Analysis of relationship marketing based on value exchange in business markets with importance-performance approach(Study case: Parsian Electronic Commerce Company)

Aim and Introduction:
In the course of its development and evolution, marketing gradually moved away from the philosophy of production and sales, and customer-oriented and establishing relationships with customers were placed on the agenda of leading companies. Relationship marketing emerged as a customer-oriented philosophy, emphasizing communication with customers, understanding their needs, and responding to those needs with appropriate products and productions. Now, however, relationship marketing has gone beyond its traditional concept and instead of knowing the needs of customers through communication between the organization and the customer, it has changed its direction to a network of interactive, bilateral and multilateral relationships. In this new approach, the goal is not only to create value for customers, but to co-create value in interaction with customers is on the agenda of businesses.
Therefore, in general, it can be said that value creation has a special place in commercial markets and inter-organizational relations. From this point of view, relationship marketing and establishing long-term relationships with customers should be done with a view based on value creation. This issue is doubly important in inter-organizational relations where the customers are the same commercial companies. This study is also very important from a negative point of view, because if the businesses active in commercial areas neglect the exchange of value with customers, they will simply lose their market share and give up their position to the leading companies in this field. that business customers have more knowledge, sophistication and expertise and will work with companies that co-create value with them. This issue has a special place in theory. Nevertheless, although the categories of "value creation" and "relationship marketing" have been emphasized in various studies, these two concepts have been studied completely separately, and a deep research gap is observed around relationship marketing based on value exchange. Also, the requirements related to the atmosphere of commercial markets and the relations of companies with each other have been neglected from the researchers' point of view. Therefore, many research gaps are observed in the conceptualization of relational marketing based on value exchange, specialized in the field of commercial markets. The theoretical synergy and the contribution of this research in increasing knowledge is the recognition of the underlying structures of creating shared value with customers through relationship marketing in the context of industrial relations, which was carried out with an approach based on a mixed exploratory design. Therefore, the current research answers the key question, what is the status of relational marketing based on value exchange in commercial markets?
Methodology:
This study is based on a pragmatic paradigm from a philosophical point of view, which was conducted with an inductive-analogical approach. Also, the current study is an applied-developmental research from the point of view of the goal, and from the point of view of the data collection method, it is considered a cross-sectional survey research. To achieve the goal of the research, a mixed exploratory research design (qualitative-quantitative) was used.
The community of participants of the qualitative section includes professors of marketing management and managers of Parsian Electronic Commerce Company. According to the view of Miller et al. (2010), five criteria of keyness, popularity, theoretical knowledge, variety, motivation to participate were used to select the participants. Therefore, in the qualitative part of this study, an interview was conducted with the senior and experienced managers of Parsian Electronic Commerce Company through targeted sampling. The sampling process continued until reaching theoretical saturation. Therefore, 10 managers participated in this study. The statistical population of the quantitative part included the customers of commercial markets and specifically the customers of Parsian Electronic Commerce Company. The sample size was estimated to be 384 people using Kurkan's formula for large communities. Because the statistical population is homogeneous, a simple cluster-random method was used for sampling.
To collect research data, semi-structured interviews were used in the qualitative part and questionnaires were used in the quantitative part.
The validity of the qualitative part was evaluated and confirmed according to Lincoln and Goba's point of view based on the four criteria of validity, transferability, verifiability and reliability from the point of view of judges. To measure the reliability of the qualitative part, the percentage of agreement observed based on the Holstein formula was estimated at 0.638, which is more than 0.6 and is an acceptable value.
In order to analyze the data in the qualitative part, qualitative theme analysis method (THEM) was used and the themes of relational marketing analysis based on value exchange in commercial markets were identified and the relationships between themes were explained. In the quantitative part, the importance-performance analysis method (gap analysis) was used. The analysis of interview texts was done in the qualitative part of the research using MaxQDA software and in the quantitative part using SPSS software.
Finding:
The research findings showed that, based on the network of research themes, functional value and social value affect emotional value, cognitive value and situational value. Also, the results showed that the mentioned components have an impact on the co-creation of value with customers and value creation and lead to the exchange of relational marketing value.
Discussion and Conclusion::
The present study was conducted with the aim of analyzing relationship marketing based on value exchange in commercial markets with the importance-performance approach in Parsian Electronic Trade Company. After collecting data, analyzing and interpreting it, the model was presented, and the research findings were summarized.Finally, the results of the research showed that through the value exchange of relational marketing, customer orientation and relationship with customers can be influenced, and it leads to customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and customer trust, and finally customer retention is possible.