Ohmae has long argued that for those organizations which find
themselves in a global marketplace, such strategic alliances are not
an option – but a necessity.^41 Fewer and fewer markets are immune
to the effects of global competition, so while it might once have been
possible to believe that most businesses would be unaffected by
such things, it would be unwise to do so today. Moreover, if the
prophecies relating to the network or virtual corporation are more
widely realized, these relationships will certainly demand greater
consideration than they have so far been afforded by the Six
Markets model.
In the years since the first Six Markets model was published, the
ideas of some other eminent academics have moved in a similar
direction to Christopher, Payne and Ballantyne, adding weight to
the ascertainment that relationship marketing involves relation-
ships with many other parties beyond the organization and its cus-
tomers. Taking the work in chronological order of publication we
will examine some of these more recent conceptualizations, which,
when added to our own empirical observations, illuminate further
this multiple stakeholder perspective of relationship marketing.
In 1992, Kotler put forward his ‘Total Marketing’ framework
as ‘a structural view of marketing performance and success’,
where the traditional marketing mix is not replaced, but is ‘reposi-
tioned as the toolbox for understanding and responding to all the
significant players in the company’s environment’.^14 For the pur-
poses of this discussion, ‘Total Marketing’ is taken to be relationship
marketing in all but name. In the executive briefing document
under that title, Kotler draws heavily on the literature of the Nordic
School and IMP Group as he crisply and concisely outlines many of
the same fundamental concepts identified by other writers as the
foundations of relationship marketing, as his opening paragraph
illustrates:
The consensus in American business is growing: if U.S. companies are
to compete successfully in domestic and global markets, they must
engineer stronger bonds with their stakeholders, including cus-
tomers, distributors, suppliers, employees, unions, governments, and
other critical players in their environment. Common practices such as
whipsawing suppliers for better prices, dictating terms to distributors,
and treating employees as a cost rather than an asset, must end.
Companies must move from a short-term transaction-orientated goal
to a long-term relationship-building goal.12 Relationship Marketing