Relationship marketing: The strategy continuum

Conclusion Few service firms will apply a pure transaction marketing strategy. Even highly standardized service operations include direct contacts with customers, and the customers do perceive the production and delivery process. Hence there are part-time marketers and functional quality effects, so we cannot talk about a pure transaction marketing situation. However, the more standardized the process is, the more dominating is the core service and the technical quality of the outcome of the production and delivery process and the less difficult it is to manage the personnel from a marketing point of view. Firms can position their strategic approach along the strategy continuum, and the more a relationship-type strategy is called for, the more has to be invested in interactive marketing, the functional quality impact, and internal marketing. In such a situation, it is at the same time more important to create information systems where the firm is managing its customer base directly and not relying on market share statistics and ad hoc customer surveys. Christian Gr?nroos, a former visiting professor at Arizona State University and a research fellow at the First Interstate Center for Services Marketing there, is currently a professor of marketing at the Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration in Finland, where he also is head of the marketing department. He has published extensively within the areas of service management and marketing and relationship marketing. He has published seven books and numerous articles in English, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Dutch, Finnish, Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian.     

企业薪酬体系与员工心理契约匹配关系研究

薪酬体系要能达到组织预期的效果,必须和组织员工的心理契约相匹配,在不同的心理契约类型下采用不同的薪酬体系。首先对员工心理契约以及企业薪酬体系进行了分类,将员工心理契约分为交易型、关系型和理念型三种类型,将企业薪酬体系分为机械型、柔性型和平衡型三种;然后探讨了薪酬体系和员工心理契约之间的匹配机制和模式,认为交易型心理契约下适合采用机械型薪酬体系,关系型心理契约适用柔性型薪酬体系,理念型心理契约下则适用柔性型或者平衡型薪酬体系;在此基础上,对企业的薪酬管理实践给出了相应的建议。     

Augmenting the eye of the beholder: exploring the strategic potential of augmented reality to enhance online service experiences

Driven by the proliferation of augmented reality (AR) technologies, many firms are pursuing a strategy of service augmentation to enhance customers’ online service experiences. Drawing on situated cognition theory, the authors show that AR-based service augmentation enhances customer value perceptions by simultaneously providing simulated physical control and environmental embedding. The resulting authentic situated experience, manifested in a feeling of spatial presence, functions as a mediator and also predicts customer decision comfort. Furthermore, the effect of spatial presence on utilitarian value perceptions is greater for customers who are disposed toward verbal rather than visual information processing, and the positive effect on decision comfort is attenuated by customers’ privacy concerns.     

Consumer decision to upgrade or downgrade a service membership

Service memberships are commonly used to support consumer relationships, yet the mechanisms for consumers’ membership decisions are poorly understood. This paper develops a model of consumers’ decision to modify (upgrade or downgrade) a service membership conditional on their decision to renew. Bridging insights from relationship marketing and consumer behavior, the proposed model conceptualizes how relational drivers differentially influence the upgrade/downgrade decision while also modeling the effect of transactional, membership and socio-demographic variables. The posited hypotheses are tested with a multinomial logit model with selection using multi-source (archival and survey) consumer-level data related to renewable service memberships in a not-for-profit context. Results suggest that modification decisions are driven by relational payoffs from ongoing experiences such that upgrade decisions evidence a “motivator” effect of consumer trust (quadratic), while downgrade decisions indicate a negative influence of consumer trust conditional on perceived knowledge. Managerially, the study indicates that, while membership modification and renewal are disparate decisions with remarkably divergent mechanisms, to examine and analyze them as independent decisions is to risk misjudgments about their determinants and waste resources in investments that are unlikely to yield desired return.     

