Total Relationship Marketing

The purpose of this book is to contribute to a more realistic approach to marketing management. It addresses the question: ‘ What do you learn if you look at marketing as relationships, networks and interaction, and what can you do with this knowledge? ’ This way of approaching marketing is referred to as relationship marketing (RM), and within this concept the topical issues of customer relationship management (CRM) and one-to-one marketing belong. The book has been written for all those who want to develop their knowledge of marketing: practitioners, students, educators and researchers. As marketing management permeates every activity in today’s business – and not only the marketing and sales departments – this book will be of particular interest to top executives and managers of all types of functions. Chapter 1 is an introduction to RM and its 30 relationships, the 30Rs, prevalent in business. This is by far the broadest and most comprehensive framework of RM that has been designed; hence the reference to total relationship marketing. Each relationship is then covered in more detail in Chapters 2–5. Chapter 6 is about marketing metrics and return on relationships (ROR), that is, the financial effects of RM and the effects on relationship-oriented marketing and business planning. Chapter 7 deals with RM and new organizational formats, captured under the term network organization; the chapter also puts RM and its organization in the context of the market economy. Chapter 8 covers theories and experiences that have formed the foundation of RM, describes how RM and CRM have emerged from these, and forebodes a paradigm shift in marketing. The structure of the book, particularly the presentation of the 30Rs, is, in a sense, encyclopedic – a hypertext in modern terminology – which gives readers the option to look up what they are interested in without having to read every page in sequence from cover to cover.