Achieving Hair Salon Competitiveness Through Relationship Marketing Model: A Case of Hair Salons in the Free State Province in South Africa (original) (raw)
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This research is about marketing research activity, an important business imperative when confronted with intense competition, among hair salon owners (mainly Black and previously disadvantaged people) in South Africa. With hair salons becoming unarguably the most affordable means through which the previously advantaged people of South Africa are able to enter mainstream economic activity, their proper management for to ensure survival and profitability has become a key concern for government and policy makers. Easy entry due to low setup cost and no legal need for formalisation, have contributed to proliferation of the hair salon business leading to intense competition for customers and this has unfortunate consequences for hair salons’ survival and economic performance. From a strategic management perspective, it is only logical for hair salons to conduct marketing research to obtain accurate information on product prices and customer preferences in order to perform better. But the question is whether hair salons ever consider marketing research relevant to them given resource constraints of such micro businesses. The purpose of this paper is to assess the attitude of hair salons towards marketing research. The findings are that marketing research is not much practiced among the hair salons studied. Implications are discussed.
Relationship Marketing: A Strategic Tool for Sustainable Competitive Advantage
GIS Business
The key to a firm's survival, profitability, and growth in a highly competitive marketing environment is its ability to identify and satisfy unfulfilled consumer needs better and sooner than the competitor. It has become imperative for business entities to strategically think about how to attract and subsequently retain customers. The study therefore seeks to examine the impact of relationship marketing strategies on sustained competitive advantage. Empirically, the study establishes that within the Ghanaian context banks can equally gain sustained competitive advantage through relationship marketing strategies. Purposive sampling technique was used to select the respondents for the study since the study only targeted relationship staff of the respective banks. It was noticed from the study that, communication, bonding, and commitment perfectly established positive significant effect on relationship marketing and sustained competitive advantage. Interestingly communication was found to be the highest contributor to sustained competitive advantage in the Ghanaian banking industry, followed by commitment and conflict handling in that order. This implies that banks that intending to attain sustained competitive advantage should strategically employ the entire integrated marketing communication elements and communicate it to the target audience in the timely and accurate manner. The banks must resolve conflicts in a manner that will boost the confidence of the customer after the conflict resolution. This work has deepened the understanding of bank marketing in Ghana by proving that banks can achieve sustained competitive advantage by investing more and more in relationship marketing practice mostly in communication, commitment and conflict handling.
2019
Given the fact that South Africa is one of the global emerging markets, many of the emerging small businesses are transiting from informal to formal businesses. The importance and contribution of these ventures in economic growth and job creation cannot be overemphasised especially in times of technical economic recession. Even tourists are more likely to repeat visit a business on later travels if they are satisfied with service quality. Small grocery retail shops in Mangaung Municipality area are no exception. Relationship marketing is considered as a vital option for achieving customer retention and growth among small businesses, particularly, in the retail industries. However, this paper provides a robust insight into the transformed small grocery retail shops by theoretically analysing relationship marketing and its effect on customer retention for business growth. It, therefore, remains concerning in this paper to interrogate customer retention given relationship marketing pra...
2013
Relationship marketing is a post modern development that has seen the practice of marketing evolving from a medieval production orientation in the early 1900s, when demand for goods and services exceeded supply to a period where organizations regardless of their sizes, nature of business and organizational objectives, have realized the strategic importance of entering into long term relationships with various stakeholders as a means of enhancing profitability. This research aimed at examining the extent to which Hotels and Lodges in Masvingo engage relationship marketing strategies at all the three tier levels as a means of fostering sustainable competitive advantage (SCA). A cross sectional descriptive research design was used to unravel the relationship between RM and customer retention. A drop and pick survey technique was administered on 51 respondents, comprising managers and section supervisors selected from firms in the sectors, using a structured undisguised questionnaire de...
