Relationship Marketing Strategy and implementation

424 Relationship Marketing

The management of marketing has become a much more general

function for the total business, led by the expertise of marketing but

on a team-wide basis.

The types of skills and breadth of knowledge required to make a
success of this philosophy are quite different from those possessed
by the more narrow functional manager of the past. There will be a
continuing need for management development in such areas as
process understanding and team working/leadership skills, for
example. The McKinsey ‘Seven-S’ model, as shown in Table 6.1 pro-
vides a helpful framework to show the many dimensions of organi-
zational change that will be involved in moving to a process-oriented
relationship marketing strategy.
It will be apparent that the changes that are implicit in the transi-
tion to Relationship Marketing management are profound. There
are many obstacles to this transition, not the least being entrenched
interests in preserving the status quo.

Making it happen

No marketing strategy, be it based upon the traditional model or the
new relationship-oriented philosophy, can succeed without the
appropriate internal culture and organizational structure. These

Managing

suppliers

Innovative

products / brands Consumer franchise

development

Managing

customers

Managing

the supply chain

Competitiveadvantage

Strategic

marketing

planning

Customer

relationships

Customer

retention

Long-term

profitability

Implications for organization, culture and ways of working

Managing cross-functional processes is becoming a critical source of competitive advantage

Supply chain processes aligned with customers’ and suppliers’ processes

Figure 6.8 Process orientation.