Relationship Marketing - A Tool for Supporting the Company's Innovation Process

The paper presents the correlation between a specific method for acquiring knowledge from external sources by companies i.e. partnership marketing and corporate innovation processes. The authors make the assumption that the use of customer relationships in the innovation process contributes to the implementation of this process. CRM systems are effective tools for acquiring information for innovation processes both at the stage of creating innovations and the stage of the diffusion of innovation. The effectiveness of individualised marketing is conditioned by such factors as close relationships with customers, continuous oversight, analyses, information technologies and databases. Customers' participation in innovation creation is significant for another reason: customers who use products and services acquire knowledge that represents a great value for companies. The results of empirical research confirm the above hypothesis. The results of research presented in the paper indicate that Malopolska's companies do not make use of CRM methods in an effective way. It results from the deficiencies of IT infrastructure, the absence of knowledge management systems, cooperation traditions, difficulties in identifying customer needs in large target groups. Relationship marketing can be used as a tool for supporting corporate innovation processes with particular regard to tourism enterprises in order to more fully understand the tourists and visitors of a destination point of view. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd.