the core concept of ‘cultivated relationship’.
The home delivery of milk is a small industry today but it has had its offsprings. Stew
Leonard started out as a milkman, then build a dairy product store and now operates 4
huge fresh food stores in Connecticut and New York, known for service excellence and
for cultivating relationships.
So relationships are part of human nature. They are timeless. They are independent of
culture. They are there in every type and size of business.
Why did it take marketing theory so long to discover what practitioners already felt
and acted on? Relational approaches in marketing gradually became the object of research
and conceptualization during the past decades and the 1990s marked a breakthrough
with skyrocketing interest. Let us look at the state-of-the-art and peek into the future.
Let’s now look at the core concepts that constitute RM: relationships, networks and
interaction.
Relationships require at least two parties who are in contact with each other. The basic
two-party relationship of marketing, the dyad, is that between a supplier and a customer
(Figure 1.1).
2
Simmons (1993). His study it is an application of ‘grounded theory’ which is dicussed further at the end
of Chapter 8.
6 Total relationship marketing
3
See further Nicholls (2005).
4
For an overview of current definitions see Chapter 8. Peppers and Rogers launched one-to-one in
1993. Comprehensive books with somewhat different approaches to RM/CRM include Storbacka and
Lehtinen (2001); Christopher, Payne and Ballantyne (2002); Bruhn (2003); Little and Marandi (2003);
Egan (2004); Buttle (2006); Payne (2006) and Donaldson and O’Toole (2007).
Relational approaches to marketing 7
5
Taken from Gummesson (2008a); the case is based on Bagelius (2003). Reprinted with
permission.
8 Total relationship marketing
The book is about these and other relationships. The relationships will be listed,
described, analysed, illustrated and discussed. RM is not just another bag of tricks to
capture customers; it offers a wide range of conditions for more efficient management and
marketing – and opportunities of making money. This will be elaborated on throughout
the book.
In the late 1990s, half of the large US corporations (‘the Fortune 500’) had Relationship
Managers and the number is probably growing.6 Key Account Managers (KAMs) who
are in charge of large B2B customers, as well as CRM managers to handle the transition to
CRM systems, have grown in numbers. These positions, however, can only be supportive;
RM/CRM have to permeate the whole organization and its culture to become effective.
Since the 1970s, when services marketing was discovered and up till now the division
between goods and services has been taken for granted, even if it has been questionned
from different directions. Although services in official statistics constituted more than
half of economic activity in developed countries, they were neglected in marketing and
management. The goods/service division is peddled in official statistics and political
debates and a nation’s economic development is commonly referred to the industrial
(manufacturing) sector, the service sector and the agricultural sector. This way of looking
at our economy is totally production centric; there isn’t a customer in sight.
But goods are different from services, aren’t they? Yes – and no! The two are a faithful,
married couple and they are always holding hands. Therefore there are no clear-cut goods
marketing or services marketing situations. Further, in statistical reports goods and services
are arbitrarily defined. Even a seemingly simple service category such as ‘hotels’ includes
a large variety of marketing situations that defy ‘hotels’ as a meaningful categorization
for marketing purposes. Each marketing situation is made up of a unique set of features
and dependent and so many other variables than just goods and services. Marketing is
complex and all efforts to make approximate generalization based on armchair reasoning
is likely to lead us astray both is practicing and researching marketing.
The fact that goods and services appear together has disturbed many over the years.7
This is not new but eventually it is seriously catching the imagination of marketers.
Efforts have been made to get product accepted as a joint term for goods and services and
to use offering, package or solution as all inclusive concepts for what the customer buys.
6
Whiting (1998).
7
The first were probably Wyckham, Fitzroy and Mandry (1975).
10 Total relationship marketing
It has not worked. When you read ‘products’ in a marketing text it generally means
goods, and the other concepts are only used in select cases.
Two articles by Vargo and Lusch (2004a) and Lovelock and Gummesson (2004)
independently of each other argued that the conventional criteria used to distinguish
goods from services did not do their job. These criteria, for services referred to as the
IHIPs (intangibility, heterogeneity, inseparability and perishability), could equally well be
turned around and attached to goods. The basic problem of course was that goods and
services cannot be separated but an obsolete paradigm has led us to believe so. Goods –
things – always appear with services – activities.
