Does online relationship marketing enhance customer retention and cross-buying?

One characteristic of online consumer behavior is the low cost of searching for alternatives. Therefore, customer loyalty is more difficult to achieve in the online context than in the offline one. Although studies have discussed the effectiveness of relationship marketing, nearly all studies examining such constructs have been in the context of ‘offline’ consumer behavior. With regard to the ‘online’ context, the integration of Internet technology with the customer loyalty concept is rarely discussed in the relationship marketing literature. Furthermore, empirical research that integrates the actual purchase behavior of customer retention and cross-buying is relatively sparse. In response to this, the current study develops and empirically tests a model that examines the relations among relationship-bonding tactics, perceived relationship investment, perceived relationship quality, customer loyalty, customer retention, and cross-buying. Using survey data from 766 online customers of a securities corporation, the results demonstrate the effectiveness of relationship marketing as it positively influences online customers' perception, then their loyalty, and ultimately, their actual purchase behavior.     

Analysis of commercial rumors from the perspective of marketing managers: Rumor prevalence,effects, and control tactics

This study examines commercial rumors from the perspective of marketing managers. American and French respondents (N = 133) completed a rumor questionnaire intended to assess the prevalence and types of commercial rumors that reach their ear, the severity of rumor effects, the effectiveness of rumor control tactics, and the psychological and situational variables associated with rumor onset and spread. Based on a variation of the critical incidents technique involving recalled commercial rumors, the results conform to rumor theory in terms of the psychological and situational factors (i.e. anxiety, importance, credulity, and uncertainty) underlying rumor transmission, and offer support for our proposed rumor model. The findings also highlight the prevalence and potentially negative impact of rumors in marketing sectors. As an initial attempt to discern cross-cultural differences in commercial rumor activity, preliminary findings suggest differences in effectiveness of marketing communication tactics for rumor control across the two country samples studied. Overall, the provision of requested information and attempts to increase trust emerged as the most effective rumor control tactics.     

Why customers won't relate: Obstacles to relationship marketing engagement

Due to the challenges associated with reaching consumers using traditional marketing approaches, firms increasingly rely on relational marketing tactics to increase customer patronage with the firm. Yet, consumers often actively avoid relational devices. Thus, firms have a heightened interest in factors that affect customer engagement in relationship marketing efforts. This research provides an empirical test of a model based on equity theory and previous findings regarding psychological engagement. The model predicts whether customers are willing to engage in different relational tactics offered by firms, measured by a formative, actionable Relationship Program Receptiveness (RPR) Index. The results indicate customer perceptions of the inconvenience and anticipated benefits, two factors controlled by the firm, affect RPR. In addition, customer factors, including general privacy concerns, involvement and shopping frequency, affect RPR. Managerially, the results suggest specific actions firms can take to increase the likelihood that consumers engage in relational marketing efforts.     

The role of ethics in gathering corporate intelligence

This paper analyzes business people's attitudes towards the tactics used for gathering competitive corporate intelligence both within their own and their competitors' corporations. Business people in large corporations are highly motivated to gather such intelligence. Their attitudes towards the ethicality of specific practices, however, are influenced by the corporate culture, their perceived effectiveness of the techniques, and their perception of the competitors' tactics. Interestingly enough, the most popular technique for securing information is socializing with competitors in nonbusiness settings. Business people generally view their competitors negatively, believing that they go to much further lengths than does their own corporation in gathering competitive intelligence. William Cohen is Professor and Chairman of the Marketing Department at California State University, Los Angeles. He has won the Outstanding Professor Award 1982–83 and Freedom Foundation of Valley Forge Medal for Excellence in Economic Education 1985. He is the author of some 15 books in marketing and business of which the most recent is Developing a Winning Marketing Plan.Helena Czepiec is Associate Professor at California State University, Hayward. She is the author of several articles which appeared in various journals on marketing and advertising.     

