Commentary: Opportunities and challenges of technology in relationship marketing
The concept of relationship marketing in the academic marketing literature is almost 40 years old. Since its inaugural mentioning (Berry, 1983) a rich body of conceptual and empirical research papers as well as popular business books has evolved, establishing the consensus view among academics and managers that strong customer relationships are key to company prosperity and performance (e.g. Morgan and Hunt, 1994; Palmatier et al. 2006) With the digital age, rather than entering its maturity stage, relationship marketing is experiencing its next upsurge, such that nourishing customer relationships is "more critical than ever before" (Palmatier and Steinhoff, 2019, p. 21) Specifically, the exponential advancements in technology revolutionize the way in which customers and companies interact (Steinhoff et al. 2019) Relationships in which relational interactions are mediated partially or even fully by technological means are ubiquitous. Today already, customers are estimated to maintain about 85% of their relationships with firms without any human intervention (Gartner, 2011) Relationship marketers dispose of a rich and ever evolving technology toolbox to build, grow, and retain strong relationships with their customers (Steinhoff et al. 2019) However, beyond the opportunities for enhancing relationships, each tool also entails challenges. Managers seem eager to learn about these new technology tools and benefit from their potential advantages; accordingly, growth rates of managers' relationship marketing spending continuously outpace those of brand spending (eMarketer, 2016) Over the past months, the developments surrounding the COV1D19 global pandemic have been strongly catalysing the shift towards online relationships. Likewise, the rapid and in part ad hoc move of customer company relationships to the online sphere has unearthed both the rich opportunities as well as the unresolved challenges, pointing relationship marketers to the strengths and shortcomings of their relational strategies. In this commentary, we discuss four major technological trends (e commerce and m commerce channels, social networks, anthropomorphized agents, big data) that shape current and future relationship marketing business practice jointly referred to as the relationship marketing technology toolbox and outline the potentials and pitfalls pertaining to each. Beyond, we shed light on the implications that the COVID 19 pandemic has on the current state and future of customer relationships. We conclude with a plea for the power of strong customer relationships in these challenging times and a brief outlook into the research avenues that relationship marketers may want to navigate in the future to generate actionable guidance for managers. 2. Relationship marketing technology toolbox: opportunities and challenges
Australasian Marketing Journal (AMJ)