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reporters, data crunchers, or facilitators of focus groups on a company s latest ad
campaigns. Instead, they would be strategic specialists with a mandate to develop and
communicate throughout the company an empathetic understanding of target consumers.
The researcher would serve as kingpin of the entire relationship- marketing function,
ensuring that the consumer was represented accurately and responsibly in the company s
value creation and delivery processes.
In the 1980s, advertising-agency account planners and qualitative research consultants
performed the task of consumer specialists. Clients didn t have time for such basic
research, what with all the scanner data there were to process and all the new-product
concepts there were to screen. With downsizing, cutbacks, and identity crises within the
discipline, there was no one left inside the company to assume these responsibilities
anyway. But is this a function we want farmed out? If ever there was a capacity that
must be served within the organization, this is it. This is where the consumer
intermediary function is performed. This is, in effect, the foundation of the entire
marketing discipline.
Marketers serve as the boundary between the consumer and the company. And in that
capacity, they are both representatives of the company and advocates for the customer s
point of view. Both roles are critical; and yet in recent years, the balance has become
selfishly skewed. Relationship marketing as it is currently practiced has not brought us
closer to our customers. Instead, it has sent us further afield. Our misguided actions have
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sparked a consumer backlash that endangers the reputation of relationship marketing,
calling into question the viability of the entire marketing discipline going forward.
Relationship marketing can work if it delivers on the principles on which it was
founded. It s startling how wrong we ve been about what it takes to cultivate intimate
relationships with customers. And it is alarming how quickly and thoughtlessly
relationships can be destroyed through the muddled actions we often engage in. We ve
taken advantage of the words for long enough. It s time to think about and act on
what being a partner in a relationship really means.
Exploring Further
Articles
"Is Your Company Ready for One-to-One Marketing?" by Don Peppers, Martha
Rogers, and Bob Dorf (Harvard Business Review, January-February 1999, Product
no. 99107)
This article is ideal for managers who have decided to give relationship marketing
another and better try. The authors agree with Fournier et al. that the theory behind
relationship (or "one-to-one") marketing is simple, but the implementation complex. Too
many companies, they say, have jumped on the relationship-marketing bandwagon
without the right preparation, mistakenly understanding it as an excuse to badger
customers with telemarketing and direct-mail campaigns.
In this tool kit, the authors reveal how to establish the proper relationship with
customers. They describe four steps: 1) identifying your customers, 2) differentiating
among them, 3) interacting with them, and 4) customizing your offerings to meet
consumers needs. The tool kit also contains activities and exercises that you can
administer to employees and customers and that will assess your firm s readiness to
launch a relationship- marketing initiative. Finally, you ll learn how to determine what
kind of program your company can implement now, how to position your firm for a
large-scale program, and how to establish priorities.
"Smart Customers, Dumb Companies" by Christopher Locke (Harvard Business
Review, November-December 2000, Product no. R00610)
In this review of Steven M. Cristol and Peter Sealey s book Simplicity Marketing:
Relieving Customer Stress in the Digital Age (2000, The Free Press), Locke takes
another look at the supposed pitfalls of relationship marketing. In particular, he
questions the book s image of customers being bombarded with an overwhelming array
of choices.
Locke doesn t share Cristol and Sealey s or Fournier, Dobscha, and Mick s view
that companies should consolidate product and service functions and limit new brands
and product extensions. That s an outmoded, dictatorial view of markets. Far from being
stymied by choices, Locke believes, customers are rapidly becoming smarter than the
companies that pretend to serve them. In this networked economy, people are talking
among themselves not with marketers. That changes everything. In Locke s view,
we ll see a growing number of well-defined micromarkets emerge: groups of
customers converging in real time around entertaining and informative voices, such as
National Public Radio s Car Talk and the Motley Fool investment site. Indeed, Web
sites will replace traditional advertising because they ll provide credible user-supplied
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news about products and services.
Simplicity may sound like a good idea but it s the open exchange of information
that s really going to solve the so-called problem of choice.
Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Review. Copyright © 2001 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights
reserved. This document may not be photocopied. This document has been reformatted to accommodate electronic format restrictions.
Notes and Articles
Richard Bierck. "Are You Reaching Your Customers?" Harvard Management
Communication Letter, December 2000.
To retain customers, you need to understand what makes them tick. What better
way to do that than by studying actual consumer behavior? Paco Underhill is a
market-research consultant whose firm studies the actions of retail shoppers, and
Gerald Zaltman is a Harvard Business School marketing professor who studies the
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