New Developments in Relationship Marketing

Prof. dr. Zlatko Jani BledCom, Slovenia, 5 July 2008

Background
Discontinuous changes in all environments Troubles in the marketing tool-box Lost seat at the table Re-conceptualization needed A second marketing revolution?

Development of RM
Outcome of service and inter-organizational marketing development A critics of conquistador marketing A philosophy of long-term relationship building! Most promising is the search for theoretical bases in social exchange theory

Shizo-marketing
A paradigm shift? RM as a continuum or the antagonism? Management or co-management? CRM or friendship? In practice: The shizophrenic mixture of transactional and relationship marketing. Are we fortelling the premature death of relationship marketing (Fournier et al 1998)?

Stakeholder Marketing
Marketing must transcend its orientation to customers and become stakeholder and thus corporate oriented, since customers shop with a knowledge of what a company does as a corporate entity and not just how good its products are.

Holistic Marketing
Holistic marketing is a process of establishing the marketing relationships with the internal environment, relevant external stakeholders and with the social and natural environment (Jani, 1993). A similar re-definition of a marketing concept is also proposed by Kotler & Keller (2005, 2006).

Other developments 1
The embedded marketing Firat and Dholakia (2006) base it on the concept of embeddedness (Granovetter 1985) The products should be the result of mutual construction and not the result of one-sided action. They should be co-created, coproduced and co-marketed. Radical proposition since it implies the fading of boundaries between the company and society.

Other developments 2
Marketing with a mission The true mission of marketing should be the enrichment of quality of life in the society. Such marketing can contribute to society a great deal for its knowledge about the creation of value is indispensable. Firms that add to, rather than subtract from the quality of life, are more likely to enjoy customer loyalty, stakeholders trust, regulatory freedom, and high employee morale and productivity (Berry and Mirahito (2006, 296).

Other developments 3
Corporate & organizational marketing A movement in the UK (Balmer, Powell, Greyser, etc.). Developed from the studies of corporate branding, corporate image, identity and reputation,. Corporation cannot hide itself behind the product or service brands, it becomes a marketing entity that needs to perform reciprocal exchange relationships with the total environment. Corporate strategic marketing (Parvinen, Tikkanen Aspara, 2007) paramount in creating shareholders value, as well as in creating value to customers and welfare to society.

Thank you!