Download RELATIONSHIP MARKETING Student Name: Name of Institution

1
RELATIONSHIP MARKETING
Student Name:
Name of Institution:
Course:
Tutor:
Date of Submission:
2
Introduction
Relationship marketing is a very important marketing approach that entails person-toperson communication. This marketing technique is also time-consuming and the most powerful.
The philosophy behind marketing as applied by most organizations is the belief that improved
relationship with existing customers and other stakeholders heightens their satisfaction and the
organization’s ability to provide better services (Egan, 2004). According to Godson (2009), the
major trends observed in the customer market makes it to increasingly gaining greater
importance among organizations and therefore the need to develop strategies aimed at fostering
relationships. Customer loyalty and retention also focuses on ensuring customer repeat of
purchase as generally triggered by an organization’s activities. Supply chain relationships and
their management also play a very crucial role in ensuring addition of value to products and
services within an organizational set up.
This study will identify that customer loyalty is a key factor of relationship marketing and
sometimes even links to customer successful customer retention depending on the relationship
marketing strategies applied for a given institution. Empirical and theoretical studies focus
mostly on the relationship between customer loyalty and retention and the general profitability of
an organization (Borland, 2006). Furthermore, another research argue that customer loyalty is
important in contributing highly to increased revenues throughout the relationship life cycle
since there would be increased cross-selling activities and relative increase in customer
penetration rates (Vasconcelos, 2008)
Positive communication to clients that is generally word-of-mouth, referring to all
informal communications between customers and organization staff concerning evaluations of
3
goods or services, experiences, recommendations to others, and even quality of product or
services is another major factor of relationship marketing. This is because; personal
communication is more appealing and believed to be a more reliable source of information as
opposed to non-personal communication. Word-of-mouth communication plays a vital role in
influencing an individual’s future buying behaviors (Billikopf, 2006).
The above introductory explanations therefore implies that relationship marketing is a
form of marketing aimed at shifting organization’s focus away from more emphasis on sales
transactions to more emphasis on customer and other stakeholder satisfaction. In this case, the
buyer and the seller strive to offer a satisfying exchange to each other. With this kind of
relationship, there is general formation of stronger ties between the buyer and the seller.
According to Erickson and McGlaughlin (2002), relationship marketing is cross-functional in the
sense that the processes involved with it touches on all aspects of the organization. With the
growth and advancement of technology such as smartphones, relationship marketing continued
to evolve and venture in social marketing and communication through social media platforms
and the internet. Technology offers organizations with tools for managing relationships with
their customers and these tools generally go beyond simple customer service data or even
demographics.
Grounded Theory
The given definition of relationship marketing reflects an expansion of the field to cover
various complex networks of relationships within an organization and its markets, suppliers,
customers, and other stakeholders. Gummesson (2008) for instance identified 30 relationships
and categorized them into groups that include mega relationships, special market relationships,
4
and Nano relationships. Another approach is that proposed Christopher, Payne, and Ballantyne
as ‘six markets’ that is helpful in identifying important stakeholders. According to Payne et al
(Herington, Johnson & Scott, 2006), the six markets include referral markets, influence markets,
recruitment markets, supplier/alliance markets, and internal markets.
The purpose of this research paper is to identify relationship marketing through the lens
of various relationships within an organization to help such organizations attain strengthened
profitability. Another important part of the study is the identification of various challenges and
opportunities with respect to relationship marketing and come up with the necessary
recommendations. To understand these aspects of relationship marketing, the study draws
explanations from various theories and models associated with relationship marketing. Finally,
the study will examine the case of Tesco PLC, a British multinational grocery and general
merchandise retailer.
Background of the Study
Since its inception in 1919, Tesco plc continued to grow to be the United Kingdom's
largest retailer and the world’s second largest after Wal-Mart in terms of both sales and market
share. Having a total operating income of £3.1bn in 2009, Tesco plc embarked upon a major
expansion phase that has been going on in the past decade. With such expansion phase, the
company had over 2,300 stores as of December 2009 across the UK. These stores include Tesco
Metro, Superstores, and Express among others. The company also embarked on pursuing an
extremely wide range of area in its pursuit for expansion. Additionally, Tesco plc established its
own distribution network to enhance the company’s drive towards greater vertical integration.
5
As an extension of the company’s Relationship Marketing approach, Tesco established an
introduction of customer loyalty and retention strategies although initially such strategies simply
offered discounts for the company’s customers. However, the introduction of Tesco plc Clubcard
scheme, for example, is important in its application in a number of different environments.
