ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the empirical evidence that reveals the concepts and strategies that researchers have identified as relevant for building or maintaining strong customer relationships. It addresses customer centricity and loyalty programs as two important forms of institutionalized relationship marketing efforts. The chapter describes a more practical view to detail some established best practices and emerging strategies that should guide relationship marketers’ daily operations to enable companies to manage relationships mediated by technological and digital channels. It examines the theoretical insights and empirical evidence to provide clear, actionable guidance for managers who seek to design and implement relationship marketing strategies. The chapter provides the some approaches to relationship management in digital relational environments, which seem promising but whose overall effectiveness is yet to be substantiated by research. Firms with customer-centric structures appear to outperform internally oriented peers, by achieving deeper and more satisfactory customer relationships, as well as greater customer value.
