After relationship marketing emerged as a new approach in the marketing field in the 1980s, it has been widely studied in the United States, Europe and Asia. Rapid environmental changes and global competition has made it inevitable for companies to consider their relationships with the environment more closely. Under these circumstances, relationship marketing has held a position as a pivotal paradigm in the field of strategy as well as in marketing. In addition, relationship marketing has overcome the limitations of a traditional marketing research while providing richer implications in company's marketing activities. The paradigm shift to relationship marketing has brought fundamental changes in a marketing point of view. First, in philosophical aspects, unlike past research which focused solely on customer satisfaction, organizational relationship parameters which focuses on trust and commitment has become key elements of successful relationship marketing while shifts in thoughts naturally take place from adaptive marketing to strategic marketing. Second, in structural aspects, the relational mechanism of governance such as network structure with a variety of relational partners has emerged as a new marketing organization from the previous simple structure focusing on the micro-economic, marketbased trading between seller and customer. Third, in behavioral aspects, it proposed the strategic course of the action of gaining an advantage over the competition on the individual firm level by focusing on building long-term relationships and considering partnership with the components in the entire marketing system, rather than with one-time transaction-centric action between a seller and a customer. Fourth, in the aspects of marketing performance, marketing performance was sought through the long-term and cooperative relationship with various stakeholders, including customers in the marketing system, focusing on the overall competitive advantage based on relationship rather than individual performance of individual companies' marketing activities, such as market share and customer satisfaction. However, studies of relationship marketing were mostly centered in interorganizational relationships focusing on the relational structure and properties of commercial sector in the marketing system. Paradoxically, the circumstance of the consumer's side that must be considered is evolving again in relationship marketing. In structural aspects, a community, as the new relationship governance structure in the digital environment, and in behavioral aspects, the changing role of consumer participation demanding big changes in the digital environment engaged in the marketing system. The possibility of building a relationship marketing community for common value creation is presented in terms of organization of consumers with the focus on changing marketing environment and marketing system according to the new realities of the 21st century- the popularity of digital environments and the diffusion of customer participation. Therefore, future research of relationship marketing must seek for a truly integrated model including all of the existing structure and properties of the research oriented relationship from both the commercial and consumer sector.
Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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v.18
no.5
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pp.91-107
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2023
Lean startup is a concept that combines the words "lean," meaning an efficient way of running a business, and "startup," meaning a new business. It is often cited as a strategy for minimizing failure in early-stage businesses, especially in software-based startups. By scrutinizing the case of a startup L, this study suggests that lean startup methodology(LSM) can be useful for hardware and manufacturing companies and identifies ways for early startups to successfully implement LSM. To this end, the study explained the core of LSM including the concepts of hypothesis-driven approach, BML feedback loop, minimum viable product(MVP), and pivot. Five criteria to evaluate the successful implementation of LSM were derived from the core concepts and applied to evaluate the case of startup L . The early startup L pivoted its main business model from defecation alert system for patients with limited mobility to one for infants or toddlers, and finally to a smart bottle for infants. In developing the former two products, analyzed from LSM's perspective, company L neither established a specific customer value proposition for its startup idea and nor verified it through MVP experiment, thus failed to create a BML feedback loop. However, through two rounds of pivots, startup L discovered new target customers and customer needs, and was able to establish a successful business model by repeatedly experimenting with MVPs with minimal effort and time. In other words, Company L's case shows that it is essential to go through the customer-market validation stage at the beginning of the business, and that it should be done through an MVP method that does not waste the startup's time and resources. It also shows that it is necessary to abandon and pivot a product or service that customers do not want, even if it is technically superior and functionally complete. Lastly, the study proves that the lean startup methodology is not limited to the software industry, but can also be applied to technology-based hardware industry. The findings of this study can be used as guidelines and methodologies for early-stage companies to minimize failures and to accelerate the process of establishing a business model, scaling up, and going global.
