Virgin Group have shown. While well-managed relationships with
other influencers might not be so overtly beneficial, they can be
used to influence public opinion and legislators in the organiza-
tion’s favour. They can also mitigate the effects of potentially disas-
trous operational mishaps. There can, however, be few better
illustrations of the consequences of mishandling these relationships
than the example of Fisons Plc, a financially oriented, British-based
pharmaceutical company, with horticultural and other scientific
interests. The company’s cavalier attitude towards key influence
groups resulted, in the UK, in consumer and retailer boycotts of its
horticultural products. Meanwhile, in North America, a public row
with the US regulators left its most important pharmaceutical prod-
ucts locked out of its largest and most lucrative markets, leading
eventually to the company’s near collapse (see Case 4.2).
Supplier markets
Relationships with suppliers have been the focus of a great deal of
interest in articles on relationship marketing in recent years, as the
point where the marketing and network literature most clearly
merge.38, 39During the 1980s, changes began to occur in purchasing
behaviour of some large manufacturing companies – noticeably
those threatened most seriously by Far Eastern competitors. The tra-
ditional adversarial approach to procurement that played multiple
suppliers off against each other began to take on a more cooperative
nature. This followed the gradual realization that, when suppliers
were squeezed to the point of collapse, they were unwilling and
unable to invest in the new plant and technologies required to allow
them to deliver better products and services, faster and more
cheaply. Instead these manufacturers were choosing to build less
exploitative relationships with fewer suppliers. In doing so they are
creating integrated and relatively stable supply chains, which allow
quality and flexibility to be engineered into the systems while costs
are reduced. Often this will involve shared infrastructural invest-
ments and the merging of some business systems. The result is
improved competitiveness through the creation and delivery of a
better value proposition for the end customer. Nowhere is this more
obvious than in the motor industry, where collaborative Japanese
management practices have been widely adopted. An early example
in the UK was the Rover Group, a dismally unprofitable car manu-
10 Relationship Marketing