Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

Maybe you could start by reading this and checking out the reference section, too, in this article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_marketing

Then see what your school library has in terms of books and research papers on this topic. I'd go look at amazon reviews of books on the topic, too, and perhaps even spring for one or two of them.

I think you need to understand what "Relationship Marketing" actually means to the outside business world. Buying products that have been recommended to you is a result of relationship marketing; the person that recommended the product has such a good relationship with the company they're telling other people about it. The company hopes that by becoming a customer, their efforts (follow-up, surveys, return policies, incentives, private sales, tiered pricing, email reminders, freebies, and any other CRM program they implement) will create a good relationship with you, too, so you pass the word along.

Its like the whole Pepsi and Coke thing. It's not about taste, no matter how much Pepsi tries to say so. Coke in their New Coke fiasco did create a better testing Coke in test trials, yet it belly flopped. Why? Cause people didn't want something new, they wanted the original. Coke's relationship with their consumers was the position they placed as the original coke soda, Pepsi was just another faker. However with the New Coke they weren't the original flavor.

This shows that just by the brand people will choose something over another. The Pepsi-Coke thing is brand vs brand. When you talk about having a Tesco card cause Tesco is cheaper you could use soda again to prove thats wrong. Mimick-sodas most of the time are cheaper. There is even a company that does mimick-sodas for superstores and so on (ex. Safeway brand sodas). Yet it hasn't been able to surpass any of the major brand sodas even though they taste pratically the same.

Marketing Relationships are shown through credit cards too. American Express may not be the best, but it is still widely used. Why? They made try to make themselves the first credit card in your wallet starting from college. Most of the members who start in college keep using American Express as they get older.
Also word of mouth is a great by-product from marketing relationships. If pleased you stay and then u tell your friends.