It was not until Steve Vargo and Bob Lusch in another article presented a new
marketing logic – service-dominant logic, usually referred to as S-D logic – that many of
the scattered thoughts from the past began to fall in place.8
As S-D logic affects the way RM/CRM is presented in this new edition of my book, a
summary of its characteristics is given below and will be referred to throughout the text:
■ Goods/services integrated and replaced by service (in the singular) and value proposition:
As has been discussed above the division of the economy in goods and services has
caused constant headache over decades. It has been kept at bay with painkillers which
eventually, as is the case with all medication addressing symptoms and not the root
cause, has spawned side effects and failed to kill the pain. Value proposition is used in
S-D logic to stress that the supplier has a proposition, encompassing the service that this
proposition can render and the price the customer pays. To avoid the wrong associations
it is important to note that ‘service’ as used in S-D logic refers to the service given by
whatever we purchase, irrespective of this being goods or services (as these terms are
used in official statistics). To avoid a mix-up with conventional thinking I also use value.
■ Knowledge: In S-D logic the application of specialized skills and knowledge through
deeds, processes and performances is the fundamental unit of exchange and it defines
service. Knowledge is also the fundamental source of competitive advantage. Further,
service provision is integration of resources between the parties involved with the
supplier and the customer in its core.
■ Operand and operant resources: Behind the S-D logic is the transfer from a goods-dominant
logic (G-D logic) where the resources were land, animal and plant life, minerals and other
physical objects. These were operand resources, those which you do something to; operant
8
The original article by Vargo and Lusch (2004b) together with commentaries by eight marketing scholars
appeared in the same issue of the Journal of Marketing. For a progress report on S-D logic as well as
critique, see an anthology edited by Lusch and Vargo (2006a); a special issue of Marketing Theory
(2006); and a special issue of the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (2008). For critical views see
Stauss (2005); Achrol and Kotler (2006); and Shembri (2006). For an overview of the value concept, see
Korkman (2006).
Relational approaches to marketing 11
resources are those who do it. In G-D logic, the No. 1 resource is the operand resource.
In S-D logic the operant resource – the skills and knowledge how to do something – is
the No. 1 resource. And who does it, who is the operant resource? When we started to
hear that ‘customers are our most valuable resource’, customers were seen as operand
resources; you do something to them. Companies were the operant resources, those
who did it. S-D logic changes these taken-for-granted and long obsolete approaches.
The customer has been promoted from a passive operand resource to an active operant
resource.
■ Co-creation of value: For example, buying a car is classified as the outcome of goods
marketing, renting a car as the outcome of services marketing. For each customer,
however, value is created in his or her interaction with the car. It is driving to a
desired destination; driving the car well or badly; taking good care of it, or neglecting
its maintenance; praising its convenience, or cursing traffic jams, absence of parking
space, and the rising gas price; enjoying music and the privacy, or getting bored by
long, lonely hours in the car; and so on. The car remains a value proposition whether
it is driver owned, owned by your employer, bought with borrowed money, leased,
rented or owned by your parents. Value actualization is in the hands of the customer and
consequently suppliers and customers co-create value.
■ Network extension: The development of S-D logic has an open source code; anyone
can contribute to improvements. Further, the customer as an operant resource and
co-creation of value are not only a supplier–customer affair, it can be extended beyond
the mere dyad and embrace further stakeholders. This aligns with my RM concept and
even more so with the many-to-many concept. It can be applied in complex and adaptive
networks in which we are embedded in society such as intermediaries, competitors,
friends, government, the media, and not least other customers, C2C.
■ Marketing definition. Summing up, the marketing definition emerging in S-D logic says
that ‘marketing is the process in society and organizations that facilitates voluntary
exchange through collaborative relationships that create reciprocal value through the
application of complementary resources’.9 You will find later that this definition is well
aligned with the message of this book.
In connection with S-D logic I want to draw the attention to a grand ongoing project started
by IBM in 2004, Service Science, Management and Engineering (SSME), usually referred
to as Service Science. It is a project with high momentum that makes an effort to spread
service thinking in the academic world and among practitioners. It is particularly focused
to get education at institutes of technology to include service and to make manufacturing
companies see their output as service rather than just goods. As this is a gigantic
9
Lusch and Vargo (2006a, pp. xvii–xviii).
