Relationship Marketing Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words

Relationship Marketing - Essay Example To keep the relationship alive, relationship marketing becomes essential. This does not mean that the company should be ‘best friends’ with the client, rather it signifies the idea that a company should use a marketing system in which the marketing stress is placed on creating a long term relationship with customers which comes with the promise of repeat business rather than individual sales (Stone & Woodcock, 1995). This process involves a perceptive understanding of the client’s needs as the customers go through their lifecycle with the company and the satisfaction of those needs as the customer experiences them. Relationship marketing is based on the concepts of marketing but it uses cross functional teams that cut across various departments in a company to provide excellent and complete services to the clients. Rather than have the client go to different locations to get the pricing, service, promotions and other elements of the marketing mix, the entire marketing process can be handled by a team which comprises of various members of the company to provide multiple points of contact for customer groups (Peck et. al., 1999). Therefore relationship marketing is also considered to be a system which is similar to customer relationship management. This is done because the focus is on satisfying the needs of the customer rather than the needs of the company. In such a process, the product and the product lifecycle take differing positions of importance since different types and elements of marketing must be used as the customer and the product itself goes through various phases of maturity. Since the topic of relationship marketing is quite vast, it has been successfully applied to everything from consumable food items (Normandy & Sanders, 2004) to high end luxury cars (Stone et. al. 1996). While a chocolate might have a smaller life as a product, a good car remains with the buyer for several years if not several

How graphic design and skateboard graphics coincide and have Essay

How graphic design and skateboard graphics coincide and have influenced the growth in skateboarding since the 70's - Essay Example consisting of roller-skate wheels attached to a two by four; once the push bar of the scooter-like contraption was broken off, skateboarding was born’ (Skateboarding History, 2007). Through the years, skateboarding has been developed extensively especially as of the shape and the size of the skateboards. Moreover, graphics were added on skateboards presenting figures of all types (always in accordance with the cultural and social trends of a specific period). Current paper examines the relation of skateboarding with graphic design. The influence of the latter to the development of the former especially after the period of 1970s is the main issue analyzed in this paper. In order for the above relationship to be clearer, it is necessary to present the history of skateboarding from its appearance (approximately in 1959) until today. At the same time, it would be useful to refer to the development of graphic design throughout the years especially in relation with skateboarding. Th e views of professionals in the specific area have been also considered to be a valuable tool towards the understanding of the role of graphic design in the development of skateboarding since the 70s. The historical development of skateboarding has not been continuous. The period that characterized by a high growth of this activity is 1970s. In fact, it was during that period that the first skatepark appeared while skateboarding was extensively advertised in the television and the cinema. Moreover, new styles of skateboarding were adopted like slalom and freestyle. Regarding the developments in skateboarding that took place in the above period it is noticed that ‘this was the first time skateboarding had stars, some of the first really big names being Tony Alva, Jay Adams and Stacy Peralta; the look of skateboards also changed from being six to seven inches in width to over nine inches, providing better stability on vertical surfaces’ (Scateboarding History, 2007). In the above context,