Corporate Citizenship: Let Not Relationship Marketing Escape the Management Toolbox
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Volume 7 Number 4
Corporate Citizenship: Let Not Relationship Marketing Escape the Management Toolbox Adam Lindgreen Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands Vale´rie Swaen Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium and IESEG School of Management, France
Corporate Reputation Review, Vol. 7, No. 4, 2005, pp. 346–363 # Henry Stewart Publications, 1363–3589
Page 346
ABSTRACT There has been a continual proliferation of marketing concepts and ‘paradigms’ that supposedly offer solutions to the challenges that companies are facing. Relationship marketing is one such concept that has moved to the forefront of research and practice; it promises companies a management tool to build economically profitable relationships, networks and interactions with different, but equally important stakeholder markets. Corporate citizenship is another concept that has become increasingly popular with researchers and practitioners alike. The argument is that companies should seek to fulfill their legal, ethical, economic and discretionary obligations to shareholders, employees, customers and the community at large. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that companies, which seek to implement corporate citizenship, consciously, but more frequently unconsciously, employ relationship marketing tools. By way of real-life examples this paper shows how the use of such tools has facilitated the implementation of corporate citizenship. The paper is organized as follows. First is a review of the literatures on relationship marketing and corporate citizenship. Then, there is a discussion of different corporate citizenship initiatives, relating this discussion to relationship marketing. Lastly, there is an outline of future research that can examine further the proposed relationship between corporate citizenship and relationship marketing.
INTRODUCTION ‘Relationship marketing’ is a concept that has moved rapidly to the forefront of research and practice, with many referring to it as a new marketing paradigm (Fournier et al., 1998; Gro¨nroos, 1994; Gummesson, 1999). Relationship marketing promises companies a management tool to build economically profitable relationships, networks and interactions with different, but equally important stakeholder markets (Christopher et al., 1991; Gummesson, 1999; Morgan and Hunt, 1994). The toolbox consists of database marketing, e-marketing, interaction marketing and network marketing (eg Coviello et al., 2002). The concept of ‘corporate citizenship’ (eg Laufer, 1996; Maignan and Ferrell, 1998; Pinkston and Carroll, 1994) is one in a series of related business philosophies such as ‘corporate social responsibility’ (Bowen, 1953; Carroll, 1979; Mason, 1960), ‘corporate social responsiveness’ (Ackerman and Bauer, 1976; Frederick, 1998; Strand, 1983) and ‘corporate social performance’ (Stanwick and Stanwick, 1998; Swanson, 1995; Wood, 1991). The idea behind these concepts is that it is no longer enough for companies to be concerned only with seeking a profit — they should also ‘give something back to the soci
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