12 Total relationship marketing
undertaking the project still is at an initial stage, but the expectations are high that it will
open up new ways of approaching both marketing and management in general.
A general conclusion from S-D logic is that customers are gaining a more significant
and active role in marketing. It also means that customers are becoming more powerful
as the next case displays.
10
Based on Creamer (2007). About the customers’ increasingly pivotal role in service
development, see Edvardsson et al. (2006).
As customers become more intimately intertwined with each other, with suppliers
and with other network actors, the boundaries between previously taken-for-granted
categories and roles become fuzzy and overlapping. Should they be considered parties
or are they just one? Engeseth (2006) takes it all the way and advocates the concept of
one. Like man and wife in the Bible the two become one flesh. It aligns with S-D logic and
the co-creation of value and with the customers more eminent role in marketing. But not
all suppliers and customers want to go to bed with each other. I conclude we need two
perspectives, first, to view the parties separately and stress their differences in roles and
goals and, second, to view them as one by stressing their affinity. The boundaries between
customers, suppliers, competitors, governments and other have to be recognized for what
they really are: fuzzy and overlapping.
Relational approaches to marketing 13
We should do the same with the conventional divide between goods and services.
When the terms goods and services (services in the plural) are used in this text they
represent a certain emphasis or perspective. They are used when either the things aspect
or the activities aspect is in focus for analysis or action. We can also use the term services
in a loose sense when we talk about hotel services, maintenance services and so on.11 The
lack of consistency is not a consequence of sloppiness as a mainstream academic might
conclude but an expression of respect for a complex and systemic reality.
The numbers of marketing situations are like the stars in the sky. We cannot really
count them and allocate them to general categories which consider the necessary details.
The situations are composed of similarities and differences, of modules that can be shared
in different configurations and customized or mass-customized to take care of situations
that closely resemble each other.
How do RM/CRM and the S-D logic harmonize with the most recent definition of
marketing proposed by the American Marketing Association (AMA) in 2004? The new
definition can have serious consequences. According to AMA’s magazine Marketing
News12‘ … the American Marketing Association is responsible for the official definition
of marketing, used in books, by marketing professionals and taught in university lecture
halls nationswide’. The definition is:
‘Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating,
communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer
relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.’
I would like to challenge the following issues:
11
See also the discussion about the meaning of service in Grönroos (2007).
12
Keefe (2004, p. 17).
13
The Nordic School is a designation for research in service, relationships and networks emanating from
Northern Europe; see Gummesson, Lehtinen and Grönroos (1997) and Grönroos (2000, 2006).
14 Total relationship marketing
brute force, fear or lack of choice is present. RM puts emphasis on an open dialogue
and interaction. There is also value for suppliers, why else would they bother? It could
equally well be claimed that customers deliver value to suppliers. This is all within the
spirit of relational approaches to marketing. Together with the S-D logic it leads me
up to questioning the relevance of the B2C expression. In B2B it is not evident who
is the seller and who is the buyer, the first or the second B. In B2C it is business-to-
customer but it could just as well be the other way around, C2B. It may sound like a
word game, but expressions like B2C subconsciously block our perception. Therefore I
will henceforth use an extended acronym: B2C/C2B.
■ ‘… for managing customer relationships …’ It reminds me of the nasty sergeant in the
movie An Officer and a Gentleman. With the dictatorial military power vested in him,
he shouted, abused and forced the soldiers to do anything he wanted; the relationship
was aggressive. Suppliers should not one-sidedly be encouraged to manage customers;
relationships are also managed by customers. The attitude is not interactive and most
people resent being managed by their bank, supermarket or car supplier. Test it on your
family: Who manages the relationships? Is it the husband, the wife or (increasingly)
the kids?
■ ‘… that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.’ I suspect that in ‘stakeholders’ the
customers and employees are hidden. But I fear that in today’s short-term economy
with more boardroom attention given to finance and accounting than to marketing, the
focus is on shareholder value.