Original scripts of e-learning lectures for the CEOs of corporation S were analyzed using topic analysis, which is a text mining method. Twenty-two topics were extracted based on the keywords chosen from five-year records that ranged from 2011 to 2015. Research analysis was then conducted on various issues. Promising topics were selected through evaluation and element analysis of the members of each topic. In management and economics, members demonstrated high satisfaction and interest toward topics in marketing strategy, human resource management, and communication. Philosophy, history of war, and history demonstrated high interest and satisfaction in the field of humanities, whereas mind health showed high interest and satisfaction in the field of in lifestyle. Studies were also conducted to identify topics on the proportion of content, but these studies failed to increase member satisfaction. In the field of IT, educational content responds sensitively to change of the times, but it may not increase the interest and satisfaction of members. The present study found that content production for CEOs should draw out deep implications for value innovation through technology application instead of simply ending the technical aspect of information delivery. Previous studies classified contents superficially based on the name of content program when analyzing the status of content operation. However, text mining can derive deep content and subject classification based on the contents of unstructured data script. This approach can examine current shortages and necessary fields if the service contents of the themes are displayed by year. This study was based on data obtained from influential e-learning companies in Korea. Obtaining practical results was difficult because data were not acquired from portal sites or social networking service. The content of e-learning trends of CEOs were analyzed. Data analysis was also conducted on the intellectual interests of CEOs in each field.
At the initial stage of Internet advertising, banner advertising came into fashion. As the Internet developed into a central part of daily lives and the competition in the on-line advertising market was getting fierce, there was not enough space for banner advertising, which rushed to portal sites only. All these factors was responsible for an upsurge in advertising prices. Consequently, the high-cost and low-efficiency problems with banner advertising were raised, which led to an emergence of keyword advertising as a new type of Internet advertising to replace its predecessor. In the beginning of 2000s, when Internet advertising came to be activated, display advertisement including banner advertising dominated the Net. However, display advertising showed signs of gradual decline, and registered minus growth in the year 2009, whereas keyword advertising showed rapid growth and started to outdo display advertising as of the year 2005. Keyword advertising refers to the advertising technique that exposes relevant advertisements on the top of research sites when one searches for a keyword. Instead of exposing advertisements to unspecified individuals like banner advertising, keyword advertising, or targeted advertising technique, shows advertisements only when customers search for a desired keyword so that only highly prospective customers are given a chance to see them. In this context, it is also referred to as search advertising. It is regarded as more aggressive advertising with a high hit rate than previous advertising in that, instead of the seller discovering customers and running an advertisement for them like TV, radios or banner advertising, it exposes advertisements to visiting customers. Keyword advertising makes it possible for a company to seek publicity on line simply by making use of a single word and to achieve a maximum of efficiency at a minimum cost. The strong point of keyword advertising is that customers are allowed to directly contact the products in question through its more efficient advertising when compared to the advertisements of mass media such as TV and radio, etc. The weak point of keyword advertising is that a company should have its advertisement registered on each and every portal site and finds it hard to exercise substantial supervision over its advertisement, there being a possibility of its advertising expenses exceeding its profits. Keyword advertising severs as the most appropriate methods of advertising for the sales and publicity of small and medium enterprises which are in need of a maximum of advertising effect at a low advertising cost. At present, keyword advertising is divided into CPC advertising and CPM advertising. The former is known as the most efficient technique, which is also referred to as advertising based on the meter rate system; A company is supposed to pay for the number of clicks on a searched keyword which users have searched. This is representatively adopted by Overture, Google's Adwords, Naver's Clickchoice, and Daum's Clicks, etc. CPM advertising is dependent upon the flat rate payment system, making a company pay for its advertisement on the basis of the number of exposure, not on the basis of the number of clicks. This method fixes a price for advertisement on the basis of 1,000-time exposure, and is mainly adopted by Naver's Timechoice, Daum's Speciallink, and Nate's Speedup, etc, At present, the CPC method is most frequently