Relational benefits in services industries: The customer’s perspective

This research examines the benefits customers receive as a result of engaging in long-term relational exchanges with service firms. Findings from two studies indicate that consumer relational benefits can be categorized into three distinct benefit types: confidence, social, and special treatment benefits. Confidence benefits are received more and rated as more important than the other relational benefits by consumers, followed by social and special treatment benefits, respectively. Responses segmented by type of service business show a consistent pattern with respect to customer rankings of benefit importance. Management implications for relational strategies and future research implications of the findings are discussed. Kevin P. Gwinner is an assistant professor of marketing in the School of Business at East Carolina University, North Carolina. His primary research interest centers on improving and managing the performance of frontline, customer-contact employees. His research has been published in theInternational Journal of Service Industry Management, International Marketing Review, and theJournal of Marketing Education. Dwayne D. Gremler is an assistant professor of marketing in the College of Business and Economics at the University of Idaho. His current research interests are in services marketing, particularly customer loyalty and retention, relationship marketing, service encounters, and word-of-mouth communication. His work has been published in theInternational Journal of Service Industry Management, theJournal of Professional Services Marketing, andAdvances in Services Marketing and Management. Mary Jo Bitner is a professor of marketing and the research director for the Center for Services Marketing and Management at Arizona State University. Her research focuses on customer evaluations of service, service quality, and service delivery issues. She has published in theJournal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Retailing, and theInternational Journal of Service Industry Management. She is coauthor of the textServices Marketing (McGraw-Hill, 1996).     

贸易公司的客户关系管理策略

面对竞争日趋剧烈的市场环境,贸易公司必须将客户关系管理提升到战略的层面,从客户获取、客户增进与客户维持三个方面加以思考,将“以客户为中心”的理念落实固化到公司的服务流程中,通过制定经营决策、客户服务与信息技术应用三个方面的策略来达成客户关系管理的战略目标。     

关系营销中顾企关系层面研究——兼论服务性企业个人关系对顾客承诺影响机理

作为关系营销的焦点,顾企关系可以出现在组织之间、个人与组织之间,也可以存在于人际之间,这构成了顾企关系的不同层面.明确各个层面关系的形成机理对于决定企业采取何种战略至关重要.文章根据建立关系的真实主体的不同时顾企关系的层面进行了划分.通过对研究架构的概括和对主要研究变量的梳理,总结和评析了顾企关系层面的相关研究.在此基础上提出服务性企业中顾客与企业关键员工的关系对顾客承诺影响机理的模型,以期指导企业利用这种关系更好地维系顾客,并有效降低关键人员离职给企业带来的风险.     

个人网上银行发展中的问题研究

网上银行突破了传统银行在时间和空间上的限制，改变银行同客户交易的接触方式，这种新型服务方式不仅降低了银行的经营成本，而且为客户提标准化、个性化银行服务。但同时由于网上银行的发展还处在初级阶段，还存在着一些问题，成本的下降还有待于客户群体的扩大，这就要求商业银行提前着手培养客户，降低客户的安全疑虑，不断提高现有网上银行客户的忠诚度，通过他们的口碑传播将会达到更好的效果。     

Using a customer-Level marketing strategy to enhance firm performance: A review of theoretical and empirical evidence

It is becoming increasingly apparent from the literature that marketers need to consider customer-level information when they generate a marketing strategy for the firm. In this article, the authors develop a customer-focused framework that uses a marketing strategy with an overall objective of maximized financial performance. This strategy is driven by seven customer-level marketing tactics and shows how actual customer data can be used to generate an actionable marketing strategy leading to optimal levels of profitability, customer equity, and shareholder value. In addition, the authors discuss a successful implementation of this strategy for several business-to-business and business-to-consumer firms and offer insights as to how to customize an implementation strategy for any firm, along with presenting potential challenges a firm may encounter during the implementation process. Several suggestions for future research are offered to explore and harness this newly available evidence. V. Kumar (VK) (vk@business.uconn.edu) is the ING Chair Professor of Marketing and the executive director of the ING Center for Financial Services at the University of Connecticut. He spends his time by transferring his knowledge (however little it may be) to his two daughters about customer lifetime value, diffusion models, forecasting sales and market share, retailing, and marketing strategy. J. Andrew Petersen (apetersen@business.uconn.edu) is a doctoral candidate in marketing at the University of Connecticut. His research interests include customer lifetime value, word-of-mouth effects, and customer-level marketing strategy. His research has been published inMarketing Research Magazine and theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science.     

