became very interested in this particular company. There was
favourable commentary in stockbrokers’ circulars and in the finan-
cial and business press. As a result, share prices improved by over
20 per cent and it is considered that this was a direct result of the
marketing activity aimed at these financial markets. The company
subsequently acquired a number of companies. Although some crit-
icism was made of certain of the acquisitions, in terms of them
paying too high a premium for some of the companies that were
acquired, they were purchased mainly through share placement.
Because of the increased share price the total cost to the company
was considerably less than it might have been. In effect, through
management of their financial influence markets, the company
ended up successfully acquiring these companies at a reasonable
price.
The financial and investor influence market, because of its overall
importance, is one where academic attention is now being directed
in applying some of the principles and approaches of relationship
marketing that have been used to address the customer market
domain. Tuominen^16 has focused on several key markets within this
market, including investors, stockbrokers, financial advisers and
analysts. She has characterized this as investor relationship market-
ing and defines it as ‘the continuous, planned, purposeful, and sus-
tained management activity which identifies, establishes, maintains
and enhances mutually beneficial long term relationships between
the companies and their current and potential investors, and the
investment experts serving them’. Tuominen uses the relationship
marketing ladder of customer loyalty (discussed in Chapter 2) to
develop a ladder of investor loyalty which illustrates five levels of
investor relationships, including advocacy investors, supporting
investors, regular investors, new investors and potential investors.
She then uses an interactive approach to examine the short-term
investor episodes which form the basis of the long-term investor
relations which lead to the creation of relational bonds.
A key issue of importance within the financial and investor influ-
ence market is the loyalty of investors. The importance of this group
has been highlighted in recent work by Reichheld^17 which shows
that investor churn in the average public company in the United
States is more than 50 per cent per annum. He concludes that man-
agers find it nearly impossible to pursue long-term value-creating
strategies without the support of loyal, knowledgeable investors.
He further points out that many of the world’s leading companies,
240 Relationship Marketing