adopted. The weak point of the CPC method is that advertising cost can rise through constant clicks from the same IP. If a company makes good use of strategies for maximizing the strong points of keyword advertising and complementing its weak points, it is highly likely to turn its visitors into prospective customers. Accordingly, an advertiser should make an analysis of customers' behavior and approach them in a variety of ways, trying hard to find out what they want. With this in mind, her or she has to put multiple keywords into use when running for ads. When he or she first runs an ad, he or she should first give priority to which keyword to select. The advertiser should consider how many individuals using a search engine will click the keyword in question and how much money he or she has to pay for the advertisement. As the popular keywords that the users of search engines are frequently using are expensive in terms of a unit cost per click, the advertisers without much money for advertising at the initial phrase should pay attention to detailed keywords suitable to their budget. Detailed keywords are also referred to as peripheral keywords or extension keywords, which can be called a combination of major keywords. Most keywords are in the form of texts. The biggest strong point of text-based advertising is that it looks like search results, causing little antipathy to it. But it fails to attract much attention because of the fact that most keyword advertising is in the form of texts. Image-embedded advertising is easy to notice due to images, but it is exposed on the lower part of a web page and regarded as an advertisement, which leads to a low click through rate. However, its strong point is that its prices are lower than those of text-based advertising. If a company owns a logo or a product that is easy enough for people to recognize, the company is well advised to make good use of image-embedded advertising so as to attract Internet users' attention. Advertisers should make an analysis of their logos and examine customers' responses based on the events of sites in question and the composition of products as a vehicle for monitoring their behavior in detail. Besides, keyword advertising allows them to analyze the advertising effects of exposed keywords through the analysis of logos. The logo analysis refers to a close analysis of the current situation of a site by making an analysis of information about visitors on the basis of the analysis of the number of visitors and page view, and that of cookie values. It is in the log files generated through each Web server that a user's IP, used pages, the time when he or she uses it, and cookie values are stored. The log files contain a huge amount of data. As it is almost impossible to make a direct analysis of these log files, one is supposed to make an analysis of them by using solutions for a log analysis. The generic information that can be extracted from tools for each logo analysis includes the number of viewing the total pages, the number of average page view per day, the number of basic page view, the number of page view per visit, the total number of hits, the number of average hits per day, the number of hits per visit, the number of visits, the number of average visits per day, the net number of visitors, average visitors per day, one-time visitors, visitors who have come more than twice, and average using hours, etc. These sites are deemed to be useful for utilizing data for the analysis of the situation and current status of rival companies as well as benchmarking. As keyword advertising exposes advertisements exclusively on search-result pages, competition among advertisers attempting to preoccupy popular keywords is very fierce. Some portal sites keep on giving priority to the existing advertisers, whereas others provide chances to purchase keywords in question to all the advertisers after the advertising contract is over. If an advertiser tries to rely on keywords sensitive to seasons and timeliness in case of sites providing priority to the established advertisers, he or she may as well make a purchase of a vacant place for advertising lest he or she should miss appropriate timing for advertising. However, Naver doesn't provide priority to the existing advertisers as far as all the keyword advertisements are concerned. In this case, one can preoccupy keywords if he or she enters into a contract after confirming the contract period for advertising. This study is designed to take a look at marketing for keyword advertising and to present effective strategies for keyword advertising marketing. At present, the Korean CPC advertising market is virtually monopolized by Overture. Its strong points are that Overture is based on the CPC charging model and that advertisements are registered on the top of the most representative portal sites in Korea. These advantages serve as the most appropriate medium for small and medium enterprises to use. However, the CPC method of Overture has its weak points, too. That is, the CPC method is not the only perfect advertising model among the search advertisements in the on-line market. So it is absolutely necessary that small and medium enterprises including independent shopping malls should complement the weaknesses of the CPC method and make good use of strategies for maximizing its strengths so as to increase their sales and to create a point of contact with customers.
