Journal of Database Marketing & Customer Strategy Management

This paper proposes a number of channel performance measurement research propositions. The paper reviews the strategy implementation, strategic control, marketing metrics, marketing channels and performance measurement literature to develop a conceptual model and research propositions. Current channel performance measurement guidelines are too generic for marketing managers and too reliant on financial measures. The introduction of contextual variables such as strategy, culture and manager's personality may provide measures more useful for an individual company's context and requirements. The alignment of channel measures with business strategy should result in more effective and efficient use of channel resources.

In this paper, the authors investigate how academics and analysts assess companies and, in so doing, may mislead managers in the companies themselves, as well as their stakeholders — shareholders, employees, business partners, governments and, of course, customers. They conclude that while academics and analysts can have a powerful positive role in stimulating change to the benefit of stakeholders, they can also have a powerful negative role, by encouraging poor and over-risky investment and strategies. The data from this paper come from the work of QCi Ltd in assessing customer management performance over the last few years. QCi is therefore itself an analyst and not immune to these charges, though the authors will show how they have tried to avoid falling prey to the enormous temptations. Parts of this paper were originally published in Chapter 2 of the third QCi report on the state of play in customer management.

The purpose of this paper is to capture the consumer's meaning of a relationship with a commercial firm. The unaided definitions of 167 adult consumers were coded using constructs based on service quality, social exchange and transactional exchange theories. The results revealed that service quality constructs were mentioned by 57 per cent of the respondents, social exchange constructs were mentioned by 41 per cent, and transactional exchange constructs by 25 per cent. The definitions used by many consumers were multi-dimensional and included a mix of constructs. The results confirm that while some business-to-business relationship constructs are appropriate for understanding the nature of the business-to-consumer relationship, service quality dimensions are central to the consumer's definition of this relationship. The implications of this research reinforce the notion that the consumer's relationship with a business is a means to an end, not the goal.

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.