The effects of customer acquisition and retention orientations on a firm’s radical and incremental innovation performance

The effect of a firm’s strategic focus on acquiring new customers and/or retaining existing customers (customer acquisition and retention orientations) on innovation performance is evaluated. With dyadic primary data collected from 225 strategic business units, the authors demonstrate that a firm’s focus on customer acquisition enhances its radical innovation performance but hinders its incremental innovation; a firm’s strategic orientation toward customer retention has the opposite effects. These effects are mediated by both customer knowledge development and the firm’s resource configuration decisions. In addition, the authors provide insight into the impact of managerial decision trade-offs when implementing customer engagement strategies. The results suggest that the effect of customer acquisition and retention orientations on customer knowledge and investment decisions, and ultimately on innovation performance, is amplified when a firm consistently implements a specific engagement strategy. Implementing a dual strategy by attempting to focus on both acquiring and retaining customers undermines resource configuration decisions, with diverse effects on both radical and incremental innovation.     

产品危机情境、响应策略与响应路径:基于中国市场的内容分析法研究

以中国市场上实际发生的103个产品伤害危机事件为样本,通过使用内容分析法获得数据,检验了危机情境因素对危机响应策略的影响,并分析了危机情境因素与危机响应路径的关系.研究发现危机类型和危机品牌来源国对危机责任策略、高层出面策略和借助权威策略有影响,而危机严重性与这三个维度的响应策略没有显著关系.对于不同的危机类型,企业都有多条不同的响应路径,但同一危机类型下的路径之间体现出明显的共性.     

Leveraged high-variety strategies: From portfolio thinking to platform thinking

Summary Barbara Kahn correctly points out the importance of creating dynamic relationships with customers and adopting high-variety strategies to succeed in today’s fiercely competitive world. However, high variety is also often high cost and high complexity. In this commentary, I propose that platform thinking is a powerful way to manage these contradictions in becoming a high-variety provider. Platform thinking relies on a simple insight—understand the common strands that tie your firm’s offerings, markets, and processes together, and exploit these commonalities to create leveraged growth and variety. Platform thinking should permeate all aspects of the firm’s strategy and should guide all strategic decisions on diversification and growth. Marketers who master platform thinking may find the 21st century to be a somewhat more inviting prospect. Mohanbir S. Sawhney is an assistant professor of marketing in the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University. His research interests include strategic marketing in technology-based industries, marketing decisions for experiential products, and cross-functional integration in new product development. His research has been published inManagement Science andMarketing Science, and his modeling work in the motion picture industry has been widely cited in the trade press. He is a consultant for several large technology firms as well as small Internet start-up firms. His current research projects include strategic planning for market-driving firms, cross-functional product line management, and strategy formulation for digital opportunity arenas.     

客户风险评级管理研究与应用——基于证券CRM管理

在客户关系管理理论的基础上,建立了包含14个行业特色指标的证券业多维细分模型,并结合K-means聚类算法和商务智能技术,提出基于K-means聚类方法的中国证券业客户风险评级管理模型,并结合具体案例,对厦门某证券公司的具体客户信息进行了实证研究,有效的识别出了具有不同该特征以及风险偏好的客户群,证券公司可以据此推出个性化营销策略。     

The duality of decisions and the case for impulsiveness metrics

Customer metrics help firms manage their performance and predict financial outcomes. While many firms focus on customer satisfaction metrics for this purpose, dual-process theories in psychology and neuroscience show that customer decisions are based on two processes. This suggests that metrics which measure the impulsiveness of purchase decisions might effectively complement customer satisfaction metrics. In a series of experiments we demonstrate that satisfaction and impulsiveness metrics make distinct but strong predictions of consumer choices. Satisfaction and impulsiveness influence choice in different ways. While impulsiveness relates to choice directly, the satisfaction-choice path is mediated by loyalty intention. Moreover this relationship is moderated by product involvement such that impulsiveness metrics provide a better prediction for low-involvement than for high-involvement situations. Finally, a field study of 750 customers of 101 firms demonstrates these relationships at a firm level, indicating that satisfaction and impulsiveness metrics have equally strong but distinct relationships with shareholder value. Therefore firms may be able to benefit from complementing customer satisfaction metrics with customer impulsiveness metrics.     

