COMPETITIVE PAPER MEASUREMENT OF CUSTOMER LOYALTY AS AN ELEMENT OF

For a long time marketing scholars have been formulating suggestions that concern building trade relations between salesmen and buyers. Changing market environment, however, contributes to the fact that these relations are perceived in a more and more complex way. Moreover, new methods of analysing such relations are continually being explored. In western countries already in the seventies it was noticed that bargaining power of institutional customers had clearly grown up. Such a situation requires from marketing specialists using more interactive and individualized instruments transcending the traditional 4P model. The interest in immaterial and long-term aspects of contacts between firms (Business to Business- B2B) is connected with the development of the so-called relationship marketing (RM) paradigm in this area. Relationship marketing postulates raising by firms multidimensional (transcending sale data) institutional knowledge base about customers. The market information system has to serve to arrange customers in accordance with their long-term value for the firm. On this basis there follows rational allocation of the marketing budget because most of all resources is allocated on tightening the cooperation (eg. by the individualisation of the offer) with particular customers treated as potential long-term partners