Relationship Marketing: Gaining Competitive Advantage through Customer Satisfaction and Customer Retention

Citation

Renart, L.G. (2001), "Relationship Marketing: Gaining Competitive Advantage through Customer Satisfaction and Customer Retention", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 18 No. 1, pp. 75-83. https://doi.org/10.1108/jcm.2001.18.1.75.4

This is an excellent book on relationship marketing, organized into seven parts, with a total of 23 chapters written by various academics and practitioners:

1. 1.

   (1) Part A: Basic issues in relationship marketing. Chapters 1 to 4.

2. 2.

   (2) Part B: Strategic options in relationship marketing. Chapters 5 to 9.

3. 3.

   (3) Part C: Personnel as a key to relationship marketing success. Chapters 10 to 12.

4. 4.

   (4) Part D: Information and communication technologies: the heart of relationship marketing? Chapters 13 and 14.

5. 5.

   (5) Part E: International dimensions of relationship marketing. Chapters 15 and 16.

6. 6.

   (6) Part F: Relationship marketing from a services marketing perspective. Chapters 17 to 19.

7. 7.

   (7) Part G: The pitfalls and limitations in relationship marketing: some critical issues. Chapters 20 to 23.

It addresses and successfully achieves four key objectives:

1. 1.

   (1) to provide a comprehensive overview of the main findings of relationship marketing theory, and to help readers new to this concept to understand its basic principles;

2. 2.

   (2) to contribute to the further development of the field;

3. 3.

   (3) to highlight how relationship marketing theory has been transferred into business practice;

4. 4.

   (4) to provide an international perspective on relationship marketing.

To achieve the first objective, different chapters present and/or elaborate the main models in the field, as done for instance in Chapter 5, by Morgan, Crutchfield and Lacey.

Regarding the second objective, some of the chapters introduce new concepts and explore new ideas which stretch the field of relationship marketing. I particularly enjoyed, for instance, Chapter 21 on “Why consumers build relationships with companies – and why not”, which forces us to face the crucial question, forcefully put forth by Barnes (p. 91): “No relationship exists until a customer says there is one”.

Regarding the third objective, four of the book’s 23 chapters were written by executives in companies who are applying the relationship marketing concept: Volkswagen, Loewe Opta (a manufacturer of consumer electronics), Bosch Siemens (home appliances) and Globus (a grocery retail chain with 34 hypermarkets in Germany).

Finally, regarding the international perspective, it is true that out of 29 different contributors, we find 16 Germans, five Britons, five Americans, one Canadian, one Finish and one Irish. But the heart of this book is basically German, which very good and welcome. We may all benefit from a Central European point of view. In fact, we should commend contributors, editors and the publisher of this book for their effort to publish it in Germany, and in fluent English.

I found so many interesting ideas while reading this book that, very frequently, I had to stop reading to pause and reflect on the consequences of what I was reading. Several chapters forced me readjust my pre‐existing general marketing ideas. Some others made me think about their application to a new case on relationship marketing I had just written.

The reading of the book is facilitated by the fact that its chapters are relatively short. Therefore, the reader need not devote to it long uninterrupted periods of time. It is rather easy to read a chapter, then put the book aside for a while, and then easily resume reading, by starting a new chapter.

Readers who are more knowledgeable about relationship marketing may also pick and choose the chapters most attractive to them. But I would not be very surprised if readers found themselves perusing most, if not all, of the chapters.

This is not a “how to” book. Due to its conceptual emphasis I think it will be enjoyed mostly by academics. But it may also be useful for the thoughtful executive, ready and willing to consider the value of the models and ideas presented by the different contributors.

This book should be particularly useful to all kinds of people active in the “Internet boom”. In my opinion, too many Internet start‐ups seem to be created on the basis of insufficient marketing analysis. Many of them seem to be being set up for one of the following reasons:

• •

  a new business format appears to be suddenly technically possible due to the fantastic progress being made in IT;

• •

  the real purpose of a new start up is not so much to persevere and bring it to fruition, but to sell it as soon as possible and make a “fast buck”;

• •

  it is trendy;

• •

  the fear of being left out; or

• •

  it may contribute to solving a problem of the company (e.g. help lower costs of service delivery), with little consideration of customers’ likely reactions to it.

Very few people seem to think about the need not only to establish, but also to consolidate close, reasonably long‐term relationships with their customers. As clearly pointed out by Barnes: “No relationship exists until the customer says there is one” (p. 91). Another warning quote which might be useful for Internet start up investors is Ahlert’s: “Building relationships means interacting with somebody very closely over a long period of time” (p. 254).

Maybe nobody who is active in the Internet context really cares about the need or the objective of establishing long term, close relationships with customers. But reading this book might certainly be a sobering act to do, right now!