Tesco’s Clubcard also provides the company and its clients to attain valuable information. Such
valuable information is important in the sense that it helps the company to assess the specifics of
a customer's shopping habits and the clients can access faster services from the company.
Corporate social responsibility and proper communication channels are also other schemes rolled
out by Tesco plc to ensure sustainable relationship marketing.
Customer Relationships
Customer Relationship Management
The main purpose for implementing customer relationship management by many
organizations is that the model enables an organization to have the ability to ensure management
of its interactions with customers, clients, and sales prospects. In this case, the use of technology
to organize, automate, and harmonize business processes such as principally sales activities,
marketing, ensuring speedy and quality customer service, and technical support is very important
(Godson, 2009). Essentially, CRM denotes company-wide strategies that are useful in embracing
all departments that are in constant interaction with clients and even beyond such departments.
With successful implementation of CRM, all people, processes, and technology relate in a proper
manner and work in synergy to ensure increased profitability and significant reduction in cost of
production.
6
Furthermore, a successful formulation, implementation, use, and support of CRM
strategies can provide companies with a significant advantage. However, there are often
obstacles that obstruct such companies from using the system to its full potential. For instance, a
CRM designed in a manner to contain a large and complex group of data can be inefficient and
difficult to understand for poorly trained users. Poor sponsorship from senior management can
also hinder the success of CRM schemes. Additionally, a CRM scheme that has an interface that
provides users with difficulty in navigate or understand can greatly reduce the CRM’s
effectiveness, forcing users to choose which areas of the system to use and which ones to avoid
(Godson, 2009). This fragmented implementation can result in serious and inherent challenges
since only parts of the system are functional while others are not.
In the case of Tesco plc, the company’s biggest weapon is information about its
customer. In 1995 for instance, Tesco plc introduced the TESCO Clubcard programs. This
program entailed giving holders of the card certain amounts of discounts in exchange for their
personal information like name, address, and other necessary personal information such as their
size household, ages of their children, and their shopping preferences. Currently, close to 80% of
Tesco’s customers are Clubcard members. In addition, to help the company in analyzing
customer data, Tesco sought the services of a consultancy firm known as Dunnhumby to run its
loyalty- card programs. The role of Dunnhumby is to assign each product a score on 50
dimensions that comprise prize and package size after which the computer searches for
customers with similar combinations of score in their shopping baskets.
The analysis of customer information as mentioned above helps Tesco to tailor
promotions to individual and come up with techniques of figuring out how new techniques and
initiatives are working out. For example, upon the introduction of Asian herbs cooking oil
7
alongside other ethnic foods in neighborhoods that comprised of Indian and Pakistanis herbs,
Tesco utilized its customer data to realize that the new products were also popular with affluent
white customers, prompting the company to expand the rollout quickly. Therefore, the data
driven CRM strategy puts Tesco plc at the vanguard in the industry of retailing with the fact
traditional advertisement continues to lose its effectiveness. What is even more appealing with
customer knowledge of Tesco is its ability to fight Wal-Mart’s core appeal of Low Prices of
certain products.
Customer Loyalty and Retention
As mentioned earlier, customer retention and loyalty is one of the important concerns of
every organization and based on consumer behavior. Customer loyalty and retention have close
relationship in the sense that the former enables organizations to attain increased customer
retention and attract new customers in not only their local market but also the global arena
(Papnigyrakis & Theodoridis, 2009). As part of consumer relationship marketing, customer
loyalty approach and strategy helps customers to switch from being action to reaction in order to
keep them in contact with the organization. According to Scott and Dunn (2002), organizations
that recognize the importance of customer loyalty and retention will push as much emphasis to
develop sustainable strategies aimed at creating and strengthening their general brand loyalty.
Additionally, Thomas (2001) argues that the improvement of customer satisfaction and eventual
sustainable customer retention are a result of a variety of activities that are available to the
specific organization. Such activities include improvements of service quality, proper strategies
for handling customer complaint, and service feature.
8
In the traditional methods of relationship marketing, caring for existing customers was
never a priority in the list of methods used for attracting customers. Within a company, the need
for salespersons with the ability of taking care of existing customers and manage to attract new
ones is of great importance. Nowadays, most organizations across the globe prioritize keeping,
caring for, and developing the existing customer relationships (Thomas, 2001). The principle and
foundation of such organizations is to treat well their present customers before courting new ones
from their competitors. Additionally, organizations in the same industry of production tend to
provide consumers with similar products and services with slightly little differentiation. This
therefore puts pressure on organizations to strategies on methods of maintaining their current
customers and make efforts to attract new ones from competitors (Uncles, Dowling, &
Hammond, 2003). It is also useful to note that past and present customer buying behavior helps
organizations to predict and identify prospective future customers. Past behaviors, for instance
help organizations to segment their customers effectively and identify that satisfied customers
will tend to stay longer in the relationship as analyzed by Barton and Wensley (2002).
