Question

According to L. Berry, firms try to move buter-seller from lowest to highest level of the continuum of relationship marketing. What are those levels refered to and what are the characteristics of those levels.

Detailed explanation

Answer 1

Relationship Marketing

Business is all about people and their needs. Any organization with an aim of long term survival in the industry focuses on creating processes to connect and reach out to their potential/existing customers to sell their product and services multiple times over a period of time.

Relationship Marketing helps organizations to sell more units by creating loyal customer base in the market using long term customer engagement plan rather than focusing on the individual sale.

Here are the Five Stages of Relationship Marketing with Characteristics

1. Basic Marketing: The first stage is focused on getting the first sale. This is the first time when a customer will engage with the brand by making their first purchase. Here are the key characteristics:

1. Price: The goal is here is quote competitive pricing to draw more attention to the brand and provide good value for money over competitors
2. Brand Awareness: Product/Services promotional strategies are used to spread brand awareness and reach out to the maximum number of potential customers.
3. Goal: The goal here is to get the first sale and capture market share by achieving huge numbers of individual sales

2. Reactive Marketing: Once the first sale is made, the organization usually expects and encourages customers to give valuable feedback. The purpose here is tackle unforeseen competition by reacting and solving issues faced by the customers. Here are the key characteristics:

1. Goal: To identify ever-changing needs of existing and potential customers
2. Data-Driven: It involves analyzing real time data to meet the needs of customers and make required changes in the product and services.
3. Identify Avenues of Promotion: The organization will identify where the customers are and what platforms they are using to promote their product and services on those avenues while listening to customers reviews on the same platforms

3. Accountable Marketing: A strong and effective tool to build relations with customers and yet very few organizations call their customers to take feedback after the first sale. The idea here is to make the customer feel important and keep them close to the chest of the organization. The best tool to create a loyal customer base. Here are the key characteristics:

1. Feedback System: The organization has outlined a feedback process with a team in place to resolve the issue and keep a direct connection with customers.
2. Check on Deliverables: A set of promises is made to the customer at the time of sale. This is to make sure that all promises regarding the product or services are delivered and understands customers’ point of view regarding the utility of product/services.
3. Goal: Listen to customers and make sure internal process are in place to meet customer demands

4. Proactive Marketing: Proactive Marketing is about taking certain steps and measures to plan for future fluctuations in the market and being prepared for external threats that can affect future sales. Here are the key characteristics:

1. Competitive and Creative Approach: A proactive approach will help the organization to gain competitive edge over other companies and force the competitors to rethink their approach.
2. Identify Needs Before Sale: Extensive research before entering a market or promoting and developing products before anyone else is the key to gain traction among customers.
3. Metric Driven: The metrics are identified before these strategies are implemented to measure the success of the campaign

5. Partnership Marketing: It’s about selling tailored products or services in huge numbers to a B2B business partner. It involves multiple discussions to identify the requirements and deliver in huge numbers to create a long-lasting relationship. Here are the key characteristics:

1. Goal: The goal here is to build a long term relations than a sale. For eg: a relationship between a wholesaler and a retailer where goods are supplied throughout the year.
2. Higher Revenue: A set of good B2B relations can help the organization to achieve revenue goals without focusing on individual sales.
3. Future Sales: It becomes easy to forecast sales for next year considering the rapport between the seller and buyer is in place.

d.Referrals: It becomes easy to get referrals from existing clients considering that they have had a good experience doing business with your organization and are willing to promote your brand in front of others.