Relationship marketing: Strategic and tactical challenges for SMEs
African Journal of Business Management, 2010
This study sought to explore the tactical and strategic challenges, which small and medium sized service firms may face in their bid to successfully practice and implement Relationship marketing. The framework of the requirements for successful practice of relationship marketing propounded by Gronroos (1996) was used in this study to explore likely, the tactical and strategic challenges that small and medium sized service firms face in their endeavour to practice Relationship marketing (RM). A critical literature review was undertaken on the inherent characteristics of SMEs and how they pose the aforementioned challenges. Small and medium sized firms could find it strategically and tactically challenging to meet effectively, the requirements of successfully implementing and practicing Relationship marketing owing to their inherent characteristics and constraints. Researchers are recommended to empirically investigate the applicability of the "generalized" requirements for the successful practice of Relationship marketing in small and medium sized service firms. The study viewpoint, which is the first of its kind, demonstrates that the "one size fit all" approach as regards the practice of Relationship marketing does not generically apply to all business forms (large and small) hence, may not be generalized to small and medium sized service firms as well across all types of economies.
Role of Relationship Marketing in Competitive Marketing Strategy
Competitive Marketing Strategy (CMS) has relationship marketing (RM) as one of the key functionality in enhancing business performance. RM is defined as the identification, establishment, maintenance, enhancement, modification and termination of relationships with customers to create value for customers and profit for organization by a series of relational exchanges that have both a history and a future. Relational exchanges can be viewed under transaction cost analysis and social exchange theories depending on the context. The role of RM in CMS includes: guide moments of truth, improve profitability, build partnering, address 'Customer Better', buy in of customer attention, protect emotional well being, understand consumer psyche, build trust with customer. All these roles are observed empirically in the hotel industry, with some hotels placing emphasis on their extraordinary operations and services to engage with the customer.
Relationship Marketing: A competitive Marketing StrategyIt’s Importance, Nature and Need: A Review
Journal of Management and Science, 2013
In today‟s intense competition, it is very important for any business organization to keep their customers otherwise the competitors will attract them as business is all about creating customer, satisfying a customer and retaining a customer. Increasing inflation rate, increasing rate of interests, hike in fuel prices, global slowdown in economic growth are a few reasons of worry for the companies to think differently to maintain their sales and profit. The business organizations are struggling for their survival and sustainable growth. On the other hand, the new economic policy of India has also opened its trade for the multinationalcompanies. Therefore companies are trying to do something by which they can keep their customers and it is the Relationship Marketing which helps the companies to do so. It is an important tool for strategic competition management. As it is well known fact that a satisfied and loyal customer brings three new customers, therefore companies try all their ...
Impact of SMEs strategy on loyalty: the hairdresser case
Spanish Journal of Marketing - ESIC, 2019
Purpose This study aims to propose a theoretical framework and provide empirical evidence on the most successful marketing strategies for obtaining behavioural loyalty in small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Design/methodology/approach The data are based on 475 telephone surveys conducted among Spanish hairdressers. The authors have used ordinary least squares to estimate the empirical model. Findings Pricing, services and communication (Web page and in-store communication) are the main drivers of customer loyalty. SMEs have to be cautious with the use of social networks to avoid damaging loyalty. In addition, those positioned at high-price segments should pay more attention to communication on the Web, and all companies should find a balance between in-store communication and the sale of products for use at home. Research limitations/implications Further research should try to replicate the findings with data from consumers and firms. Practical implications Service managers need to...
Exploring Business Growth Aspirations and Strategic Planning of Hair Dressing Salons in South Africa
2013
The entrepreneur needs to be knowledgeable about all the activities that occur in the business in order to effectively growth the business. The purpose of this paper was to explore the business growth aspirations and strategic planning of hair salon businesses. Fifty-two respondents were interviewed in a survey using a structured questionnaire. The empirical study investigated whether salons owners had business growth aspirations and if they plan strategically. It appears that hair salons have business growth aspirations but do not actively engage in strategic planning for business growth. It seems that owners of hair salons do not manage their businesses with a strategic focus and do not regard having a business plan as essential to business growth. Only by engaging effectively and efficiently in long-term strategic planning can hair salon owners aspire to achieve business growth.