Relationships are at the core of human behaviour. If we dissolve the social networks of
relationships, we dissolve society and the earth is left with a bunch of hermits. In that
Relational approaches to marketing 15
case no marketing is needed, for two reasons. The short-term reason is that hermits
live alone. They breed their own sheep for wool, cheese and meat, they grow their own
vegetables, and they tailor their own clothes, if any. They do not need mobile phones
because there is no one to call. No market for Nokia or Motorola.
The long-term reason is that the human race will be extinct after one generation. But
if it is true that nature has a genetic urge for multiplication, couples and families will
spring up and the atomistic world of individuals will turn into a growing network of
relationships.
As citizens and family members we are surrounded by relationships in our daily lives.
We have relationships at work, with neighbours, with stores and other providers. Driving
a car is a complex social interaction with other drivers in a network of roads.
People have girlfriends and boyfriends, go steady, marry, have an affair, divorce. Many
have used matrimony as a metaphor for commercial relationships: to enter into marriage
with a customer or to divorce a supplier. ‘Business dancing’ has been suggested as
another metaphor.14 Dancing is a dynamic relationship. You can invite somebody to dance
with you. It can be a smooth waltz, but you can also step on your partner ’s toes. Peters15
makes it even more dramatic: ‘Today’s global economic dance is no Strauss waltz. It’s
break dancing accompanied by street rap. The effective firm is much more like carnival in
Rio than a pyramid along the Nile.’
Relationships are central for business people. Craftsmen exchange services with other
craftsmen whom they know and trust. The first thing I heard about business was that
you need to be well connected, and that it helps to have relatives in high places and to
belong to the right clubs. People who knew each other did business and then the seller
wined and dined the buyer. As individuals, we voluntarily enter formal relationships
through associations. Rotary, for example, brings people together from different trades
and professions. The Rotarians get to know each other and business relationships are
facilitated by the long-term friendship that develops among them.
Marketing and business are subsets or properties of society. In practice, relationships,
networks and interaction have been at the core of business since time immemorial.
They have certainly not gone unnoticed by business people.16 For example, Ericsson has
expanded and remodelled its network for 130 years. The sad story is that relationships have
too long gone unnoticed in research and education. Does the current interest in RM/CRM
imply that marketing theorists are getting closer to marketing reality? Are we beginning
to discern the marketing content of Japanese keiretsus, Chinese guanxies, global ethnic
networks, the British school tie, trade between friends, loyalty to the local pub and so on?
14
Wilkinson and Young (1994).
15
Peters (1992, p. 17).
16
One of the early academic proponents for a network view of the market was Thorelli (1986).
16 Total relationship marketing
Marketing theory has not invented these phenomena, practice has. Some practitioners
have lived them, others have not. A book can draw your attention to relationships by
adding them to the map, making them visible.
Relationships between customers and suppliers are the ground for all marketing.
Within the conventional marketing management mode of thinking, much of marketing
is reduced to impersonal exchange through mass promotion and mass distribution. The
manufacturer offers products and services via an intermediary and the consumer offers
money. The manufacturer and even the retailer are no more than brand names; they may
even be totally anonymous to the consumer, who in turn is just a statistic. This approach
to marketing does not comply with the reality of society.
In contrast, the RM/CRM spotlight is on the individual, on the segment of one. It’s one-
to-one marketing. But focus is also on groups of like-minded people, affinity groups. The
group members share a common interest, they want a relationship with the supplier, its
products and services, and even with each other. Golfers, environmentalists, computer
geeks and Harley-Davidson owners belong here. They form communities.
During the industrial era, mass manufacturing of standardized goods gave birth to mass
marketing and mass distribution. During this brief period of our history, marketing
theory and education evolved around consumer goods marketing. Services marketing
and B2B – where relationships were also central during the industrial era – remained
blank spots in research and education.
Research and practice in marketing during more than 30 years point particularly to
the significance of relationships, networks and interaction. Literature on RM/CRM has
emerged at an exponential rate in many languages. With certain exceptions, the literature
is narrow, characterized by treating single issues in RM such as consumer loyalty,
databases for smarter direct marketing, call centres, customer clubs or CRM software
systems. These are all valuable bits and pieces, but they lack the coherent framework of
an overriding theory.
