战略营销Test-BankChapter-7-Question-Bank-7-28-2017.docx

Marketing Strategy: Based on First Principles and Data Analytics

Marketing Strategy:
Based on First Principles and Data Analytics

Question Bank

Chapter 7 Question Bank

MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS

1. Relationship equity in combination with brands and offerings, in turn can lead to ____________
a. Sustainable advantage
b. Sustainable competitive advantage
c. Sustainable brand advantage
d. None of the above
Answer: B
2. Which of these trends decrease RM strategies in a country?
a. Shift to goods economies
b. Increasing use of marketing channels
c. Increased global competition, “me too” offerings, and faster “product” commoditization
d. All of the above
Answer: A
3. Aggregation of relational assets and liabilities, associated with the firm’s boundary-spanning employees and social networks linked to the offering is known as ____
a. Relationship Equity
b. Brand equity
c. Employee equity
d. None of the above
Answer: A
4. Social exchange theory has established that ______ and ______ are central to strong business relationships
a. Commitment, relationships
b. Trust, Relationships
c. Commitment, Trust
d. Relationships, integrity
Answer: C
5. As a means to create value beyond what each individual firm could do on its own, _____ increases customers’ flexibility and adaptiveness to sellers’ requests for changes, information, or ________
a. Reciprocation, Commitment
b. Commitment, Cooperation
c. Cooperation, Reciprocation
d. None of the above
Answer: C
6. A diverse, authoritative contact portfolio increases a seller’s ability to effect change in its customer’s organizations _________
a. Relationship Quality
b. Relationship Composition
c. Relationship Breadth
d. None of the Above
Answer: B
7. Coordinated, complementary actions between partners to achieve a mutual goal is called _________
a. Relationship loyalty
b. Empathic behaviors
c. Cooperative behaviors
d. None of the above
Answer: C
8. The likelihood that customer provides seller benefits in exchange process due to their relational ties and attitudes is called _____
a. Relationship loyalty
b. Empathic behaviors
c. Cooperative behaviors
d. None of the above
Answer: A
9. Because it is not affected by switching costs or lack of time or motivation, ______ provides an effective indicator of customer loyalty; only customers with strong, trusting relationships are likely to risk their reputations by advocating a seller to another potential customer
a. Gratitude
b. Customer life time value
c. Word of mouth
d. All of the above
Answer: C
10. _____ leads to a greater likelihood of being influenced by perceptions of the seller’s position.
a. Relationship loyalty
b. Empathic behaviors
c. Cooperative behaviors
d. None of the above
Answer: B
11. Long-term RM success thus often depends more on ___________ than __________.
a. Preventing the bad, promoting the good
b. Promoting the good, preventing the bad
c. Flexibility than consistency
d. Consistency than flexibility
Answer: A
12. Bystanders despise the unfair treatment they receive which in turn _______
a. Harms loyalty and annual sales intentions
b. Does not harm loyalty and annual sales intentions
c. Has no effect on loyalty
d. Improves sales for targeted customers
Answer: A
13. When contextual factors ________ a customer’s relationship orientation, they also _________ its receptivity to relationship building, prompting more effective RM.
a. Increase, Decrease
b. Decrease, Increase
c. Stay the same, Increase
d. Increase, Increase
Answer: D
14. ________ encourages strong customer-seller relationships through compensation policies, evaluative systems.
a. Product category dependence
b. Relational Norms
c. Relationship-centric reward system
d. Relationship proneness
Answer: C
15. Business-to-business markets offer ______ complexity, such that they require adaption and relational ________structures
a. Lower, Governance
b. Greater, Governance
c. Greater, Transactional
d. Lower, Transactional
Answer: B
16. Preventing customer perceptions of unfairness; may be “highest impact” relationship marketing strategy since it
a. Prevents small negative effect
b. Suppresses negative effects of other negative activities
c. Induces punishing or retaliatory behaviors
d. All of the Above
Answer: B
17. If a seller does not offer relationship marketing benefits of its own accord it does not show evidence of ______ in the relationship
a. Contractual behavior
b. Free will
c. Mandated Behavior
d. Motivated behavior
Answer: B
18. Relationships have the smallest payoffs in ____ in ______, 37% lesser than the U.S.
a. Germany, Netherlands
b. Japan, Norway
c. Norway, Netherlands
d. China, Norway
Answer: C
19. In general, relationship marketing is more effective when
a. Product dependence is high
b. Category involvement is low
c. Industry has low relational norms
d. None of the above
Answer: A
20. Even successful relationships can enter the recovery stage in response to events of passive neglect such as
a. Failure to communicate
b. Ending investments
c. Unfairness
d. All of above
Answer: D
21. Relationship equity is built in two steps: First, a firm needs to develop a strong _____ that supports relationship building and maintenance. Then, the firm can begin to implement relationship marketing and loyalty programs targeted at ______.
a. Lowest price adopters, foundation
b. Customer segment, lowest price adopters
c. Customer segment, foundation
d. Foundation, customer segments
Answer: D
22. Financial RM programs provide financial benefits, in the form of _____
a. Special discounts
b. Giveaways
c. Free shipping
d. All of the above
Answer: D
23. Relationships typically peak during the _______ stage.
a. Growth
b. Maturity
c. Early
d. Decline
Answer: B
24. The linkages between relationships and financial performance operate through four mechanisms, including increased cooperation, ________, word-of-mouth, and_______.
a. Commitment, Empathetic behaviors
b. Loyalty, Trust
c. Trust, Commitment
d. Loyalty, Empathetic behaviors
Answer: D
25. Factors that help leverage the effectiveness of RM delivery include free will, ________, risk, and _________.
a. Governance, Motive
b. Motive, Value
c. Value, Competitive advantage
d. Governance, Competitive advantage
Answer: B
26. Sellers need to leverage their RM investments by designing and delivering programs that increase their customers’ perceptions of the seller’s free will, _________, risk, and __.
a. Benevolence, Cost
b. Trust, Cost
c. Commitment, Trust
d. Benevolence, Commitment
Answer: A
27. Because so many drivers of customer relationships revolve around ________, sellers need to dedicate specific relationship marketing investments to motivate such employees.
a. dedication
b. targeted marketing
c. boundary spanners
d. communication experts
Answer: C
28. When contextual factors increase a customer’s__________, or desire to engage in a strong relationship, they increase its receptivity to relationship building, prompting more effective RM.
a. loyalty
b. relationship orientation
c. commitment
d. trust
Answer: B

