Financial Times.^2 In more measured tones, he made it plain that his deci-
sions would be guided by research and financial discipline.
In its formative years the company had successfully relied on Mrs
Ashley’s instinctive grasp of her customers’ preferences and requirements
to guide the business. Even after her death, it had never felt the need for,
or indulged in, regular market research. The names and addresses of
165 ,000 customers were held on a database of Laura Ashley store card
holders, but beyond that very little was known about the customer base. In
an effort to improve the situation, questionnaires were sent to 45,000 Laura
Ashley customers in the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands and North
America during 1991. Laura Ashley customers were, it transpired, pre-
dominantly female and aged between 18 and 50. They were affluent, well
educated and many were working mothers. They looked for quality,
service and value, and for things that would last. On average they visited
a Laura Ashley store 11 times per year, but purchased on only two of these
occasions. In the UK, their interests were likely to include theatre going,
fine art, gourmet cooking and the National Trust.* Further research
showed that the profile was remarkably similar in all 28 countries in which
the company operated. When questioned about the brand, customers
responded very positively. They identified with the Laura Ashley image,
and its perceived brand values, though many of them felt that the clothes
were ‘not relevant to their lifestyles’.^3
Maxmin’s belief in the future of the Laura Ashley brand was unshakable.
In accepting the post he had declared his intention to reposition the brand
worldwide. In his opinion Laura Ashley was not, and would never be, a
competitively priced mass-market brand. ‘This company is only going to
appeal to between 3 and 5 per cent of the world’s population and we have
got to serve them.’^4 He went on to state: ‘I want Laura Ashley to be one of
the UK’s top international brands; a place where people want to work. And
I want it to be successful because of high quality products and good
culture, not financial engineering.’^5 Maxmin was convinced that the way
forward for Laura Ashley was to build much stronger relationships with its
customers through what he described as ‘a word-of-mouth repeat-pur-
chase kind of marketing’.^6 These sentiments were embodied in the
company’s new mission statement,^7 which read:
Our Mission is to establish an enduring relationship with those who share a
love of the special lifestyle that is Laura Ashley. We will act so as to protect
the integrity of that relationship and to ensure its long term prosperity.Former acting CEO, Mike Smith, resigned a week after Maxmin formally
Creating and implementing relationship marketing strategies 441
*The National Trust is a charitable organization concerned with the preservation of
Britain’s heritage.