As for the case of Tesco plc, there are various strategies put in place to ensure sustainable
customer loyalty and retention. At the core of the strategy is the use of discounts to Tesco
Clubcard owners aimed at attracting new customers. This idea also gets support from other
promotional measures like ordinary discounts, coupons, and sweepstakes offered to customers.
These promotional measures are useful in keeping the company’s interaction with customers,
increasing loyalty, and retention in the end. Reward is another important factor in Tesco’s
customer loyalty scheme. The Clubcard scheme enables the company’s customers to earn one
point for every dollar they spend on shopping. On attaining 150 points, customers will have the
opportunity to be rewarded with price-off vouchers for their shopping (Mukund, 2003). It is
9
notable that such schemes with other companies failed. However, Tesco’s success lies in its
partnership with other companies that offer gas, car hire, and hotel services to enable its
customers accumulate points at all of these outlets, speeding up point collection in the process.
Other schemes like Tesco Clubs that comprise Tesco Toddler, Tesco Health Living, and Tesco
World of wine are aimed at meeting the needs of the diverse customer base.
Furthermore, to enhance their customer loyalty and retention, Tesco plc designed its
stores in a more appealing format. The division of the company’s stores to six different formats
with different sizes and range of products is the company’s scheme aimed at ensuring that the
stores suit different shopping patterns of customers as identified from the information gathered
with the help of the Clubcard (Mukund, 2003). These different formats bring about the ability of
Tesco to meet its customers changing demands. Additionally, in keeping its customer-centered
policy, the company takes care of the local community by ensuring that landscaping,
architecture, and aesthetics of its stores appeals to the surrounding environment. Tesco also
believes that it can improve its customer retention probability by offering them a greater value.
According to Evans (2002), offering customers a greater value will see satisfied customers
staying in the relationship for long while new customers will tend to test the company’s products
and services. This finally makes customers to climb up the ladder of loyalty. From this overview
of Tesco customer loyalty scheme, it is important to note that the company’s success is more
than loyalty scheme but went beyond CRM tools to ensure implementation of operational
changes according to data analysis and allowing its customers to manage the relationship
(Newell, 2003).
10
External Stakeholder relationships
Corporate social responsibility
There are five major corporate social responsibility practices common with major retail
chain stores, and other sectors by extension (Egan, 2004). These five areas of corporate social
responsibility include environment, health and safety, employees, supply chain, and stakeholder
responsibility. It is clear that corporate social responsibility is one of the major issues facing
global organizations including retail supermarkets. This is even more evident as transnational
companies expand rapidly with the intent of reaping most of the globalization benefits.
Therefore, such corporate social responsibility practices mentioned above are aimed at
improving services, taking care of society’s interests and ensuring sustainability as a model for
promoting relationship marketing (Halabi, Kazi, Dang, and Samy, 2006). Generally, corporate
social responsibility is an organization’s wider responsibilities to the general society.
An organization’s responsibility to supply chain implies that every organization strives to
work committedly to share the mutual values aimed at improving the importance of corporate
citizenship, human rights and social justice, and respect for the environment. Similarly,
organizations should include in their corporate social responsibility strategies on the importance
of diversity in its employees. It should also treat its staff with respect to demonstrate their value
as retail industry. In addition, organizations need to be responsible to its stakeholders by ensuring
that their relationship has its foundation placed at high importance on honesty, trust and being
hopeful, and respectful on their stakeholders and value direct communication with them (Lane,
2006). Environment conservation is another important CSR that organizations need to take into
11
consideration by avoiding excessive emission of gases, conservation of biodiversity, improving
waste management, water, and energy conservation.
For the case of Tesco plc, the company’s strong belief is that it cannot be able to build a
sustainable business on an unsustainable supply chain. The company also ensures health and
safety of its workers by funding Base Code of the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) since 1998 to
ensure that the company and its suppliers work with high standards. The company’s standards
that cover issues concerning its customers, for example animal welfare also aims at ensuring
sustainability. Additionally, the Tesco Knowledge Hub remains one of the world’s largest in
terms of supply chain sustainability through its online knowledge-sharing platform that serve
over 1,800 individuals. Members of the Knowledge Hub are drawn from the company’s largest
suppliers, expatriates, and Tesco colleagues. The company also projects that the Knowledge Hub
will play a key role in reduce the company’s carbon footprint of its products by 30% by 2020.