TRUE/FALSE QUESTIONS
29. Relationship Marketing's (RM) influence on decision making is supported by the underlying psychological emotion of gratitude, which leads to a desire to repay
Answer: TRUE
30. The linkages between relationships and financial performance operate through four mechanisms, including increased commitment, loyalty, word-of-mouth, and empathetic behaviors.
Answer: FALSE (first one is cooperation)
31. The most effective RM strategies emphasize positive factors such as seller expertise, communication, relationship investment, and similarity while minimizing negative factors such as unfairness and conflict.
Answer: TRUE
32. The effect of negative activities on relationships is only half as strong as positive activities; it is more important to prevent negative events while continuing positive RM.
Answer: FALSE
33. Bystanders of loyalty programs often perceive their treatment as unfair; this is why loyalty program preferential treatment should be invisible to bystanders.
Answer: TRUE
34. Some of the factors that determine a customer’s brand orientation are relationship proneness, exchange and product uncertainty.
Answer: FALSE (relationship orientation)
35. Because RM is not effective for all customers, sellers must determine where to allocate RM resources across their customer portfolios.
Answer: TRUE
36. Factors that help leverage the effectiveness of RM delivery include free will, motive, risk, and profits.
Answer: FALSE (last is value)
37. Relationships operate through a typical lifecycle with four phases: exploration, growth, maturity, and decline/recovery. Each phase requires different RM strategies.
Answer: TRUE
38. There are two steps to building relationship equity: developing a strong relationship foundation and implementing targeted brand marketing.
Answer: FALSE (targeted loyalty programs)
39. To understand the effectiveness of RM efforts, firms should measure their relational equity on an ongoing basis and link it to customer lifetime value.
Answer: TRUE