Organizational buying effectiveness in supply chain environment: A conceptual framework

The idea of effectiveness measurement in supply chain context stresses the importance of value development process for the forthcoming member of the chain. The main purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual model of organizational buying effectiveness in the supply chain context, emphasizing the importance of marketing orientation in the purchasing process. Literature has revealed that there are many focal interaction points between relationship marketing, supply chain management, and organizational buying. The effectiveness framework was developed regarding the value perception, organizational buying involvement, and decentralization of decision making     

Understanding Interactive Online Advertising: Congruence and Product Involvement in Highly and Lowly Arousing,Skippable Video Ads

Interactive online media are an increasingly preferred format for users and advertisers, and skippable online video advertisements are common on social media networks such as YouTube. The specific features and influences of this interactive marketing tool demand further consideration. Focusing on effective tactics, this article investigates the influence of introducing high-arousal and low-arousal stimuli on skippable ad effectiveness (i.e., ad acceptance, ad attitude, brand attitude, and ad intrusiveness), with the potential moderation of context congruency and product involvement. A pretest and three studies confirm that high-arousal ads are watched for longer time and are more effective in congruent contexts. Users' product involvement determines the intrusiveness of high- and low-arousal skippable ads. These findings, along with their practical implications for this novel setting, provide further directions for research too.     

Impact of Traditional Chinese Culture on Business-to-Business Relationship Marketing and Service Firm Performance

ABSTRACT

Purpose: This work addresses the mixed findings in relationship marketing studies regarding the importance of traditional culture-level (i.e., interpersonal) relationships on service firm outcomes.

Methodology/approach: This article leverages customer relationship marketing (CRM) theory to advance a framework for understanding the causal relationship between the Chinese cultural worldview and relationship marketing in order to better predict firm performance.

Findings: The author suggests that five major Chinese cultural characteristics—iren-qing, wa-pao, mianzi, chaxu-geju, and collectivism—can qualify the business-to-business (B-to-B) relationship building process and impact the effectiveness of interpersonal and/or group relationships on service firm outcomes.

Research implications: The study’s framework suggests that Chinese cultural characteristics, universal concepts manifest in the activities of Chinese society and organizations, have a positive effect on customer relationship marketing. Chinese culture characteristics can be used to generate excellent relationships with customers and thus create a consumer preference for certain companies and drive service marketing repurchase.

Originality/value/contribution: This study’s theoretical framework (a) distinguishes between Chinese cultural characteristic and relationship marketing relationships; (b) suggests that Chinese cultural characteristics and customer relationship marketing have a positive and substantial effect on service firm performance and that Chinese cultural characteristics are related to customer relationship marketing in their effect on service firm performance; and (c) provides managerially relevant guidelines for strategic sales planning.     

绿色消费驱动下的绿色营销策略及其启示

绿色消费是绿色营销产生和发展的时代基础和思想基础,绿色营销能有效引导和促进绿色消费。文章基于绿色消费和绿色营销的互动发展机制,从消费者感知效力、利他主义、自由主义和环境保护意识四个细分变量分析了绿色消费行为,揭示了其间隐含的营销策略启示。     

An Empirical Test for Mediation Effect of Educational Institute's Image on Relationship between Marketing Elements and Parents' Loyalty: Evidence from India

The article presents the results of a study that assesses effects of selected marketing tactics on parents' loyalty towards the educational institutions. The results of Multiple Regression Analysis show that the price mix was the most significant factor having impact on parents' loyalty followed by people mix, place mix, product mix, and promotion mix. Furthermore, educational institution image mediates completely (full mediation) the relationship between selected marketing tactics (product mix, people mix, place mix, promotion mix) and parents' loyalty. Whereas, educational institution image mediates partially (partial mediation) the relationship between price mix and parents' loyalty. The sample comprised 687 respondents.     

Relationship marketing's strategic array

Relationship marketing should be planned and implemented within an array of other strategies that relate with and enhance one another. Supporting strategies are those necessary for achieving a relationship's full effectiveness. Augmented strategies are those whose effectiveness might be enhanced by relationship marketing if marketing planning and strategic planning are integrated. Consideration of relationship marketing's use as a strategy deserves attention from management because it may require significant resources, often leads to interfunctional activities, and augments certain overall market strategies.     

