274 The Marketing Book
a unique address via fibre-optic cable (Channel
4, 1990).
In practice, the most usual interpretation
and operationalizing of CRM is essentially this
sort of data mining, which is used to identify
and classify customer segments for differential
targeting. It is unfortunate that many com-
panies see a software package as all that is
required. If the management of this resulting
knowledge is not integrated and shared across
relevant organizational functions, there is little
chance of there being sustainable relational
marketing. Knowledge management as it is
often termed at present is outside the scope of
this chapter, but is a framework for moving
data-driven marketing to a more strategic
plane.
In conceptual terms, relationship market-
ing is concerned with all activities directed
towards attracting, developing and retaining
customer relationships. Gronroos (1994, 1996)
indicates that there are a number of strategies
open to marketers, along what he calls the
‘marketing strategy continuum’. At its extreme,
transactional exchange involves single, short-
term exchange events encompassing a distinct
beginning and ending. Consumer goods firms
with mass markets and little contact with their
ultimate customers are most likely to place
themselves at this end of the continuum. On the
other hand, relationalexchange involves trans-
actions linked together over an extended time
frame.
Rather than treating individual customers
according to some rather mechanistic data
mining, real relationship marketing should be
characterized by more affective factors such as
trust, commitment, mutual benefit, adaptation,
respect, and regard for privacy (O’Malleyet al.,
1999). Organizations might want the sort of
relationship with customers that results in a
continued stream of money from customer to
company, but do all customers really see their
interaction with companies as a relationship?
Indeed, it is probably more complex in
practice because it is not merely a case of
whether an individual wants a relationship
with a company, but whether the company
wants a relationship with that individual (some
customers being deselected because they do not
contribute sufficiently to profitability). Fur-
thermore, the type of relationship needs to be
determined; after all, we all have unique
relationships with everyone we know and
meet, so the conceptual ideal of relationship
marketing might lack pragmatism (see Chap-
ters 3 and 19).Relational segmentation
One framework that might provide a basis for
segmenting along relational lines concerns ‘loy-
alty’. This is more than regular purchasing, as
Dick and Basu (1994) in their conceptualizing of
the loyalty phenomenon suggest. ‘Relative atti-
tudes’ are also important. That is, loyalty
depends not only on positive attitudes toward
the store or brand, but on differentiated atti-
tudes toward the alternatives (Figure 10.7). In
other words, if a consumer is positive toward
store A, and not very positive towards B and C,
then the consumer might indeed develop loy-
alty toward A. On the other hand, if there are
fairly similar positive attitudes toward A, B and
C, then there is unlikely to be real loyalty. In
this case, the consumer might patronize a
particular store regularly, but due to factors
such as convenience and familiarity.
This analysis is useful because it is an
explanation of why apparent loyalty (at least
regular patronage) might not be true loyalty.
Conversely, it contributes to our understanding
of why some consumers exhibit aspects of real
loyalty without holding particularly strong
positive attitudes toward that store. In this
latter case, the argument would be that a
positive but weak attitude toward A might be
accentuated by even weaker positive attitudes
towards B and C.
Dick and Basu (1994) describe a situation
in which relative attitude is low (little to choose
between the alternatives) but which is also
characterized by high store patronage, and they
describe this as ‘spurious loyalty’. Where,