This will be a great step towards environmental sustainability by the company and would allow
the suppliers to work with the company in accelerating the efforts aimed at reducing greenhouse
gas emissions throughout the company’s mainstream supply chain.
Finally, Tesco plc works in partnership with Consumer Goods Forum (CGF), which a global
network that brings together over 400 retailers, to enable the company tackle industry-wide
problems in collaboration with other players in the industry. It is important to identify the efforts
of CGF in fostering sustainability. In 2010 for instance, the network’s members pledged to help
in conservation efforts to ensure the achievement of zero net deforestation by 2020. This implies
that Tesco plc is working towards increased production and purchase of products that are
sustainable and utilizing sustainably sourced products related to palm oil, soy, paper, and
deforestation by leveraging the scale of CGF membership.
12
Partnerships and Alliances
It is important to note that businesses grow externally through acquisition and mergers
with other companies in the same industries and other ongoing businesses. In the case of
acquisition, the acquiring company has to pay for the acquired business with the agreed mode of
payment, mostly through cash payment or with its own securities. Additionally, the acquired
company’s liabilities and assets become transferable to the acquiring company. On the other
hand, a merger is generally a combination of two or more businesses within the same industry
(Kale, Dyer & Singh, 2002). After a merger, all of the combining companies will lose their legal
identity with only one of them retaining its identity and continues to carry out its operations
under its original name. In the case of consolidation, all of the combining companies lose their
legal entities and identities to form new company. Generally, organizational partnerships and
alliances can be formal partnerships, joint ventures, consortia, licensing agreements, comarketing, branding, and management contracts.
With the case of Tesco plc, the company employs three dimensions to inform its strategic
behavior when pursuing international and local partnership and alliances. Firstly, the company
continues to acquire successful companies. This remains the company’s central point in its
strategy of overseas expansion, with greater movement towards emerging markets since 1992.
Tesco’s expansion to Asian markets in 1998 by purchasing significant number of shares in
Thailand’s Lotus hypermarkets and later on in 2002 entered the Malaysian market, Japan in
2003, and eventually gained entry to China in 2004. The partnership and alliance in the case of
Malaysia resulted from an agreement between Tesco and a local company called Sime Darby
Behad as a joint with Tesco owning 70% of the equity although the locals controlled the
operations. Tesco reached similar agreement with Shanghai Hymall to attain entry to Chinese
13
market. Although Tesco owned majority of the equity in these joint ventures with the operations
being locally controlled, Tesco joint the partnerships with local operational knowledge to enable
it establish increased market share and eventual market domination.
The second dimension that guides Tesco’s strategy for partnership and alliance concerns
market selection. Before entering any market or partnership, Tesco takes caution to analyze
competition levels markets where opportunistic events are abundant. For instance, the company
chose to enter Eastern Europe and South East Asia markets after considering that there was low
local competition, far from expanding giants like Wal-Mart and Asda. The final dimension in
Tesco’s expansion approach was that of recognizing the fact that learning would only be possible
after opening a store or entering into a partnership, without much consideration of the ultimate
success of the venture. Although Tesco plc was comparatively weak in the global market during
its infant stages as compared to other experienced rivals at the times, the company chose to
pursue an aggressive expansion and partnership strategies with the main view of long-term
global growth and expansion. Therefore, setting small and inexperienced stores for piloting
alongside small joint ventures were key pillars in the earlier expansion of the company.
Therefore, Tesco pursued two types of partnerships and alliances in its strategy.
Normally, international retailers put more emphasis on the cognitive aspects that surround
partnership and alliance processes. Tesco pursued an innovative approach on its own to enable
the company acquire market knowledge to support its expansion globally. A good example of
this approach was the utilization of embedded research teams in Japan to carry out a survey and
research on Japanese families to come up with household consumption behavior. The result of
the survey resulted to Tesco’s acquisition of the Japanese C2 chain.
14
Investors and Shareholders
According to Dale, Barbara, Wixom, and Hugh (2002, effective management of
stakeholder relationships within organizations is one of the most vital components that constitute
the new global frontier to foster communication management. Although such communication
processes are imperative, facilitating effective tools for investor and stakeholder relationships are
vital for organizational success. Normative stakeholder theory puts more emphasis on value and
rights of stakeholders and how they are affected by organizational behavior and how
organizations can strike a balance of concerns between different stakeholders. Therefore, this
theory emphasizes on the impact of moral propriety of organization’s behavior on investors and
shareholders (Johnson & Scholes, 2002). With this regard, shareholders that possess no power
and legitimacy to less extend when arriving at the organization’s crucial decisions. According to
Kotler and Lee (2005), application of normative stakeholder theory is important, as it is a central
factor in fostering CSR.
