It’s all about relationships, stupid!

Roderick White

In this introduction to four further articles focusing on customer relationship management (CRM), Roderick White briefly reviews the history of CRM, its relationship with direct marketing, and the reasons why it has failed to revolutionise marketing practice in the last decade.

It's All About Relationships, Stupid!

Roderick White

CRM (customer relationship management) has its origins in the mists of retailing history, when merchants first noticed that, if they looked after their best customers, these customers would come back and buy, again and again.

But the world is a bigger place now and the distance between the managers of companies, whether they have any opportunity for direct customer contact or not, and their customers has widened. In the early stages of the consumer market revolution this did not seem to matter, but now the world's markets have become crowded, viciously competitive and,...

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