ESSAY TYPE QUESTIONS

40. Write a short note about why relationships equity represents an important source of sustainable competitive advantage.
Answer: Marketing Principle #3 focuses on building and maintaining barriers, or sustainable competitive advantages (SCAs), to competitive attacks, based on the premise that competitors react continually to a firm’s success. Investments in building a firm’s relationship equity by developing B2B and B2C relationships can represent a strong barrier to competitors. Relationship equity refers to the aggregation of relational assets and liabilities, associated with the firm’s boundary-spanning employees and social networks linked to the offering or experience, that add to or subtract from the value provided by the firm’s offering. Efforts to build relationship equity often come after generating brand and value equities, because relational interactions are part of the product and service delivery or experience, which occurs after the product is designed and launched and brands have been promoted to the targeted customer segment. Yet, relationships powerfully affect behavior; relational-based decision making is ingrained in people’s psyches. For example, nearly one-third of human brain activity focuses on relational interactions, because they support cooperation and evolutionary advances. The varied psychological processes and emotions associated with relational or seemingly relational interactions (e.g., gift–gratitude, anger–punishment, guilt–reciprocation, love–hate) help explain customers’ responses to marketers’ actions and thus the effectiveness of RM.
41. Write a short note about the benefits from relationship equity.
Answer: Relationship marketing efforts seek to improve relationship characteristics (e.g., quality, breadth) with an exchange partner and build relationship equity, in the hope of ultimately improved financial performance. That is, RM activities do not affect financial performance directly. Instead, they help build relationship equity, which influences customer behaviors, which improves the seller’s financial outcomes. This chain of effects operates through four mechanisms. Gratitude and reciprocity, together with trust and commitment, largely capture the effects of interpersonal relationship marketing and explain the strong empirical support for the impact of interpersonal relationships on customer decision making. Beyond these theoretical foundations, relationship theory also needs to encompass:
-Relationship quality: Similar to the notion of tie strength (i.e., relational bonds between actors) from network theory, the quality of relational bonds with an exchange partner refers to diverse interaction characteristics, such as commitment, trust, gratitude, reciprocity norms, and exchange efficiency.
-Relationship breadth: As a measure of the number of relational bonds with an exchange partner, this dimension suggests that when relationships feature many interpersonal ties, they can provide information, profit opportunities, and protections against severed ties (e.g., due to reorganizations, turnover).
-Relationship composition: A diverse, authoritative contact portfolio increases a seller’s ability to effect change in its customers’ organizations. With diverse contacts, the seller can confirm information across different perspectives and gain access to critical decision makers.
42. Write a short note about why maintaining relationships is important, from the standpoint of negative events.
Answer: A negative event can overwhelm an accumulation of positive activities. Long-term RM success thus often depends more on preventing the bad than on promoting the good. Negative activities generally have approximately twice as strong an effect as positive activities, but not all negative events are the same. Perceived unfairness or betrayal is probably the most potent relationship poison, with direct and powerful negative effects, such as undermining customer cooperation, flexibility, and performance. It also aggravates the negative effects of more conventional activities, such as daily conflict, disagreements, or opportunism. A party that invests heavily in the relationship, only to have the partner free-ride or cheat, seeks to punish this failure to reciprocate. Perceptions of unfairness thus lead directly to emotional, punitive, and retaliatory behaviors. For example, customers often leave only after some perceived unfairness pushes them to expend the substantial effort and cost required to switch to another brand.
43. Write a short note about targeting and adapting relationships marketing strategies.
Answer: Various causal drivers thus are responsible for RM effectiveness and building relationship equity; their effects also depend on environmental or contextual factors though. For example, seller expertise might be a strong positive antecedent to relational equity in general, but its influence also depends on whether customers are rebuying a commodity product (e.g., gasoline), in which case they have little interest in expertise, or investing in a highly technical, unfamiliar product (e.g., HDTV), in which case they likely find this RM activity very valuable. Understanding these contingencies can help managers target customers with specific, appropriate, adapted activities and strategies that optimize the returns on their RM investments.

44. What are the key stages in a relationship lifecycle?
Answer: Most relationships begin with an exploratory or early stage, featuring limited confidence in the partner’s ability and trustworthiness but also a willingness to explore the relationship to determine if the potential benefits exceed those available f