Relationship Marketing

Relationship Marketing is a marketing strategy aims to establish and maintain a profitable, long-term relationship with the customers which go beyond the initial contact, to achieve profit to the company. Most of the conventional strategies in marketing focus on satisfying customer. However, the trend had been changed as satisfying customer is not enough to secure the business. Nowadays, relationship marketing emphasis on building longer-term relationship with customers rather than only focus on individual transactions, buy and sell. (http://www.iclployalty.com/homePage?q=relationship-marketing). The core of relationship marketing is relations, concern on customers and taking care of them, a maintenance of relations between the company and the actors in its micro-environment, ie suppliers, market intermediaries, the public and etc. ( Gronroon, 1994). Relationship marketing involves in better understanding of customers' needs and wants through their live cycle and providing a range of products or services accordingly.

Relationship marketing creates mutual rewards which benefit both the firms and the customers. An organization can also gain quality sources of marketing intelligence for better planning of marketing strategy by building relationship with customers. (Ndubisi, 2007). Development of relationship marketing required communication with customers from time to time so that to keep in touch with valued customers and provide trustworthy information on service. In this context, relationship marketing is designed to develop strong connections with customers by providing them with information directly suited to their needs and interests and by promoting open communication. This approach often results in increased word-of-mouth activity, repeat business and a willingness on the customer's part to provide information to the organization. (http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/definition/relationship-marketing) On the other hand, effective communication also tell dissatisfied customer on the way organization rectify causes of dissatisfaction, which could build in a better relationship between organization and its customers. This will result in customer loyalty.

1.2 Objective of relationship marketing

Create trust

In today's world, business has become a lot more complex, and so has the marketing involved with it. But it is no longer sufficient to just market your product. It is equally important to keep your existing customers satisfied. Not only the quality of the product is important, the existing customers could end up buying more of your product or service provided they are satisfied with your service. Relationship Marketing is the kind of marketing which does exactly this. It emphasizes on consumer retention and continual satisfaction rather than just the per-case individual transaction.