Browsing by Subject "relationship marketing"

Purpose: The changing global economy has presented uncertain factors in future development. To keep up with the competition, companies have launched partnership programs. Many organizations seek strategic partners to enhance their positions, create joint business development and marketing opportunities, and that way strengthen their competitiveness. Methods: The objective of this study is to discover the characteristics of a partnership program in a Finnish software company. Quantitative methodology is used to examine how accurately partners can be distinguished from non-partners. Furthermore, this study introduces how customer focus should be incorporated based on a partner portfolio analysis. Also, it suggests how to derive improvements to a partnership program based on a partner portfolio analysis. Results: The main finding of this research is that partners are more profitable from the sales perspective. Their net sales have increased more during the five years, almost all of them have bought again at least once after the first purchase, and all of them increased their net sales when joining the partnership program. In addition, grown marketing and sales costs have led to an increase in partners’ net sales, which correlates with a number of joint marketing activities. This study suggests case company to focus on technology partners the most, as they are the most profitable from both sales and marketing perspectives. Based on the theoretical framework and empirical research results, proposals for further academic research are given in the thesis.