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Marketers have apparently forgotten that profits come as a result of creating value and cultivating well-being and not before.
Not only have CRM efforts failed to engage meaningful, developmentally appropriate relationships, but research on relationship marketing has also neglected the emotional drivers for, and the developmental nature of, human relationships. The research has not yet focused on the emotional mediators in a developmental stages theoretical perspective and the empirical support for this line of inquiry: “We have less empirical knowledge about the process of relationship development (than knowledge of success factors)" (Wilson, 1995, p. 335). An investigation of the stages in customer relationships as variables (awareness, exploration, growth, and commitment), where stages are driven by emotions, may reveal a process of relationship development. A study of the emotional basis for developmental stages in relationship marketing is the next logical step for the field.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to “map“ a customer relationship through its developmental stages and to begin to document the mechanisms. This research, therefore, focuses on the aspect of relationship marketing between a customer and a seller, from the customer’s point of view.
This study’s objective is to understand how a customer relationship unfolds. It is proposed that one developmental stage leads to the next in an awareness-exploration-growth-commitment model. Furthermore, key factors-such as emotions, trust, satisfaction, and amount of purchases-may fluctuate according to stage. In fact, these emotion-based factors may indeed act as causal agents for stage change itself.