Braj Mohan Chaturvedi: Relationship Marketing

Relationship Marketing - Not a New Concept

Industrialization changed the marketing structure but in a small form marketing based on relationship survived and re-emerged in late eighties and early nineties of last century. To be very precise symptoms of the change in marketing structure were witnessed in late 1970s. Berry1, however, was the first one to use and thereby establish the phrase Relationship Marketing. He defined Relationship Marketing as attracting, maintaining and - in multiservice organizations - enhancing customer relationships.

There are many small stories, which describe the importance of relationship in marketing. We here have discussed a few cases in the book but to start with we shall narrate one of the incidents that took place in Ranchi, India. Ranchi is a small industrial town in India where there was a small grocery shop; small by the standards of the new mega retail formats. Shop owner knows every one in the neighborhood by name, their birthday, and anniversary. Till late eighties he was doing good business but he started losing customers in early nineties, as first generation employees of Heavy Engineering Corporation Ltd. (HEC) , started moving to suburbs on retirement.

Rabindranath Choubey, an employee of HEC and a good friend of the shop owner, discussed the latter's problems with him once. He was losing his customers and finding it difficult to win new customers. Choubey suggested him to take the trouble of making home deliveries. The gesture though small, made a difference to all his customers - old and new, who also enjoyed a regular discount from him. His establishment today has flourished and expanded but his relationship with all the customers is still cordial. Even today he knows the needs of each individual and his/her family. This form of relationship marketing existed since ages in all part of world. It is not a new concept and has existed since the beginning of business. Everything from shopping at grocery store to enjoying a British Airways services involves a certain element of relationship.

Katyayana

This Blog is dedicated to all the Management Professionals who want to challenge the set pattern, who are practical in their approach and dont think in thin air; who believe that strategy is all about making things simple; who strongly advocate the “Rule of Simple” and who believe that impossible is nothing. - Just like Katyayana. Katyayana was a disciple of Gautama Buddha. He is also known as Kaccana or Kaccayana, Mahakatyayana, Mahakaccana and in Japanese as Kasennen. Katyayana is one of the “Ten Disciples of the Buddha”. Mahakashyapa, Ananda, Shariputra, Subhuti, Purna, Mahamaudgalyayana, Katyayana, Aniruddha, Upali and Rahula. He was foremost in explaining Dharma. He was born in a brahmin family at Ujjayini (Ujjain) and received a classical Brahminical education studying the Vedas. Katyayana was a Sanskrit grammarian, mathematician and Vedic priest who lived in ancient India, around the time of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom. He is known for two works:- The Varttika, an elaboration on Panini’s grammar. Along with the Maha-bhasya of Patanjali, this text became a core part of the vyakarana (grammar) canon. This was one of the six Vedangas, and constituted compulsory education for Brahman students in the following twelve centuries.- He also composed one of the later Sulba Sutras, a series of nine texts on the geometry of altar constructions, dealing with rectangles, right-sided triangles, rhombuses, etc. Katyayana certainly have been a man of very considerable learning but probably not interested in mathematics for its own sake, merely interested in using it for religious purposes.He wrote the Sulbasutra to provide rules for religious rites and to improve and expand on the rules which had been given by his predecessors. Katyayana would have been a priest instructing the people in the ways of conducting the religious rites he describes. Authorship: Nettipakarana, a work of grammar, and Petakopadesa, a treatise on exegetical methodology, sulvasutras dealt with geometry.

Relationship Marketing - Not a New Concept

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