我国商业银行市场营销中存在的问题与对策分析

本文认为,市场营销在我国商业银行中刚刚起步,由于垄断式经营的惯性作用,形成了一种非理性的无序行为,有许多活动甚至脱离了市场营销的基本理念。这主要源于理论研究缺乏系统性,营销组织体系不健全,缺少专业营销人才及相应的营销策略与手段。我国商业银行要在日益激烈的市场竞争中立于不败之地,必须树立正确的市场营销观念,理解现代市场营销的内涵,培养造就一支高素质的营销队伍,制定竞争性营销策略,建立高效的营销服务体系,借鉴国外先进的营销模式,创造性地开展营销,对产品和服务进行全过程的市场营销,全面提升中国金融品牌的市场竞争能力。     

Consumers' response to promotional gifts: The role of gender,transactional value,and reciprocity

Gifts received with the purchase of a focal product are widely used as a tool aimed at incentivizing sales. Yet, marketers still face many questions related to the effectiveness of this promotional technique. In this paper, we examine whether customer's gender—a variable that is managerially relevant and often collected for targeting and positioning purposes—influences the success of gift promotions. Using novel data from a car rental company, we show that promotional gifts have a stronger positive impact on subsequent purchase behaviors for women (vs. men). Two follow‐up experiments demonstrate that this gender effect is driven by the fact that women obtain greater transactional value from the promotional purchase than men do, leading to enhanced reciprocity motivation among women. Taken together, these findings first argue for a more targeted use of promotions involving gifts and second, raise questions about whether we should carefully consider potential gender differences in predicting the effects of many common marketing tactics that are presently discussed as if universal.     

Business-to-Business Negotiations: The Role of Relativism,Deceit, and Opportunism

Purpose: Studies examining the impact of relativism and deceitful tendencies on unethical negotiation tactics have yielded inconsistent results; some studies report a positive relationship, some negative, while some others report a nonexistent relationship between these constructs. These inconsistencies suggest that there may be intervening variables mediating the effects of these factors on unethical negotiation tactics. We propose that opportunism plays an important role in determining the effects of these two antecedents on business managers' perceptions of unethical negotiation tactics.

Method: An Internet-based survey was administered to a sample of managers at U.S. firms engaged in business-to-business marketing. Structural equation modeling techniques were used to evaluate the mediating role of opportunism between deceitful tendencies and relativism on questionable negotiation tactics.

Findings: The analysis supports the hypothesized role of opportunism as a mediating variable. Opportunism was found to play a significant role in mediating the relationships of both relativism and deceitful tendencies on attitudes toward unethical negotiation tactics.

Contribution: In addition to the theoretical contributions suggested here, this article includes suggestions for minimizing the likelihood that a negotiation partner's relativism and deceitful tendencies will negatively impact business negotiation.     

Ads That Attack the Tobacco Industry: A Review and Recommendations

ABSTRACT

While traditional anti-tobacco social marketing campaigns have focused on prevention and cessation, a new breed of anti-tobacco message has arisen during the last decade, which focuses on attacking the tobacco industry and its tactics. This type of anti-tobacco program has been termed a tobacco industry manipulation campaign in the United States, where it was introduced in the early 1990s. The objective of a tobacco industry manipulation campaign is to point out negative traits of the tobacco industry, including manipulative marketing strategies and tactics. Evaluations of tobacco industry manipulation campaigns have found that these ads are effective in redirecting the guilt that smokers often feel, channeling it instead into anger at being manipulated. Guidelines are provided for how social marketers can incorporate this approach within their tobacco control campaigns.     

Improving relationships between sales and marketing: the relative effectiveness of cross-functional coordination mechanisms

ABSTRACT

The importance of effective sales and marketing working relationships is well known and this article examines the effectiveness of various coordination mechanisms used to improve this cross-functional relationship. Six coordination mechanisms are measured to identify their effect on sales and marketing conflict and collaboration, which in turn influence business performance. The results reveal that not all coordination mechanisms are equally effective. Structuring sales and marketing as a single unit and creating cross-functional project teams improve the interface, as do providing opportunities for job rotation and establishing cross-functional meetings. However, employing cross-functional training and co-locating sales and marketing do not influence this working relationship. Finally, reducing conflict and increasing collaboration between sales and marketing is shown to independently, and positively, influence business performance.     

A Framework for Assessing Immorally Manipulative Marketing Tactics

A longstanding debate exists in both academic literature and popular culture about whether non-informative marketing tactics are manipulative. However, given that we tend to believe that some marketing tactics are manipulative and some are not, the question that marketers, their critics, and consumers need to ask themselves is that of how to actually determine whether any particular marketing tactic is manipulative and whether a given manipulative tactic is, in fact, immoral. This article proposes to operationalize criteria that can be used by marketers for making such determinations and attempts to provide some clarification toward our under- standing of the concept of manipulation and the conditions for the moral acceptability of manipulative marketing practices. It argues that a marketing tactic is manipulative if it is intended to motivate by undermining what the marketer believes is his/her audience’s normal decision-making process either by deception or by playing on a vulnerability that the marketer believes exists in his/her audience’s normal decision-making process. Such a tactic is morally objectionable on several grounds, which make it morally impermissible unless outweighed by sufficient “redemptive” moral considerations.     

