The Impact of Relationship Marketing on the Performance of Chinese Smartphone Companies

Since the 1950s, most marketing practices have focused on “exchange,” so marketing research has mainly focused on transactions between products and currencies. Researchers believe that the essence of marketing practice is a series of practical actions undertaken by enterprises in order to convert products into currency. That is, transactional marketing and its core is transaction. Influenced by transactional marketing, more emphasis has been placed on achieving product sales and encouraging customers to buy, but there has been a lack of in-depth research on maintaining relationships between businesses and customers. With significant productivity gains and the continuous development of a market economy, transactional marketing cannot solve practical problems well and has been questioned and criticized in many areas, especially from relationship marketing. More and more scientists are emphasizing the importance of maintaining good relationships with external partners in order to survive and thrive in the increasingly competitive marketplace. From a macroeconomic perspective, corporate development requires establishing relationships with government departments, suppliers and recruiting agencies; from a microeconomic perspective, companies need to establish business relationships with customers. As a result, the emphasis in corporate marketing practices is gradually shifting towards building mutually beneficial relationships. From a relationship marketing perspective, corporate marketing practices should focus on building interactive relationships with customers, follow the “customer first” principle and place great emphasis on customer service. Businesses should not only view customer buying behavior as individual purchasing behavior, but also view customers as important partners. According to this relationship positioning, for companies, personal transactional behavior should not be given too much attention, and it is important to establish long-term and stable relationships with customers. Relationship marketing is focused on customer service and aims to add value to the consumer. The main way is to increase the buyer's profit by reducing the client's total costs or increasing the client's total income. The company is committed to establishing and maintaining long-term and stable relationships and interactions with customers, providing customers with high-quality products and services through communication and interaction, meeting the individual needs of customers, thereby increasing customer satisfaction and the likelihood of repeat purchases. This helps to build loyalty to the company's products and services and ultimately brings the company huge profits and long-term value. Thus, the introduction of relationship marketing helps to strengthen the competitive advantage in the market and has a positive effect on the long-term development of the enterprise. The importance of relationship marketing is also different for different industries: the tech industry (communications, smartphones) is heavily dependent on relationship marketing. The mobile phone industry in China has developed rapidly over the past two decades and a number of very prominent international mobile smartphone companies have emerged. This is due to the constant investments of Chinese companies in science and technology, as well as with a number of Chinese companies that orient marketing practices to the main challenges of the Chinese market. Taking smartphones as an example, Chinese smartphone manufacturers such as Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Horner, Yealink and other brands have taken a significant share of the Chinese market away from foreign mobile phone brands, even in the global market. A decade of rapid development of the smartphone industry in China is also a decade of relationship marketing in China. These companies are actively using relationship marketing techniques to increase brand awareness, customer loyalty, and ultimately, their performance.