Additionally, it is important for organizations to identify the needs of stakeholders and
interests. After identifying such interests, it is also important to categorize the investors to
understand those with high power and low power and those with low and high levels of interests.
In doing so, organizations would be effective in understanding the type of stakeholders to engage
in decision-making processes (Jawahar & McLaughlin, 2001). The following table indicates
stakeholder power/interest matrix.
15
LEVEL OF INTEREST
Low
A
High
B
Low
Minimal
effort
Keep
informed
POWER
C
High
Keep
satisfied
D
Key
players
Figure 1 – The Stakeholder Map or Power/Interest Matrix
Source: Johnson & Scholes (2002)
Tesco plc appreciates the importance of its shareholder relationships by recognizing that
the company cannot work alone unless works together with its stakeholders, who can contribute
expertise that can enable the company to assess areas of success and areas that need
improvement in service delivery. In 2012 for instance, the company organized an engagement
program that brought together leading stakeholders from national and international levels with
the main agenda of carrying out assessment of work and steer the company’s strategy. Finally,
16
the company also engages in specific consultation with its socially responsible investment (SRI)
community with a dedicated team of investor relation (Tusco, 2012). Such programs also serve to
promote the company’s public relations image (Rawlins, 2006).
Internal Relationships
Concept of the "Internal Customer"
As mentioned earlier, the concept of Nano relationships exist below within the
organization and wields greater impact on external relationships. According to Egan (2004), the
internal customer comprises the organizational employees. The major idea behind the concept of
internal customer is that all employees are perceived to be customers and suppliers that put more
concern on internal processes. However, the relationship among employees and the management
can influence the external relationship as well. As customers, employees are useful in moving the
organization from value chain to value constellation. In this case, Tesco offers its employees the
opportunity to make suggestions on how to improve customer service from their experience as
internal ‘customers’. This offers the company the opportunity to improve the quality of service
delivery across their stores.
Categorizing Customer- Influencing Employees
Categorizing customers-influencing employees is one of the most crucial activities in an
organization in order to ensure that the right individuals are working on the departments to
maximize customer satisfaction and retention. The following matrix indicates general
categorization of customer-influencing employees into four main categories with contactors and
influencers scoring high in customer contact and involvement in customer service against
modifiers and isolators and vice versa. Employees scoring highly in the matrix are likely to show
17
happiness to a customer. Tesco appreciates that it is the role of the organization to encourage
factors such as employee recognition, training and development, empowerment, and proper
recruitment and selection process to improve employee influence on customers.
The Recruitment Market
The recruitment is another crucial component of internal relationships that concern
employee turnover, employee retention, the ability to attract the right type of staff, and managing
recruitment and selection process as applied by Tesco. It is the need for every organization to
retain its best performing employees, realize low employee turnover, bring on board the right
people, and manage their recruitment and selection channels. However, attaining all these desires
requires proper strategies for personnel management. With the case of Tesco, the company
18
understands that hiring great employees is one thing while retaining them is another entire
different one. Among the reasons that make it difficult to retain employees are inadequate pay
rate, lack of recognition, and poor motivation. By making good payment rates to its employees,
effective methods for solving conflicts, enhancing communication, and creating a family culture,
Tesco is able to retain its performing employees, eventually reducing employee turnover.
Supply Chain Relationships
Upstream and Downstream
Supply chain comprises of organizational suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, and the
applicable modes of transport and any other services that ensure the final product reach the
customer. Downstream supply chain implies the movement of products from the manufacturer
down to the customer while upstream supply chain implies any activity that took place up to a
specific point of the supply previously. Whichever the case is, many manufacturers including
Tesco consider their suppliers as upstream while the customers remain the downstream in the
chain. However, successful connection of these two issues depends largely on specific
organization’s strategies to ensure successful connectivity. This therefore calls for system
integration.
Systems Integration
Tesco already works in a close association with its supply chain since it already has
knowledge about the system. Every one of the company’s store has its own supply chain
assigned the role of growing the store, developing the store, packing it, storing the store, and
finally delivering the products. Furthermore, the company integrates such strategies like
19
technology, inter-company negotiations, and cooperation to ensure successful system integration
in its supply chain management.