The more radical theories that have contributed to RM/CRM stem from services
marketing and the network approach to B2B. A first effort to merge these two schools was
presented by Gummesson in 1983. Relationships, networks and interaction play a
subdued role in traditional marketing management, popularly referred to as marketing mix
or the 4Ps (product, price, promotion, place). It has hegemony over marketing education
throughout the world, but refers first and foremost to the mass marketing of standardized
consumer goods. Despite its limitations it is erroneously presented as a general marketing
Relational approaches to marketing 17
theory.17 In the area of sales management and negotiations, relationships are emphasized but
often limited to a salesperson’s interaction with a buyer or to negotiations between teams.
However, for B2B a series of models on organizational buying behaviour developed around
1970 that show a more complex, partly network-like type of marketing.
These three approaches – services marketing, B2B as networks and traditional
marketing management – are central in the RM/CRM root system. The roots have been
extended through S-D logic and many-to-many marketing and may keep doing so with
the future aid of the Service Science project.
These were all influences from marketing but there are also influences from adjacent
non-marketing areas. One area that has significantly contributed is quality management. In
its core are customer perceived quality and customer satisfaction. Quality management
has inspired the concept of relationship quality, that is, the efforts to improve quality of
relationships, and not just the quality of goods and services. Relationship quality emerged
in the large quality programme of Ericsson in the early 1980s. The purpose was to make
explicit the fact that relationships are part of customer perceived quality. This is far from
the traditional engineer ’s production-centric quality concept. Often the human aspect,
the h-relationship, ‘to be liked’, sorts out the winner from the loser.18 Lean production as
a quality strategy expanding into lean consumption and the supplier value chain into the
customer value chain also belong here. This will be further explained later.19
Accounting has often stood out as a nightmare for marketers and salespeople, and been
felt as a bureaucratic obstacle to relationship building. Investors, stock market analysts,
top management and controllers have, however, gradually begun to question the role
of traditional accounting: Do we really measure what matters? Modern accounting goes
beyond the mere financial numbers and accountants, who are by training historians,
acknowledge the impact of customers, employees, knowledge, IT readiness, environmental
effects, corporate social responsibility and innovation as antecedents to future profit. The
current efforts to design accounting for today’s and tomorrow’s business life are found
under the concepts of the balanced scorecard and intellectual capital. They help to give a
framework to the measurement of return on relationships (ROR). Chapter 6 is dedicated to
marketing metrics and marketing’s contribution to the bottom line.
There is also a connection to organization theory. RM is also a result of – or possibly a
cause of – new organizational structures and processes where the roles of customer and
supplier are not as clear-cut as in Figure 1.1. The fuzziness stands out better in Figure 1.2,
17
For critical discussions of marketing management theory, see Brownlie and Saren (1992); Brown (1998);
Gummesson (2002); Grönroos (1997); Saren et al. (2007).
18
Gummesson (1987b, 1993); Holmlund (1997).
19
Lean production and lean consumption combined into lean solutions is treated by Womack and Jones
(2005a, b).
18 Total relationship marketing
where suppliers and customers interact in a network together with competitors, own
suppliers, intermediaries and others. RM is not happening in a vacuum, it is mirroring other
events in business and society. When organization is discussed in the following chapters, it
is treated as a network of relationships and referred to as the network organization.
IT is the latest branch of the RM root system. It is easy to get enthralled by the media
hype and the trendy praise for all the blessings of technology. What in this daily hullabaloo
will exert sustainable influence and what is just a short-lived, albeit colourful, butterfly? We
begin to discern some answers, to see IT in a context as part of marketing theory. IT has a lot
in common with RM. The Internet, email and mobile telephony form new networks within
which we can interact. IT has not fathered RM as is sometimes claimed, only changed it.
Even if the ideas of CRM date far back under other names, IT has made it possible to
go further and has caused the explosion in CRM software. The IT influence is covered
specifically in ‘the e-relationship’, but is also an integral part of the whole book.
