Ethical Marketing And Relationship Marketing

Usually, we use "internal and external cultivation" to describe a man who emphasizes not only internal moral mastery but also external behavior capacity. It is the same that marketing strategy also includes inside practice and outside practice. Inside practice means ethical marketing such as product quality and social responsibility, and outside practice refers to relationship marketing which is the interaction between the enterprise and interest. Therefore, how to gain the real "internal and external cultivation" is the eternal topic for enterprise development. However, not all companies can reach the goal of "internal and external cultivation" in the reality. Huge competitive pressures often make marketers face the dilemma of ethics and profits, and many well-known foreign and domestic enterprises often sink into moral crises. Some scholars have pointed out that one of the important reasons why enterprise moral crisis often happens is that ethical marketing theories apart from other marketing theories, rather than making integrated researches on it and other marketing theories from the perspective of integration. The current mainstream research on ethical marketing tends to make ethical marketing prevail over other marketing theories and make separated analysis on it, which leads to moral problems easily. The separation between ethical marketing theories and other marketing theories puts a curb on the effectiveness of current marketing researches, weakens the quality of academic research, and has a negative impact on research findings. Although the academic circle has recognized that the separation between the ethical marketing theories and other marketing theories leads to limitations, the integration and integrated researches on ethical marketing and other marketing theories are still at the stage of exploration. Murphy (2008) pointed out that the enterprise can release the tense relationship between customer's interest and the enterprise's profits by adopting fixed moral basis and more attention on customer relationship. Previous studies also demonstrate that ethical marketing itself contains the meaning that enterprise can enhance customer relationship by making promises for them. There is a natural link between ethical marketing and relationship marketing. At the same time, according to researches with Chinese background, many scholars point out that relationship is an important factor affecting Chinese commerce. What's more, relationship marketing theory itself is one of the main researching topics that is needed to be grasped mainly in the field of current marketing. Under the guidance of this kind of thinking, combining the Chinese local features of "relationship orientation", this thesis makes the integrated research on relationship marketing and ethical marketing from the perspective of relationship marketing and gives it the local characteristics. This thesis's researching aim and significance is that how to make the enterprise marketing gain the greatest success which not only allows the enterprise establishes satisfactory and lasting customer relationships but also fits the principles of ethical marketing to gain customer's respect by good reputations.This research makes it as a starting point and discusses from the following three issues:(1) what internal mechanism and theory of logic exist between the ethical marketing and relationship marketing? (2) Because there are different strategy combinations between ethical marketing and relationship marketing in the reality, what are the differences among psychological mechanism of customers' inner responses for these sorts of strategies? Why customers have different responses for enterprises'different strategy combinations between ethical marketing and relationship marketing? (3) From the perspective of the enterprise, how to combine these two sides together to enable the enterprise to establish satisfactory and lasting customer relationships and satisfy ethical marketing principles to win customer's respect with good reputation to meet the greatest success for enterprise marketing. This research seeks for the answers from the standpoint of the local Indigenous. The conclusion not only widens the existing research thinking to a certain extent but also makes up for gaps in the existing studies.First, this thesis clarifies deeply the relationship between ethical marketing and relationship marketing from the standpoint of marketing philosophy of these two sides. Soft tendency between Deontology and Teleology Theory can provide philosophical and ethical supports for continued closed, integrated and included relationship between ethical marketing and relationship marketing. Then, make exploration and explanation of theoretic logic relationship between ethical marketing and relationship marketing from different viewpoints of resource basis theory, equity theory, customer trust, customer perceived value theory and China's Utilitarianism " and so on, so that to offer evidence for feasibility and necessity of two sides'integration.Second, with introduction of two sides theory describing Chinese unique characteristics and integrated use of China's "face ", "relationship", "human sympathy" and other concepts, this thesis makes local modification for economic satisfaction and social satisfaction proposed by Geyskens and Steenkamp (2000) to separate customers'evaluation for the enterprise into economic satisfaction and relationship satisfaction. And it separates customer affection into four dimensions, namely real emotional feelings, proper feelings, embarrassment and no feelings, on the basis of the existing literature and according to combinations of evaluations made by customers for the enterprise from aspects of economic satisfaction and relationship satisfaction, so that the clarification of customer affection becomes more specific, complete and can reflect the local fitness better.Finally, based on different focusing levels of enterprise ethical marketing and relationship marketing perceived by customer, this thesis makes the enterprise's marketing strategy combinations into four different categories, namely ethical strategy, relationship strategy, integration strategy and no strategy to foster a complete model which is about customers'"attitude-behavior" response on enterprise ethical marketing and relationship marketing. What's more, this thesis makes a study on differences of customer attitudes, customer emotions and customer loyalty with different ways of enterprise ethical marketing and relationship marketing. It builds models that what influence that ethical strategy, relationship strategy, integration strategy and no strategy make on customer affection and loyalty, and explores the influence on enterprise business performance and stability of performance.The theoretical value of this research lies in:(1) This thesis connects the "relationship marketing" with. the basis of external relationship and internal motivation "ethical marketing" with basis morality firstly, breakthroughs these two sides'limitations with the dialectic perspective, points out that integrated marketing strategy of ethical marketing and relationship marketing can make an important effect on customers'response on enterprise marketing activities, explores customers'psychological mechanism for different marketing strategy combinations of ethical marketing and relationship marketing, and provides beneficial help for furthering the researching modes of marketing. (2) It is the first time to make connection between customer affection with different marketing strategy combinations of enterprise ethical marketing and relationship marketing which are perceived by customers to make research on customers'inner response mechanisms. This thesis separates customer affection into four dimensions with local features, namely real emotional feelings, proper feelings, embarrassment and no feelings, on the basis of the existing literature and according to combinations of evaluations made by customers for the enterprise from aspects of economic satisfaction and relationship satisfaction. And it connects customer affection with different marketing strategy combinations of enterprise ethical marketing and relationship marketing. This thesis provides more supports for local research on importance of getting deep understandings on customer affection. (3) According to the model of loyalty proposed by Dick & Basu (1994), this thesis makes the first research on different loyalty behavior response made by customers for different marketing strategies of ethical marketing, relationship marketing and combination of them from the perspective of Indigenous, and the influence made by these strategies on enterprise business performance, so that to foster a relatively systematic and complete researching framework and provide the basis for marketing scholars to further the research on effect of customer behaviors made by integration of relationship marketing and ethical marketing. At the same time, this study also has the practical significance:(1) the integrated strategy of relationship marketing and ethical marketing can local the enterprise difference to win sustainable competitive advantage; (2) to provide reference for developing marketing strategies for enterprises, dealing with the ranking priorities of enterprise relationship marketing and ethical marketing, and choosing the right marketing decision; (3) when making marketing strategy, it is necessary to consider the Chinese culture background throughout and change customers' behavior and preferences by integrated strategies of relationship marketing and ethical marketing.