Archives
Book Review
The Future of Relationship Marketing
David Bejou and Adrian Palmer (eds)
ISBN: 0-78790-3162-0 2005 The Best Business Books, Binghamton, NY
Peter Vitartas
School of Commerce and Management, Faculty of Business, Southern Cross University, Lismore NSW
For marketers the nineties was a particularly interesting time as it was a period that saw a change in the approach to marketing. Marketing during the 70s and 80s had been dominated by large multinationals who focused on product advertising relying almost exclusively on television. Yet during the eighties the era of ‘services’ started to gain traction and what emerged was a shift in focus from the ‘product’ to ‘customer service’. Whereas previously advertising was seen as the primary means of attracting customers, now the focus was turned to how businesses served their customers. Emerging from these changes discussion turned not only to how to get customers, but how to keep them. Relationship marketing became a dominant topic which, for many, was a new marketing paradigm.
Relationship marketing has seen a number of developments since the early work of Christopher, Payne and Ballantyne (1991), most notably the development of terms and processes that have been used to demonstrate the adoption of the new paradigm. It is the automation of processes that has driven practitioners with ‘Customer Relationship Management Programs’ that enable data collection, analysis and communication of tailored messages to the most promising prospects as the focus of activity. In The Future of Relationship Marketing, editors Bejou and Palmer make a concerted attempt to stretch our thinking about the future direction relationship marketing can take more than a decade on from the early writings. The content is based on a colloquium in relationship marketing held at Cheltenham, UK and the manuscript is co-published simultaneously as volume four of the Journal of Relationship Marketing. A set of six papers cover the topics of communication, justice theory, word-of-mouth, organisational theory, CRM implementation and verbal behaviour in negotiations. A seventh paper by the editors introduces the issues addressed by the papers. Combined they present alternative approaches to thinking about an organisation’s relationship with its customers or stakeholders that can guide future research in relationship marketing.
In the first paper by Varey and Ballantyne (2005), titled ‘Relationship marketing and the challenge of dialogical interaction’, the authors make the distinction between three types of interaction, informational, communicational and dialogical, and argue that dialogical communication between marketers and stakeholders is necessary for an organisation to be an ‘innovative social and economic contributor’ (p.12). The authors explain that dialogical interaction refers to an ‘extended conversation among two or more people’ – in essence the basis for a relationship that involves both parties learning together. Yet in today’s high tech world where managers are removed from any contact with their customers, the way such dialogues can occur are much different from the approaches used in traditional markets where the seller of a product interacts directly with the customer. Therefore, it is argued, managers need to make an effort to develop dialogical inquiry which can inform them and allow them to reflect on their past behaviours and consequences. This it is believed will lead to a greater understanding of each participant’s point of view and lead to the establishment of further and deeper relationships.
Lyle Wetsch introduces the concept of procedural justice to marketing as part of justice theory, or the idea that customers’ fairness perceptions of an organisation can be affected by the way they are treated by the organisation. The introduction presents the theory and will be of interest to potential students of marketing. A model of loyalty intention that is moderated by procedural justice and distributive justice is developed in the paper and it becomes apparent that the author was developing research to test the model at the time of writing. However no discussion of the findings is presented, leaving the reader wondering why these couldn’t have been added as part of the publication of the book.
In the third paper, Woratschek and Horbel (2005) play devil’s advocate by asking why should we bother trying to satisfy variety seekers given that they are unlikely to become repeat or loyal customers? They use the example of a tourist destination that has low repeat custom because it attracts passing tourists rather than having a base of local residents. This situation is common for many tourist destinations and could also apply to irregularly purchased products and services as well. The research they present reports a link between customer satisfaction and the level of word of mouth recommendation by visitors, indicating that a satisfied infrequent visitor will deliver business through word of mouth communications. These findings challenge managers’ approaches to viewing variety-seeking behaviour and a number of practical recommendations are made by the authors.
The next paper explores relationship marketing from a management philosophy perspective. Pels and Saren (2005) discuss the influence of positivistic and interpretative approaches to strategy, organisational theory and marketing by reviewing the philosophies that have dominated these topics and how they have changed based on the positivistic and interpretativistic schools. They conclude that a pluralistic approach now needs to be taken that accepts the co-existence of multiple approaches. The reader is left with the challenge to solve the resultant problem of how multiple paradigms can coexist in the same firm.
Taking a different tack, Henneberg (2005) provides a practitioner oriented article by examining the opportunities for future research in customer relationship management implementation models. The paper provides managers with direction for the implementation of a CRM program, although the failure of many current programs and very high dissatisfaction levels with such programs (reported as 52% in the study) may mean that the CRM models may quickly become obsolete as managers move on to more rewarding activities.
In the final paper Tracy Harwood investigates the verbal behaviour used in negotiations involving strategic relationship development. The study is based on real-life negotiations in a business-to-business context and reports distinct patterns of verbal behaviour at different stages of the relationship development. The paper is also of interest as it reports an observational study methodology that prospective researchers would find useful. although the practical application seems limited and there is little discussion of how the findings could be implemented.
The papers appearing in The Future of Relationship Marketing provide the reader with a diverse range of topics and interesting perspectives on literature and research methodologies that can be useful examples or idea incubators for post-graduate marketing students. It is a text for the academic rather than the practitioner and would be a valuable addition to the reading list of new researchers in the field of relationship marketing. It has to be admitted that the title may lead readers to believe that some clear direction for research and the future development of relationship marketing would be included in the text, however this is sadly missing. It is unfortunate that the papers’ authors did not adapt their manuscripts to the book’s title.
While the title builds the readers expectations for a little more, one can take heart in the many research issues that are raised and the questions posed in the text. The editors, in their introductory paper, pose a number of challenging questions - has relationship as a concept moved since its introduction; which paradigm do we use to research relationship marketing; what is the nature of relationships and do they lead to profitability? Answers to these questions will no doubt be the topics for future researchers to consider, with the papers in the book starting the debates.
eContent Home
