Authors: RSpencer;
Customers have progressively become undeniably core elements, and indeed often represent a passage obligé, in the marketing literature. Such is their importance that to discuss marketing strategy and derived marketing methods and approaches without giving a central role to the customer component would seem inconceivable. The notion of customer itself translates a certain vision of the market, and specifically the demand market, from a conceptual point of view.
Fundamentally the way the market is conceptualised leads to the adoption of specific approaches to handling the market. These approaches thus dictate marketing behaviour of the firm. This behaviour consequently affects marketing outcomes. As a conclusion, inadequate or inappropriate conceptualisation of the market will inevitably result in unsatisfactory and/or unexpected outcomes.
Existing approaches in marketing strategy relating to the customer dimension – namely market segmentation, CPM (customer portfolio management), CRM, and KAM (Key account management) – are still very much based on a conceptual approach which considers markets as atomised in nature – with the customer as predominant or sole entity – and static. These approaches are moreover more often than not considered as stand-alone issues rather than holistically.
Alternative conceptualisations of markets have however emerged which provide scope for and, we would argue here, demand a revised approach to handling the customer dimension of the market. These alternative conceptualisations are discussed.
The thesis then takes a closer look at the approach issues mentioned above. Starting with a general discussion of the customer dimension of marketing strategy, the literature in the fields of segmentation, CPM, and CRM is subjected to a brief critical review. Focus is then placed specifically on the state of the art of the literature in the area of KAM, in industrial markets. In simple terms this sees KAM as the largely stand-alone task of organising the supplier firm’s internal resources in such a way as to optimise sales to those large multi-site, multiple buying-centre, customers perceived as demonstrating high economic returns to the supplier firm.
This critical review is then related to empirical findings in the six published contributions to the thesis. The first three of these contributions address issues which examine and support a rather different conceptualisation of markets and the nature and role of customers and thus, accordingly, the need for revised approaches to the market in general. The last three, building on the first three, address specifically the need for a revised approach to KAM.
As a result an alternative model to KAM is proposed, that of SMCR – Strategic Management of Customer Relationships – which views KAM firstly as an indissociable part of the strategic dimension of customer management, and indeed corporate strategy, necessitating a holistic approach integrating segmentation, CPM and KAM. Secondly KAM is seen to be a rather more complex issue than organising supplier resources to match large, important customers’ requirements and optimise on economic returns. Rather it translates as the identification of multiple forms of return on investment of different forms and origins, and as the handling of potentially complex internal and external networks of relationships. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, the customer dimension is itself seen to be embedded in a network context which goes beyond simple management of relationships with customers. This encourages a vision of KAM as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself, hence the SMCR model.
Publish Year: 2005