The Origin of Relationship Marketing

Texas a & amp； Professor Leonard L. Berry of M University defined relationship marketing for the first time in a report of 1983 American Marketing Institute: "Relationship marketing is to attract, maintain and enhance customer relationships." 1996 gives a more comprehensive definition: "Relationship marketing is a process of identifying, establishing, maintaining and promoting relationships with consumers in order to meet the goals of enterprises and related stakeholders, and terminating relationships when necessary, which can only be achieved through exchange and commitment". Barbara B. Jackson B.B, an expert in industrial marketing, 1985) describes relationship marketing as "relationship marketing focuses on attracting, developing and maintaining customer relationships" from the perspective of industrial marketing. Morgan and Hunter (1994) understand relationship marketing from the difference between economic exchange and social exchange, and think that relationship marketing is "a marketing activity aimed at establishing, developing and maintaining successful relationship exchange". Gu Mansen (1990) defines relationship marketing from the perspective of enterprise competitive network, and thinks that "relationship marketing is to regard the market as relationship, interaction and network".

In one of his articles, Kurt divided many research results on relationship marketing into three schools: British and Australian school, Nordic school and North American school. Kurt believes that the Anglo-Australian School is mainly based on the research of Christopher, Payne and Barents, emphasizing the close relationship between quality management, service marketing concept and customer relationship economics. The Nordic School originates from the research results of Nordic scholars represented by Karen Rus, and is based on the interactive network principle of industrial marketing, the concept of service marketing and the theory of customer relationship economics. The North American School advocates strengthening the education of the relationship between buyers and sellers in enterprises and improving the management level of enterprises in this respect accordingly, among which the research results of Berry and Levitt are the most representative. Relationship marketing is derived and developed from the concept of "big marketing". 1984, kotler put forward the so-called "big marketing" concept, aiming at solving the problem of entry barriers in the international market. In the traditional marketing theory, the external environment of enterprises is regarded as an "impossible factor", which implies that enterprises have to resign themselves to fate and do nothing when facing various trade barriers and public opinion obstacles in international marketing. Because in today's increasingly popular trade protectionism, the traditional 4P combination strategy is not enough to open a closed market. To open a closed market, enterprises should not only use the four marketing strategies of product, price, distribution and promotion, but also effectively use the two marketing tools of political power and public relations. This strategic idea is called big marketing. Although the concept of relationship marketing comes directly from kotler's "big marketing" thought, its emergence and development also benefit from the reference of other scientific theories, the expansion of traditional marketing concepts and the promotion of information technology wave.

The first is the extensive reference to other scientific theories. This kind of reference mainly comes from system theory, synergetics' slavery principle and exchange theory.

(1) system theory regards society, organizations and other things as systems, and these systems are composed of several subsystems. The operation of the whole system depends on the interdependence and interaction between these subsystems and their components. According to the viewpoint of system theory, an enterprise is a system composed of subsystems, and these subsystems have identifiable boundaries with their environment. Researchers and managers need to understand the relationships among subsystems, between subsystems and between enterprises and the environment, so as to determine the relationship model or variable structure, and take effective measures to ensure the efficient operation of the system. If so, enterprise marketing needs to handle and manage the above relationship well.

(2) Synergetics believes that the change of system nature is due to the interaction between subsystems of the system. There are two trends in the movement of any system. One is spontaneous disorderly movement, which is an important reason for system collapse. The other is the coordination and cooperation movement caused by the correlation between subsystems, which is an important reason why the system spontaneously moves towards order. The principle of slavery shows that disorder is disorder, and there are many different possibilities. The dominant sequence parameter forces other factors and states into its orbit, thus making everything organized in an orderly way. Collaboration itself is a kind of self-organizing ability, which is realized by feedback control based on information connection. When the system exchanges material, energy and information with the environment, the self-organization ability is embodied in controlling and adjusting the subsystems in the environmental system, making them coordinate their actions and keeping the system running in harmony and order. This principle of synergetics is of great significance for studying the relationship between enterprises and the external environment. In fact, synergy is the interest that relationship marketing should pursue. Although the system has the ability of self-organization, how to reduce the disorder state and keep the disorder state is undoubtedly a practical topic of relationship marketing.

