Relationship Marketing Case Study

Task One

Audit

1.1 Gflock’s three largest customer groups and their relative importance to the organization

“Segmentation is the process of grouping customers in markets with some heterogeneity into smaller, more similar or homogeneous segment to target with a distinct Marketing Mix”. (Smith, 1956). The table below demonstrates the company’s five main customer groups out of which the Misses, Ladies and Mistresses were chosen as the key customer groups respectively according to the percentage of the market and their monthly income.

(Table 1.1) Teens Misses Ladies Mistresses Madams

Demographic

Age 14-17 years 18-21 years 22-28 years 29-35 years Above 35 years

Gender Female

Nationality Sri Lankan

Monthly Income

(Per Month) Less than

The goal of relationship marketing is to create strong, even emotional, customer connections to a brand that can lead to ongoing business, free word-of-mouth promotion and information from customers that can generate leads. As opposed to relationship marketing, transactional marketing is an approach that is short term based focusing on acquiring new customers and making a sale.

Further, the difference between companies that adopt to relationship marketing and companies that adopt to transactional marketing can be explained as below.

Relationship Marketing Transactional Marketing

• Focus on customer retention and building customer loyalty • Focus on single sales

• Emphasis upon product benefits that are meaningful to the customer • Emphasis upon product feature

• Long time scale • Short time scale

• Emphasis upon high levels of service which are possibly tailored to the individual customer • Little emphasis on customer retention

• High customer commitment • Limited customer

2.2 Evaluation of current customer retention strategies used by GFlock

Marketing Mix

Usually referring to E. Jerome McCarthy 's 4 P classification for developing an effective marketing strategy, which encompasses: product, price, placement (distribution) and promotion. When it 's a consumer-centric marketing mix, it has been extended to include three more Ps: people, process and physical evidence. Depending on the industry and the target of the marketing plan, marketing managers will take various approaches to each of the four Ps.

As identified in the audit 1.3 GFlock does not successfully target each area of the marketing mix compared to it’s competitors. The below table explains current marketing mix of GFlock in contrast to it’s three main competitors.

Marketing Mix Element Current Approach of GFlock Current Approach of Mondy Current Approach of Kelly Felder Current Approach of Dress