Managing the automotive marketing and sales cycle through mail: Part 2

This report builds upon the authors' previous report on relationship marketing in the financial services industry. It is based on: – research commissioned by the Royal Mail into the state of relationship marketing in the UK automotive industry and the use of mail in managing customer relationships – our wider research programme in which we examine how companies in many sectors are managing customer relationships and their use of different media and systems to do so – consulting and training engagements in the automotive industry. The paper is published in three parts. The first part (in Vol. 8, No. 1 of the Journal) deals with the authors' research aims, methodology and findings. The findings relating to the ten automotive companies interviewed for the study are then reported in more detail. Part 1 concludes with an overview of the modelling process. This second part takes the examination of modelling further with a description of acquisition modelling and a time series approach to relationship marketing modelling called approach management. A discussion on how to manage the future customer concludes this part of the paper. Part 3 (to be published in the next issue of the Journal) uses relationship stage analysis to examine how mail is used in selling cars and makes recommendations for future practice.