MARKETING COMMUNICATION - Essay Example

The process of creating, maintaining and enhancing strong, value –laden relationship with customers and stakeholder’s {Kolter et al 1999, p11}.The development of on-going (and, if possible, constantly deepening and improving) relationship, as opposed to one –off transaction. A key principle is to extend the duration, or lifetime, of a customer’s purchasing relationship with the firm, and therefore to maximise their ‘‘life time value” that is, the future flow of net profit arising from the relationship.

Transactions are single exchanges between an organisation and customer: a single market exchange in the form of a purchase {goods exchange of information or influence (such as an offer and a response). The focus of transaction marketing(TM) is to look to each transaction or encounter as an opportunity to maximise short term gain, without necessarily considering future contacts, or the effect of this transaction on the potential for future contacts. At its worst, transactional marketing can be seen as manipulative or exploitative approach (Egan, 2004).

it has been recognized that: transaction marketing is inadequate to cope with today’s business environment. A focus on single transaction fails to leverage the potential inherent in the customer base, and other relationship, to add value for the organisation and for the customer. E.g., it fails to gather on-going customer feedback which could be used to refine marketing strategy Relationship marketing intentionally aims to retain customers (keep them purchasing repeatedly over time) and foster customer loyalty (create a favorable attitude or bias which drives repeat purchase).

Research by Fredrick Reichheld, a management consultant at Brain & co, found that a high correlation between customer retention and company profitability: retained customers are more profitable than new customer for several reasons. Is an interactive approach which builds a database of all communications and