QUESTION 1 (50 Marks) Read the extract below and answer ALL the questions that follow:

Relationship Marketing AND Customer relationship management Relationship marketing has the aim of building mutually satisfying long-term relationships with key partiescustomers, suppliers, distributors, and other marketing partners. Relationship marketing builds strong economic, technical, and social ties among the parties. Marketing according to Kotler and Keller (2012:42) must not only do customer relationship management (CRM) but also partnership relationship management (PRM). Four key constituents for marketing are customers, employees, marketing partners (channel partners) and members of the financial community. The ultimate outcome of relationship marketing is the building of a unique company asset called a marketing network. A marketing network consists of the company and its supporting stakeholders (customers, suppliers, distributors, retailers, ad agencies, university scientists, and others) with whom it has built mutually profitable business relationships Customer relationship management (CRM) is the process of managing detailed information about individual customers and carefully managing all customer touch points to maximise customer loyalty. According to Kotler and Keller (2012:156) maximizing customer value means cultivating long-term customer relationships. Companies are moving to more precision marketing designed to build strong customer relationships. Mass customisation is the ability of a company to meet each customers requirements - to prepare on a mass basis individually designed products, services, programmes, and communications. Customer databases and database marketing A customer database is an organised collection of comprehensive information about individual customers or prospects that is current, accessible, and actionable, for such marketing purposes as lead generation, lead qualification, sale of a product or service, or maintenance of customer relationships. Database marketing is the process of building, maintaining, and using customer databases and other databases for the purpose of contacting, transacting, and building customer relationships. Customer databases are not customer mailing lists. A customer mailing list is simply a set of names, addresses, and telephone numbers. Ideally, a customer database contains the consumers past purchases, demographics, income, family members, psychographics, mediagraphics, and other useful information. A business database would contain business customers past purchases, past volumes, prices, and profits, buyer team members names, and other useful information.

Taking the points from the extract into account, as the co-owners of a small to medium enterprise, Memorable Events, offering event management services, the marketing team which is made up by 4-6 members, has been tasked to draw up a suitable comprehensive service report that will be presented by your team to the other members of the company. Your team will have to come-up with strategies to address the key issues in the above article as your team has found that the company has not been communicating or engaging with your customers, effectively, timely and therefore the overall satisfaction levels have been average and this has negatively affected the company performance and profit. Your plan must also incorporate the following:

Identify a known service organisation of your choice. Your mandate is to examine and evaluate the relational perspectives at play in that organisation. You should use readily available information online or from the companys publications or the press. Provide a brief introduction to the company.

Using known examples of your choice, discuss the nature of relationships marketing and customer relationship management and how they contribute to the well-being of the organisation.

Using examples, discuss in detail how a forward-thinking organisation can utilise its employees as a competitive tool.

As the marketing manager of a large organisation. Using concrete examples, discuss how you would ensure that information and knowledge about customers is shared with staff throughout the institution.

Conclusion