Sales force leadership during strategy implementation: a social network perspective

Many new marketing strategies falter in the execution phase where managers fail to make frontline employees fully committed to implementing the new initiatives. While formal managers can apply transformational and transactional leadership behaviors to increase salespeople’s strategy commitment, peers can also exert a great deal of informal influence on salespeople. Building on recent social network perspectives of leadership, this paper investigates the interplay between the sales manager’s leadership styles and peer effects during the implementation of a new strategy in a large sales organization. The authors find that salespeople with high network centrality but low strategy commitment not only lower their peers’ commitment but also hurt the effectiveness of a transformational manager. Specially, the influence of a central salesperson becomes stronger when the sales group has lower external connectivity. However, sales managers’ transactional leadership can decrease the non-committed central salesperson’s influence over peers.     

企业产品战略中的技术创新

市场竞争“短兵相接”的必然是产品或服务。而产品竞争体现了企业能为客户创造怎样的价值和多少价值。因此,产品战略是战略制胜时代的制胜战略,是企业竞争战略的核心。产品战略重在创新,只有建立在技术创新基础上的产品战略才能落到实处,战而胜之。     

Exploring the national and organizational culture mix in service firms

Using representative samples of U.S. and Japanese retail service firms, this study explores whether one particular type of organizational culture is the best with respect to business outcomes (performance and customer satisfaction) or whether the optimum culture depends on the national context in which the firm is embedded. The findings suggest that there is a significant interaction effect of organizational culture with national culture on outcomes. Specifically, the relationships between the importance placed on the cultural values of stability, people orientation, and detail orientation and outcomes are significantly greater for Japanese than for U.S. service retailers. On the other hand, the relationships between the values of aggressiveness, innovation, and outcome orientation and outcomes are greater for U.S. retailers. Further, the findings show that firms whose cultures match those of their home countries exhibit lower levels of outcomes when they operate in other countries with different cultural values. Implications are given for how service retailers might be designed and managed for purposes of improving business outcomes.     

战略差异如何影响公司现金持有

以2007-2015年全部A股上市公司为样本,结合企业竞争地位,考察企业战略差异对企业现金持有的影响。研究发现：企业战略差异度与现金持有水平正相关,企业竞争地位能够削弱两者正相关关系。进一步检验发现：企业战略差异增加了融资约束、企业风险及创新投资,进而导致企业现金持有水平提高;企业战略差异提高了现金持有竞争效应,但竞争地位高的企业不显著。研究表明,企业战略差异是现金持有的重要影响因素之一,研究结论能够为企业管理层制定现金持有策略、进行企业战略选择以获取竞争优势提供参考。     

Cost-effective service excellence

This article integrates relevant literature to develop a conceptual model on the potential avenues to achieve service excellence at low unit costs, which we term cost-effective service excellence (CESE). To gain a deeper understanding of these strategies, their applicability and interrelatedness, we analyze how 10 organizations have achieved CESE. Our findings show that CESE can be achieved through three core strategies. First, a dual culture strategy provides a comprehensive set of high-quality services at low cost, largely driven by leadership ambidexterity and contextual ambidexterity. Second, an operations management approach reduces process variability and thereby allows the increased use of systems and technology to achieve CESE. Third, a focused service factory strategy can enable CESE through a highly specialized operation, typically delivering a single type of service to a highly focused customer segment. The use of the three approaches ranges from “pure” (e.g., mostly pursuing a dual culture strategy) to combinations of the latter two approaches with the dual culture strategy (e.g., a focused service factory strategy combined with dual culture). Our conceptual model provides an integrated view of the strategic options available to organizations that aim to pursue a strategy of CESE.     

Cause marketing and customer profitability

This research marks the first attempt to investigate the cause marketing–customer profitability relationship, and to assess whether features can moderate the influence of cause marketing (CM) on customer profitability for a focal brand and its main rival. We obtain a panel dataset on 7257 customers to evaluate the Yoplait–Susan G. Komen partnership. On a propensity score matched sample, we estimate a multilevel model and find that Yoplait’s CM initiative positively influences Yoplait’s customer profitability (2.70%), along with a deleterious effect on Dannon’s customer profitability (?13.31%). These findings are theoretically meaningful and pragmatically useful as they: (1) provide behavioral evidence of CM’s profit impact, (2) establish CM as an “offensive” strategy that cultivates the rival’s customers, (3) suggest features can amplify the effect of CM on the focal brand’s customer profitability, and (4) support that managers can add CM to their strategic marketing arsenal as an instrument to strengthen brand equity.