The Application Of Relationship Marketing Theory

With the economical globalization and increasingly intensive market competition, the traditional marketing theories have been unfit for resolving the complicated problems in practices. Many theorists and enterprisers began to look for and think over new marketing strategy. In 1980s and 1990s, Relationship Marketing (RM) became to be recognized and developed. RM is to create and maintain a long-term good relationship, on the basis of mutual interest, with stakeholders, which include customers, suppliers, distributors, competitors, government, media, etc. Success with RM will result in high levels of repeat purchase, customer retention, insulation from price increases, good reputation, cross selling, reducing costs and increasing revenue.Relationship marketing has been applied and implemented by many companies in various industries, and it is also successfully applied by some famous oversea professional qualification bodies. Firstly, this article makes a study on the evolution of RM, characteristics of RM, theoretical and methodological issues in RM, and 3 types of RM tactics (i.e. customer relationship management tactics, internal relationship management tactics and business partnership management tactics). Secondly, it makes a case study on ABC (a leading global professional qualification body) and introduces its good RM practices. The third part concludes the merits of RM and the illumination of ABC's case study. Finally, it gives some advices for the local professional qualification bodies.The purpose of this article is to seek for the feasibility of RM in the local professional qualification bodies through the study of RM theories and ABC case.