Marketing offers no fully fledged theory, but the word theory will be used here in a
broad sense. The most complete theory that has a link to marketing is the neoclassical
micro-economic theory, also called price theory. Its severe shortcoming is that in order to
reach a self-imposed desire for rigour and theoretical completeness, a series of limiting
assumptions have to be made, such as all customers being the same, all suppliers being
the same and all products being the same. It disregards differentiated offerings and
brands, service, quality and relationships. Thus, micro-economic theory distances itself
from the variety and complexity of real life, and the validity of the theory becomes weak,
even non-existent.20
Furthermore, the borderline between theory and practice is thin. To design theory,
researchers interview and observe marketers and customers. Activities and decisions in
companies form empirical evidence for theory. Thus, there is no a priori conflict between
theory and practice; they are two sides of the same coin. There often is, however,
animosity between representatives of theory and practice who claim that their side of the
coin shines brighter. Such pseudo-conflicts do not contribute to knowledge development
and are left aside here.
Management thinker Peter Drucker, who died in 2006 almost 96 years old and until the
end listed as the No. 1 management guru in the United States, said somewhere that ‘the
problem with good ideas is that they quickly degenerate into hard work’. There is invariably
20
Hunt and Morgan (1995).
Relational approaches to marketing 19
a gap between ideas and action, between RM philosophy and CRM application. The
gap can be caused not only by lack of implementation skills and stamina, but also by
difficulties in grasping the essentials. There may be a lack of data, or inability to put
data together in a meaningful pattern or map – ‘theories’ – which facilitate decisions
and actions. The difficulties are caused by at least four ‘random variables’: customers,
competitors, the general economy and technology change. None of these and their
interdependence can be predicted with accuracy.
The gap is also caused by marketers who have not internalized marketing values.
Drucker was an early proponent of customer centricity. In his classic management book
from 1954, he says: ‘Marketing … is the whole business seen from the point of view
of its final result, that is, from the customer ’s point of view.’21 As Michael Baker in the
United Kingdom points out ‘… the distinction between success and failure in competitive
markets may be reduced to two basic issues, first, an understanding of customer needs,
and, second, the ability to deliver added value …’22 This is the essence of the marketing
concept and the antecedent to creating customer satisfaction and loyalty. This marketing-
oriented and customer-centric approach is in opposition to product and production orientation,
according to which the customer is obliged to buy what is available or not buy at all.
Production orientation is typical of markets with a shortage of goods and services, and
markets of centrally planned economies, but also of complacent industries in wealthy
market economies such as in Europe and the United States.
Being customer centric has become a widespread slogan. It is understood and
implemented to a varying degree. It may just be perceived as a fad which it is timely to
confess to, or yet another smart trick to trap the consumer. The customer in focus values
have not killed the old values, just pushed them into a corner from which they make
recurring and successful efforts to break out. But a basic question is if customer centricity
is realistic. Several researchers and consultants have suggested programmes for the
implementation of customer centricity.23 My contention is that customer centricity as the prime
target for business is non-implementable and not fit to form the foundational credo of marketing.
It could be a transient goal – but it has been so for 50 years by now. There are different
perceptions of its success, all the way from just being nice rhetoric and not actionable (with
some exceptions) to being a commodity that ‘… no longer gives companies the edge in
competitive situation … and every extra dollop of marketing orientation results in ever-
diminishing returns’.24 Satisfied customers are not the only drivers of success. A balance of
interests can only be actualized in a context of many stakeholders. After the one-party focus
21
Drucker (1954, p. 36). For a discussion on the past and future of marketing, see Baker (1999a, b).
22
Baker (2006, pp. 197–198)
23
See Shah et al. (2006) for an overview.
24
Brown (2007, pp. 151–152).
20 Total relationship marketing
(the customer), RM introduced a two-party focus (customer and supplier) and there is an
emerging multi-party focus (multiple stakeholders) through many-to-many marketing. I
call for balanced centricity. It means that in long-term relationships and a well-functioning
marketplace all stakeholders have the right to satisfaction of needs and wants.
INSIGHT I propose that inadequate basic values and their accompanying procedures –
the wrong paradigm – is the biggest obstacle to success in marketing. If
marketers and top management do not understand and accept relationship
values as a natural vantage point, there will be neither positive effect of RM,
nor of the installation of computerized CRM systems, eCRM.
The most fundamental values of RM/CRM are well in line with the tenets of S-D logic.
