Barriers to implementing relationship marketing: analysing the internal market-place

Abstract

The emergence of relationship marketing and relational selling has underlined the importance of diverse parties in implementation- the 'part-time marketers', the 'five markets', the 'stakeholder' groups and so on. However, it is suggested here that the degree of organizational change required to implement a relationship marketing strategy successfully may have been commonly underestimated. This paper examines the particular issue of customer satisfaction measurement (CSM) as a management tool in monitoring performance in developing productive customer relationships and highlights the problem of managing employee satisfaction alongside customer satisfaction, i.e. relationship in the internal and external markets. Case evidence illustrates the potential leverage in implementing relationship strategies by successful management of this interface, while survey evidence underlines the potential barriers to implementation from this same interface. A number of important implications are identified for managers and researchers.