the cornerstones of relationship marketing.^25 Placing the customer at
the centre of the Six Markets model focuses on the purpose of rela-
tionship marketing, the creation of customer value, satisfaction and
loyalty, leading to improved profitability in the longer term. A brief
examination of each market domain or ‘market’ follows. The theo-
retical basis for the inclusion of each domain is presented using
established bodies of literature, together with a selection of empirical
and descriptive examples to show how relationships with parties in
each can contribute to or, if badly managed, impede overall market-
place performance and competitiveness.
Customer markets
The work of management consultants Bain & Co, directly linking
customer retention to profitability in a number of mainly service sit-
uations, has done much to promote the benefits of customer reten-
tion through relationship building to the business community as a
whole.26, 27A study of marketing in key British enterprises, com-
missioned by the Chartered Institute of Marketing in 1994, confirms
that in the views of experienced practitioners ‘relationship building
is rapidly becoming the most powerful weapon in the professional
marketer’s armoury’, and that ‘this relationship building and main-
tenance is taking place at each level of the organisation’.^28 The issues
of customer retention and relationship building will be explored in
greater detail in Chapter 2 of this book.
Whether a customer is the end user of a product or service does
of course depend on the position a supplier occupies in a particular
value delivery sequence. Many organizations market both to trade
customers (intermediaries, distributors or retailers) and consumers
(end purchasers, users and consumers), but their relative power
within the value system is likely to determine which relationships
are cultivated most assiduously. For the manufacturers of consumer
goods, the rising power of retailers has focused their attention on
these relationships. Meanwhile retailers and distributors are
pouring considerable effort into managing direct relationships with
increasingly fickle consumers.
A point which must not be overlooked, however, is that relation-
ship marketing is not a universal panacea. There are situations,
often involving low-involvement or commodity products, when a
swift and simple transaction approach is most appropriate and most
6 Relationship Marketing