Recommendations
From the above analysis, it is evident that Tesco plc has good relationship marketing
schemes that are the major pillars to its success and continued growth. However, even though the
company’s CRM efforts are useful in ensuring the company’s superior financial performance and
increased market share, it is important for the company to evaluate its customer service standards
critically. It is evident that the company has been aggressive in spending much time on the
appearance of its stores, the range of products in its store, and their service processes. Although
this is good for the company, it has temporarily overlooked the impact of its employees on
customers through employee behavior. The company therefore needs to re-address and put more
emphasis on this issue.
Tesco plc also has to launch aggressive initiatives and programs like ‘Every Customer
offered Help’ (ECOH) and make it mandatory that every employees have to understand clear
instructions on how to deal and interact with customers at all levels as part of ECOH. Just as an
example to this idea, employees at the checkout counters should be keen and very particular in
welcoming customers by greeting them, offering any necessary help to customers, and wishing
them a good day on exiting the stores. In addition, the company should empower store managers
and appreciated for their efforts in making the ECOH initiative successful in order to make them
participate wholeheartedly in supporting the scheme.
It is also important for Tesco to recognize that the Clubcard scheme in its CRM strategies
was just a single scheme in an array of CRM strategies and that there is an important need for
20
customer enhancement in order for the company endure stiff competition and attain survival and
excellence in the intensely competitive retail industry. This implies that Tesco has to take serious
measures and a host of initiatives in its stores to foster its customer services and loyalty. The
company would also improve its customer satisfaction by introducing new scheduling system for
the company’s store employees.
In addition, it would also be useful for Tesco to make it mandatory its employees from
junior staff to top executives to spend certain amounts of time every year in the stores to make
them have a clear understanding and acquaintance with the nuances and degrees of customer
service. This initiative would enable the company’s employees to ingrain customer service and
integrate it as the company’s philosophy eventually resulting in initiation of innovative ideas.
Unlike other rival company’s customer service program like that of Asda, Tesco’s program
should discourage employees from being ‘too personal’ with customers, since such post
employees at their store entrances to greet customers.
Finally, in order for Tesco to that the company’s CRM efforts have a strong backing from
strong operational framework, the company should pay special attention strategies and schemes
aimed at controlling costs and restructuring its supply chain and remove all non-value adding
costs in its association with the company’s suppliers. In its collaboration with suppliers, Tesco
should pursue important initiatives and approaches like ‘Lean Thinking’ that should majorly
focus on smart and efficient working.
21
Reference
Barton, A. and Wensley, R., 2002. Weitz: Handbook of Marketing. London: Sage
Publishers.
Billikopf, G., 2006. Interacting With Employees. Workplace Interpersonal
Relations. Berkely: University of California.
Borland, J., 2006. Employee and Customer Loyalty – Critical Keys to Profitability.
Vox Incorporated, Research Paper.
Dale, L., Barbara, H., and Hugh, J., 2002. Realizing Business Benefits through CRM: Hitting
The Right Target in the Right Way. pages 1-25
Egan, J., 2004. Relationship Marketing. Pearson Education, Harlow
Erickson, S., and McGlaughlin, M., 2002. Customer Relationship
Management. Information Systems and Control Foundation, White Paper.
Evans, G., 2002. Measuring and Managing Customer Value. Emerald Insights
Research Paper, 51 (3): 134-139.
Godson, M., 2009. Relationship marketing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gummesson, E., 2008. Total relationship marketing. Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann
Halabi, A., Kazi, A., Dang, V., and Samy, M., 2006. Corporate Social Responsibility. Monash
Business Review, l2 (3): 22-25.
Herington, C., Johnson, L., and Scott, D., 2006. Internal relationships. European Business
Review, 18 (5): 364-381.
Jawahar, I., and McLaughlin, C., 2001. Towards a descriptive stakeholder theory: An
organization life cycle approach. Academy of Management Review, 26(3): 397-414.
22
Johnson, G., and Scholes, K., 2002. Exploring corporate strategy. Texts and cases. Pearson
Education, Harlow.
Kale, P., Dyer, J., and Singh, H., 2002. Alliance Capability, Stock Market Response, and LongTerm Alliance Success: The Role of the Alliance Function. Strategic Management
Journal, 23: 747-767.
Lane, G., 2006. Taking responsibility. Leisure Management, 26(6), 40-43.
With respect to corporate social responsibility, Lane comes out clearly to define that CSR
is every organization’s opportunity to ensure mutual benefits for both the organization
and the general organization. CSR is one of the most important aspects of relationship
schemes.