Green Marketing: Multiplier for Appropriate Technology Transfer?

The effectiveness of "reward and reinforcement" strategy used in marketing activity is compared to a strategy of "mutual coercion mutually agreed upon" as a means for accelerating acceptance of environmentally appropriate production and consumption technologies. The risk and reward consequences of green marketing tactics are traced to identify their implications in pursuing globally sustainable development. Together, reward and reinforcement strategies and coercive regulatory activities are more promising for attaining sustainable development than either one alone.     

Using virtual reality to increase charitable donations

Marketer interest in using virtual reality (VR) as a persuasion tactic continues to rise. Notably, one sector at the forefront of utilizing this tactic for persuasive means is nonprofit marketing. Many charities have devoted considerable resources to creating VR appeals under the assumption that this medium will increase donations over and above present tactics. However, research has not yet examined the persuasive consequences VR may provide over more traditional channels. This research seeks to understand the opportunities and limitations this emerging tactic can offer marketers. Specifically, we examine the donation effectiveness of three real VR charitable appeals by assessing actual donation behaviors, and find that VR appeals increase donations compared to a two-dimensional (2D) format. This work addresses a timely and relevant issue for practitioners and opens doors to future research investigating VR’s applications to marketing.

     

Buyer–seller relationships of the dental devices industry in Taiwan: perspective of relationship

Purpose: While research in marketing and management has addressed characteristics associated with buyer and seller, relatively little research has been reported on the marketing of relationship benefits and relationship bonding tactics, particularly involving their relationships with customers. Given a dyadic perspective, it can be surmised that gaps in buyer and seller perceptions may well dampen relationships, and will inevitably occur, since a perfect match is highly unlikely between two exchange parties. To enhance relationships, major gaps need therefore to be identified and eliminated. Therefore, the purpose of this study is developing matrices of customer relationship benefits and relationship bonding tactics separately from buyer’s and seller’s perspectives, together with the insights of interrelated propositions.

Methodology: This research subjects chosen for this study consist of those distributors of dental devices, procurement in hospitals, and dentists. Using the grounded theory, four stages of coding analysis are conducted.

Findings: The results indicated that buyers and sellers differed in their perceptions in all field interviews due to their different attitudes toward different benefits. While buyers’ perceived benefits were based on the consideration of confidence and trust in the practical use of purchased medical devices, sellers primarily considered specialized issues of provided services and technologies. Based on this, buyer and seller perspectives were distinguished.

Research Implications: As a self-enclosed system, the medical device industry is difficult to enter for new manufacturers. Therefore, from the perspective of product providers, academic support can increase their product visibility, improve their company’s image, and provide more opportunities to contact new clients. From the perspective of medical institutions, the participation of hospitals and clinics in relationship marketing activities and seminars can raise their prestige and provide more opportunities for gaining new information.

Originality/Value/Contribution: Theoretical contribution of this study is in building matrices of customer relationship benefits and relationship bonding tactics separately from buyer’s and seller’s perspectives, together with the insights of six propositions. These insights shall expose the undisclosed systems of the dental devices industry.     

A checklist for managers to enhance influencer partnerships and avoid potential pitfalls

Influencer marketing continues to be popular with marketing managers because of its effectiveness as a marketing tactic for raising brand awareness and ROI. To date, much of the literature on influencer marketing focused on its benefits, but it also bears potential risks: not all influencer marketing experiences are positive. While influencer marketing is still emerging in the digital space, managers should not forgo supplier managerial principles when hiring influencers. This article provides a checklist to help managers navigate this marketing tactic and avoid potential mistakes by encouraging the same due diligence they would with other suppliers. The checklist asks nine questions during the life cycle of an influencer relationship—including selection, performance and contract management, and reputation management—and is corroborated by the marketing literature but should be applied by managers. To demonstrate this, several case studies were examined in which managers should have considered supplier management when engaging with influencers. By employing the checklist amid influencing marketing efforts, managers can avoid the mistakes identified in the case studies.