ABSTRACT

The appreciation of marketing’s role in managing continuing customer relationships requires a quantitatively different approach to the use of the marketing mix than applies where customer acquisition is the primary purpose of marketing. It is interesting to note how much of the language used in connection with acquiring customers appears somewhat militaristic. Terms such as strategies, campaigns, targets, tactics and marketing armoury all seem to somehow resonate with a notion that marketing is concerned with a heroic battle to win customers. As commented upon earlier, objection-handling forms an important element of sales training and is symptomatic of an adversarial, if not confrontational, mind set. Hopefully, it has been firmly established that to see marketing just in terms of the single-minded pursuit of new customers deserves to be consigned to the history of the marketing of financial services.