(3) Communication is a symbolic transmission process, through which both parties exchange information. In this process, the ultimate goal of communication is to make the understanding of the sender and receiver of information tend to be consistent. In traditional marketing, advertising and other means of mass communication (one-way communication) are the main channels for enterprises to communicate with consumers. This way can achieve the purpose of communication, because manufacturers control most of the product information and can use this limited information to make decisions. Modern communication will be a two-way communication, and the information exchange between enterprises and consumers will go through such a process: first, enterprises should understand the information forms and information contents owned by consumers, then clarify consumers' demand for information through some channels and ways, and finally transmit information in an appropriate way. Integrated marketing communication is the abstraction and sublimation of traditional marketing theory and communication. In this concept, advertising, promotion, public relations, direct selling, CI, packaging, media planning and other marketing activities constitute the whole meaning of communication, communicating with consumers with consistent information, that is, "speaking with the same voice". In this sense, communication is equal to marketing, and the process of marketing is also the process of communication.

Secondly, it is a powerful expansion of the traditional marketing concept. Traditional marketing theory takes a single enterprise as an analysis unit, and holds that enterprise marketing is a process of influencing the external environment by using internal controllable factors. The generalization of internal controllable factors is 4P &；; Acute; S-mix, that is, product, price, distribution and promotion strategies, the core of marketing activities is to formulate and implement effective marketing mix strategies. However, practice has proved that it is increasingly difficult for traditional marketing concepts to directly and effectively help enterprises gain operational advantages. This is because it is impossible for any enterprise to independently provide all the resources needed in the operation process, but it must obtain funds through banks, recruit personnel from the society, trade or cooperate with scientific research institutions, distribute products through distributors, and jointly promote and spread with advertising companies through the media. Moreover, enterprises must be accepted by a wider range of relevant members, including peer enterprises, community public, media, government, consumer organizations, environmental groups and so on. Enterprises cannot cope with all environmental pressures alone. Therefore, enterprises are closely related to these environmental factors, which constitute the survival and development of enterprises. The partners in the enterprise establish appropriate relationships and form a huge network. For most enterprises, the success of enterprises is the result of making full use of this network resource. In this way, the understanding of enterprise resources extends from the enterprise "boundary" to the enterprise boundary, that is, it includes all organizations, groups and individuals related to the survival and development of enterprises, as well as the whole network composed of these "nodes" and their interaction. Whether these relationships are stable or not, and whether they can bring benefits to network members, that is, achieve a "win-win" result, depends on effective relationship management, including the enjoyment of benefits and the establishment of intimate relationships between partners through "emotional investment".

Finally, the driving force of information technology to the development of relationship marketing. The development of modern information technology provides a low-cost and efficient communication tool for the establishment, maintenance and development of various marketing partnerships, and solves the basic technical conditions necessary for relationship marketing. It is under the influence of the above factors that relationship marketing has developed rapidly since the late 1980s. Berry first proposed and discussed how to maintain and improve the relationship with existing customers. Subsequently, Jackson proposed to establish different types of relationships with different customers. Groros, Schulsinger and Hejsky, the representatives of Nordicism in Northern Europe, demonstrated the great influence of the relationship between enterprises and customers on the marketing of service enterprises. Today, people's discussion and practice of relationship marketing has expanded from simple customer relationship to the relationship between enterprises and suppliers, middlemen, competitors, governments and communities. In this way, the market scope of relationship marketing has expanded from customer market to supplier market, internal market, competitor market, dealer market, influencer market and recruitment market, thus greatly expanding the meaning and scope of traditional marketing.