In short, Microsoft has been successful in relationship marketing in their core businesses in addition to sustaining momentum in the global application and software development community. The company has struggled however in its effort to use relationship marketing in the areas of Internet-based advertising models, sales of enterprise server components and applications including Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Supply Chain Management (SCM). These are all enterprise software areas that require an inordinate amount of trust and continual relationship building to be successful. In these areas Microsoft is challenged. Add to this the fact that Microsoft's channel strategy has at times been contradictory, and there is ample evidence of the company not being trusted in many reseller and indirect channels globally. Recommendations

Microsoft's success with developers and the willingness to openly collaborate with them in the creation of entirely new applications underscore what researchers have found to be the cornerstone of effective relationship marketing, and this is the creation of trust (Porter, Donthu, 2008). Microsoft must take these lessons learned and apply them to their channel strategies starting with consistency and leading to high levels of collaboration if their indirect selling strategies are to be successful (Dong, Swain, Berger, 2007). Second, Microsoft needs to concentrate on their enterprise applications business, specifically focusing on the development of relationship strategies that more...

Third, Microsoft needs to address the lack of trust throughout much of its partner base in the areas of enterprise software including CRM, ERP and SCM by creating a cohesive relationship marketing strategy specific to the needs of their purchasers. Again Microsoft focuses primarily on demographics to win in this market, when collaboration and higher levels of trust need to be generated (Singh, Mitchell, 2005)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Background and Introduction

Main Conclusions

Recommendations

BENEFITS and LIABILITIES of RELATIONSHIP MARKETING

Background

Consistency and Collaboration key to Channel Trust and Relationships

Segmenting on Customer Relationship Needs Not Demographics in ERP

Effective Relationship Marketing with Business for Online Advertising

Future Trends

Limitations, Conclusions and Recommendations

Benefits and Liabilities of Relationship Marketing

The future of Microsoft is in their approach to resolving their challenges in relationship marketing. Their strengths in this area include the ability to create communities of developers who readily collaboration both between each other and with Microsoft, the ability to segment developer markets and the emerging gaming markets through relationship marketing and unique market planning processes they have perfected internally, and the development of a trusted brand for desktop