Mukund, A., 2003. Tesco: the Customer Relationship Management Champion. ICFAI Centre for
Management research: Hyderabad, India.
Mukund presents a guideline for obtaining CRM from a corporation with an effective
twelve-step plan. He addresses opportunities offered by sponsorships, selling of a
sponsorship, and methods to find the right sponsorship best suited for an organization.
This article makes clear that sponsorships are a crucial area for a source of revenue for a
non-profit organization and is an important area for our research.
Papnigyrakis, G., and Theodoridis, P., 2009. Internal marketing impact on business
performance in a retail context. International Journal of Retail & Distribution
Management, 37(7): 600-628.
Rawlins, L. B., 2006. Prioritizing Stakeholders for Public Relations. Institute for Publ
23
Bibliography
Barton, A. and Wensley, R., 2002. Weitz: Handbook of Marketing. London: Sage
Publishers.
A comprehensive text that integrates advanced, state-of-the-art techniques to provide
readers and marketing professionals with an understanding of the techniques and an
operating ability to design, test, and implement marketing schemes. The text includes
new material on designing for quality marketing strategies for defensive and competitive
strategy, value mapping, the integration of marketing, new issues of organization,
customer satisfaction, and new international examples.
Billikopf, G., 2006. Interacting With Employees. Workplace Interpersonal
Relations. Berkely: University of California.
This article summarizes findings linking employee and customer engagement with
business outcomes, including customer satisfaction and loyalty, profitability,
productivity, employee turnover, and safety. It is important to examine business-unitlevel relationships because it is at this level that employee survey data are typically used
by organizations.
Borland, J., 2006. Employee and Customer Loyalty – Critical Keys to Profitability.
Vox Incorporated, Research Paper.
This article bases its premise on the claim that for a RM system to be successful, it must
target two distinct areas of customer retention and loyalty. It describes each of the two
24
areas and gives examples of the benefits that specific companies have incurred from the
implementation of the one area into their RM and CRM strategy. It further claims that
many companies fail in the implementation of CRM strategies because they often focus
on only one of the two areas. This article does a good job of describing how best to apply
CRM strategies most successfully. However, as opposed to many other articles, it places
a lot of emphasis on customer retention and loyalty aspects of CRM, which of course, the
main components of the system. This article is relevant because it provides us with
numerous examples of how CRM strategies and systems have been implemented by
many well-known companies such as Tesco plc.
Dale, L., Barbara, H., and Hugh, J., 2002. Realizing Business Benefits through CRM: Hitting
The Right Target in the Right Way. pages 1-25
This article bases its premise on the claim that for a CRM system to be successful, it must
target three distinct areas: applications, infrastructure and transformation. It describes
each of the three areas and gives examples of the benefits that specific companies have
incurred from the implementation of the one area into their CRM strategy. It further
claims that many companies fail in the implementation of CRM strategies because they
often focus on only one of the three areas. This article does a good job of describing how
best to apply CRM strategies most successfully. However, as opposed to many other
articles, it places a lot of emphasis on the technological aspect of CRM, which of course,
is only a component of the system.
This article is relevant because it provides us with numerous examples of how CRM
strategies and systems have been implemented by many well-known companies such as
3M. Furthermore, it also provides a somewhat differing perspective to the “A Customer
25
Relationship Management Road map: What Is Known, Potential Pitfalls, and Where to
Go” article. This will help us form a more informed conclusion on the best ways to
implement CRM strategies to accomplish company goals.
Egan, J., 2004. Relationship Marketing. Pearson Education, Harlow
Marketing professors Neeli Bendapudi and Singh and doctoral candidate Venkat
Bendapudi discuss the lack of research available for understanding why people help. The
authors incorporate research from marketing, economics, sociology, and social
psychology to advance this theoretical understanding. In addition, they propose specific
promotional strategies which charitable organizations can research and employ to obtain
help. This article relates the findings of many studies concerning how certain
psychological and environmental factors affect donation frequency and amounts and also
discusses methods charities can use to get the most value out of each donor. This piece is
a key source for our research because it highlights the practice of relationship marketing
and its focus on maintaining long-term relationships in order to sustain reliable donor
bases.
Erickson, S., and McGlaughlin, M., 2002. Customer Relationship
Management. Information Systems and Control Foundation, White Paper.
This paper provides basic information regarding customer relationship management
systems. It states that CRM systems are information systems that help companies
improve customer focus by effectively using customer information/knowledge to help
make repeat purchases. According to the article, there are increasing number of
companies implementing and spending money on such information systems. This
article’s relevance to our topic is quite significant as it provides an in depth look into
26
CRM systems including a brief overview of the aspects of organization, its
implementation issues with specific examples, and the author’s opinion based on the
results.
