Managing market relationships

The ability of a firm to create and maintain relationships with their most valuable customers is a durable basis for a competitive advantage. To keep this edge over rivals, who continually try to attract these customers away, a firm has to master the three elements of a market-relating capability. First, a relationship orientation must pervade the mind-set, values, and norms of the organization. Second, the firm must keep deepening its knowledge of these customers and putting it to work throughout the organization. Third, the key processes must be internally integrated and externally aligned with the corresponding processes of the firm's customers.