They will be presented here in somewhat different terminology:
customers, a fact which is increasingly being stressed. Extending the duration of the
relationship becomes a major marketing goal. Too much emphasis has been put on the
acquisition of new customers and too little on caring for existing customers. RM/CRM
encourage customer retention and discourage customer defection well aware of the fact
that attraction marketing – getting new customers – must also be persued. Although
collaboration is the core property of RM, my RM concept holds that both competition
and collaboration are essential in a functioning market economy. Traditional marketing is
prejudiced in favour of the benefits of competition. It sees collaboration as inhibiting
the forces of the market. The misunderstanding is obvious among those politicians
and business leaders who advocate competition as a cure-all for society’s problems, a
counter-reaction to the socialistic advocacy for central planning and regulations.
3 All parties should be active and take responsibility: RM should not be mixed up with
traditional selling, which represents the supplier perspective and does not put the
customer and an interactive relationship in focus. In relationship selling, the initiative
comes from the salesperson and depends on ‘… how well the relationship is managed
by the seller ’.25 In this sense, relationship quality and a long-term relationship become
the consumer ’s trust in the salesperson based on the salesperson’s present and past
performance.26 But the initiative to action cannot be left to a supplier or a single party of
a network; everyone in a network can, and should, be active. Contrary to the mythology
of marketing, the supplier is not necessarily the active party. In B2B, customers initiate
innovation and force suppliers to change their products or services. Consumers suggest
improvements but have a tough time getting lethargic and complacent suppliers and
legislators to listen. Chat groups on the Internet empower customers to reach out at
no cost but time; it makes C2C interaction possible. Customers can exert pressure on
suppliers and it may even go so far that hate sites are created. At the same time, the
supplier has more and better information available to act on. In services marketing
consumers are often both producers and ‘project leaders’, whereas the role of the
provider is limited to offering an arena.
4 Relationship and service values instead of bureaucratic–legal values: Bureaucratic–legal
values are characterized by: rigidity; legal jargon; application of dysfunctional laws
and regulations; a focus on internal routines; more interest in rituals than in results;
belief in the supplier as the expert and the customer as ignorant; the customer being a
cost and a residual of the system; customers as masses and statistical averages; and
the importance of winning over the customer in a dispute. These values historically
dominate governments and their agencies. Its representatives have previously disclaimed
marketing, but the international wave of privatization, deregulation and demand for
25
Levitt (1983, p. 111).
26
Crosby, Evans and Cowles (1990).
22 Total relationship marketing
competition, as well as the failure of the command economies, has forced a change. RM is
a valid concept for public organizations as well, and an understanding of how marketing
could be applied to public bodies to the benefit of the consumer/citizen is growing.
Unfortunately, bureaucratic–legal values are also common in private companies. RM
requires different values based on relationships and service to the customer. These
values establish that all customers are individuals and different in certain respects; that
the outcome is the only thing that counts; that customers are the source of revenue and
should be in focus; and that the supplier ’s task is to create value for the customer.27
These values were written long before S-D logic managed to distil them and other ideas
into a more communicative and consistent message. RM may stand out as a naively idyllic
and benign agenda that is purely academic and not paying attention to the harsh realities
of marketing practice. It requires more ethical behaviour than traditional marketing. But
all business people do not base their activities on RM/CRM values as presented here. We
will come back to this on several occasions.
Joseph Duveen dominated the art market for Old Masters during the first half
of the twentieth century. In Brown’s terminology Duveen created ‘lustomers’,
customers who were driven crazy by the lust to acquire the right art. He used
skilled manipulation, which Brown has conceptualized into the 4Ds:
■ Dearth: ‘… there is nothing like scarcity to stimulate the gotta-get-it urge among
lustomers’.
27
See Gummesson (1993, pp. 40–42).
28
Brown (2007); quotations from pp. 150–151.
Relational approaches to marketing 23
■ Denial: ‘He understood that people appreciate things all the more if they are
difficult to obtain …’ and ‘… disdain what comes easily.’
■ Distinction: ‘… dangling deliciously unobtainable carrots definitely helps
drive consumers wild with desire, but unless the product or service itself is
distinctive – and confers distinction on its possessors – it is pointless playing
the strategic stock shortage game …’
■ Discourse: Duveen ‘… was a superlative storyteller ’ and ‘… convincingly
demonstrated that story orientation rather than customer orientation is the
real secret of marketing success’.
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