Evans, G., 2002. Measuring and Managing Customer Value. Emerald Insights
Research Paper, 51 (3): 134-139.
Evans explores the aspects of organizational attributes and techniques of successfully
measuring and managing customer value as an important factor for realizing customer
retention and loyalty. The author also explores on the benefits of customer value through
quality service delivery by carrying out empirical study on various international
organizations. With Tesco being our case study and an international organizational
organization, this text is important in understanding the scope of our research topic.
Godson, M., 2009. Relationship marketing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
This article questions and investigates why investments in Customer Relationship
Management should be made. The article begins by stating that RM system suffers
because it is poorly understood, improperly applied and incorrectly measured and
managed. The author explains that in order for a RM program to be successful, it must be
feasible and requires a wider understanding of its structural and behavioral limits to
performance. The author also explains that RM schemes are needed to drive a portfolio of
CRM processes that includes customer retention and loyalty, stakeholder satisfaction, and
employee performance. This article is significant to our topic as it answers questions
most businesses have about RM issues and sheds light on RM.
Gummesson, E., 2008. Total relationship marketing. Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann.
27
Gummesson brings out a clear understanding of relationship marketing through empirical
research. It critically analyses the CRM impacts in organizations and therefore becomes
important in our study.
Halabi, A., Kazi, A., Dang, V., and Samy, M., 2006. Corporate Social Responsibility. Monash
Business Review, l2 (3): 22-25.
Halabi, Kazi, Dang, and Sam puts more emphasis on the importance of CSR among
organizations and the benefits that come with utilization of corporate social
responsibilities to help stakeholders and the general society. These aspects are key issues
in ensuring organizational success and improved public relations.
Herington, C., Johnson, L., and Scott, D., 2006. Internal relationships. European Business
Review, 18 (5): 364-381.
Herington, Johnson and Scott as marketing professionals are useful in understanding the
concepts of internal relationships. The authors are critical in analysing the importance of
RM and CRM in ensuring the success of any given organization.
Jawahar, I., and McLaughlin, C., 2001. Towards a descriptive stakeholder theory: An
organization life cycle approach. Academy of Management Review, 26(3): 397-414.
Jawahar and McLaughlin argue on the line stakeholder theories. The use of these theories
posited by Jawahar and McLaughlin are useful in understanding relationship marketing.
Johnson, G., and Scholes, K., 2002. Exploring corporate strategy. Texts and cases. Pearson
Education, Harlow.
Johnson and Scholes are critical in exploring corporate strategies aimed at ensuring
successful relationship between organizations and the general society. It is for this reason
that this text became so crucial for this study in corporate social responsibility.
28
Kale, P., Dyer, J., and Singh, H., 2002. Alliance Capability, Stock Market Response, and LongTerm Alliance Success: The Role of the Alliance Function. Strategic Management
Journal, 23: 747-767.
Rawlins, L. B., 2006. Prioritizing Stakeholders for Public Relations. Institute for Public
Relations. Retrieved January 11, 2014 from http://www.instituteforpr.org/wpcontent/uploads/2006_Stakeholders_1.pdf
Relations. Retrieved January 11, 2014 from http://www.instituteforpr.org/wpcontent/uploads/2006_Stakeholders_1.pdf
Marketing professors Rawlings discuss the lack of research available for understanding
why people help. The authors incorporate research from marketing, economics,
sociology, and social psychology to advance this theoretical understanding. In addition,
they propose specific promotional strategies which charitable organizations can research
and employ to obtain help. This article relates the findings of many studies concerning
how certain psychological and environmental factors affect donation frequency and
amounts and also discusses methods charities can use to get the most value out of each
donor. This piece is a key source for our research because it highlights the practice of
relationship marketing and its focus on maintaining long-term relationships in order to
sustain reliable donor bases.
Scott, M., and Dunn, M., 2002. Building the Brand Driven Business. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass
Thomas, J.S., 2001. A Methodology for Linking Customer Acquisition to Customer Retention.
Journal of Marketing Research, 38: 262-268.
29
Tusco plc. 2012. Listening to and working with our stakeholders. Available from;
http://www.tescoplc.com/index.asp?pageid=86
Uncles, M., Dowling, G. and Hammond, K., 2003. Customer loyalty and customer loyalty
programmes. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 20, (4
Vasconcelos, A., 2008. Broadening even more the internal marketing concept. European
Journal of Marketing, 42 (11/12): 1246-1264.