RELATIONSHIP MARKETING
COURSEWORK ASSESSMENT
The module will be assessed by one individual piece of work.
Taking an organisation with which you are familiar(ZARA), identify and evaluate the different relationships in and around the organisation and the communication tools used to manage these relationships. On the basis of your findings recommend actions that will enable the organisation to develop a full Relationship Marketing strategy, in order to facilitate the effective management of long term, profitable, customer relationships.
Original and creative approaches to the topic will be required as well as evidence of an ability to reflect on learning arising from the completion of the assignment.
Your choice of organisation must be agreed with the module tutor in advance
Format: The work may be presented either in report form or in essay
style – either way, it should be clearly structured and flow logically and smoothly.
Length: The assignment should be between 4,000 words and 5,000 words (not including reference lists and any appendices).
Application: It is essential that relevant academic theory and arguments are
applied to the chosen organisation and discussed in some depth – not merely described.
Referencing: The assignment is designed to assess your ability to apply theory covered on the course, to actual scenarios. As such, it is expected that further reading will be undertaken and all books and articles used should be detailed in a bibliography. The source of any quotations or academic frameworks used in the text must be acknowledged by full referencing. (The Harvard Method is encouraged).
Submission: A hard copy of the work should be handed in to the SHIP and an electronic version should be submitted through Turnitin). Please note that the SHIP closes at 15:30. All work will be subject to a plagiarism check through Turnitin.
Note: Whilst the University makes every effort to safeguard work submitted for marking, students are advised to keep a copy of all assignments, essays and other coursework.
ASSIGNMENT ADVICE
Detailed assessment criteria are provided in this booklet, along with guidance about how the work should be written. However, the following extra advice might be useful.
1. Make sure that your work is supported by robust academic underpinning. This means making use of a model, or models, such as those introduced in the first week (e.g. ‘6 Markets’, Doyle, Morgan & Hunt, or the ’30 R’s checklist’ proposed by Gummesson).
2. In order to evaluate the application of relationship marketing, it is necessary to put this into context, by saying what relationship marketing actually is. You should therefore present a clear distinction between relationship marketing (RM) and transaction marketing (TM).
3. This assignment is looking for more than a simple description of different stakeholders. You need to be undertaking an evaluation of each of your chosen organisation’s stakeholders, including a consideration of different types of customers, as well as external, internal and lateral stakeholders, where appropriate. You should then assess the appropriateness and effectiveness of the relationships that exist between organisation and these stakeholders. Again, you should be supporting this with academic theory.
4. You should not automatically assume that all customers are the same and form one homogenous stakeholder group!
5. You are not being assessed on your detailed knowledge of an organisation – you are being assessed on your knowledge and understanding of the principles of relationship marketing. It is therefore acceptable to make assumptions about the organisations you are writing about, as long as you make these clear and fully incorporate them into your findings and recommendations.
6. You should make sure that you make some recommendations – this is what the assignment brief asks you to do. Your recommendations must be linked to your earlier analysis. If you think the organisation is already doing the best it possibly can, then you must justify why you think this by showing that alternative strategies would be less effective.