Internet commerce has been growing at a rapid pace for the last decade. Many firms try to reach wider consumer markets by adding the Internet channel to the existing traditional channels. Despite the various benefits of the Internet channel, a significant number of firms failed in managing the new type of channel. Previous studies could not cleary explain these conflicting results associated with the Internet channel. One of the major reasons is most of the previous studies conducted analyses under a specific market condition and claimed that as the impact of Internet channel introduction. Therefore, their results are strongly influenced by the specific market settings. However, firms face various market conditions in the real worlddensity and disutility of using the Internet. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of various market environments on a firm's optimal channel strategy by employing a flexible game theory model. We capture various market conditions with consumer density and disutility of using the Internet.
shows the channel structures analyzed in this study. Before the Internet channel is introduced, a monopoly manufacturer sells its products through an independent physical store. From this structure, the manufacturer could introduce its own Internet channel (MI). The independent physical store could also introduce its own Internet channel and coordinate it with the existing physical store (RI). An independent Internet retailer such as Amazon could enter this market (II). In this case, two types of independent retailers compete with each other. In this model, consumers are uniformly distributed on the two dimensional space. Consumer heterogeneity is captured by a consumer's geographical location (ci) and his disutility of using the Internet channel (${\delta}_{N_i}$).
shows various market conditions captured by the two consumer heterogeneities.
(a) illustrates a market with symmetric consumer distributions. The model captures explicitly the asymmetric distributions of consumer disutility in a market as well. In a market like that is represented in
(c), the average consumer disutility of using an Internet store is relatively smaller than that of using a physical store. For example, this case represents the market in which 1) the product is suitable for Internet transactions (e.g., books) or 2) the level of E-Commerce readiness is high such as in Denmark or Finland. On the other hand, the average consumer disutility when using an Internet store is relatively greater than that of using a physical store in a market like (b). Countries like Ukraine and Bulgaria, or the market for "experience goods" such as shoes, could be examples of this market condition.
summarizes the various scenarios of consumer distributions analyzed in this study. The range for disutility of using the Internet (${\delta}_{N_i}$) is held constant, while the range of consumer distribution (${\chi}_i$) varies from -25 to 25, from -50 to 50, from -100 to 100, from -150 to 150, and from -200 to 200.
summarizes the analysis results. As the average travel cost in a market decreases while the average disutility of Internet use remains the same, average retail price, total quantity sold, physical store profit, monopoly manufacturer profit, and thus, total channel profit increase. On the other hand, the quantity sold through the Internet and the profit of the Internet store decrease with a decreasing average travel cost relative to the average disutility of Internet use. We find that a channel that has an advantage over the other kind of channel serves a larger portion of the market. In a market with a high average travel cost, in which the Internet store has a relative advantage over the physical store, for example, the Internet store becomes a mass-retailer serving a larger portion of the market. This result implies that the Internet becomes a more significant distribution channel in those markets characterized by greater geographical dispersion of buyers, or as consumers become more proficient in Internet usage. The results indicate that the degree of price discrimination also varies depending on the distribution of consumer disutility in a market. The manufacturer in a market in which the average travel cost is higher than the average disutility of using the Internet has a stronger incentive for price discrimination than the manufacturer in a market where the average travel cost is relatively lower. We also find that the manufacturer has a stronger incentive to maintain a high price level when the average travel cost in a market is relatively low. Additionally, the retail competition effect due to Internet channel introduction strengthens as average travel cost in a market decreases. This result indicates that a manufacturer's channel power relative to that of the independent physical retailer becomes stronger with a decreasing average travel cost. This implication is counter-intuitive, because it is widely believed that the negative impact of Internet channel introduction on a competing physical retailer is more significant in a market like Russia, where consumers are more geographically dispersed, than in a market like Hong Kong, that has a condensed geographic distribution of consumers.