The role of transactional versus relational data in IMC programs: Bringing customer data together

In this exploratory study of integrated marketing communications (IMC), we bring together relational and transactional data, and sales and marketing views, to investigate whether firms can enhance their position in the market in terms of both marketing-oriented and sales-based performance benchmarks. This article examines, in a business-to-business services context, the relationships between collecting various types of customer transaction and relational data, customer data quality, and two types of business unit performance. The first type of performance is a more traditional sales-oriented metric of sales-oriented business growth, growth in sales, and net income. The second type is a less traditional marketing-oriented metric, called marketing-oriented customer performance, a summed measure of retention rate, share of wallet, lifetime customer value, and return on investment (ROI). An extensive review of different types of transaction and relational data produced two different categories of transaction and relationship information.