A multi-case study study has been conducted on five grown sports organizations to realize how the organizations have been utilizing various Relationship Marketing (RM) indicators in order to position their image in their target markets. Based on various existing and emergent Stakeholder Causal Scope (SCS) and relevant RM indicator(s), the organizations differentiate their corporate profile or market offering in a way that conveys a central idea relating to their stakeholder relationship value and relevant market positioning. 12 RM indicators, four market positioning dimensions, and subsequent existing and emerging differentiation variables are described in this chapter. Underlying the relevant SCS, the organizations utilize these RM indicators and differentiation variables to design their market offerings in order to position their corporate or market offerings’ image in their target markets. The RM-centred market positioning initiatives of the sports organizations emerge as viable across industries and markets.
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RM keeps a keen eye on stakeholders’ existing relational perspectives in order to nurture and flourish further lucrative relational interaction among associated stakeholders. Focusing on the mutually beneficial relationship values and diverse goals of associated stakeholders, RM administers marketing activities with a long-term outlook, while the stakeholders work interdependently in order to identify, establish, maintain, and enhance value for customers by meeting and exceeding customers’ anticipation in a way that customers expect and accept, and share that value with the involved stakeholders towards a win-win outcome. Moreover, RM helps marketers to assess what level of marketing emphasis should be provided to each stakeholder (Payne, et al., 2001); so that the level of interaction among associated stakeholders can be measurable. Such a RM effort enables to recognize the significance of involvement, roles, responsibilities, accountabilities, and further relational prospects of each of the involved stakeholders. Payne et al. (2005) elaborated that often stakeholders are inadequately recognized by organizations, as a single stakeholder may play multiple roles in a value-network. Therefore, prospective values may not be generated through only the transactional marketing management philosophy. RM enforces additional consideration to a broad range of stakeholders’ interests and causal scope because of their prospective impact on an organization’s value creation process, and because of the systemic effects of interdependencies, which may not previously have been entirely understood (Payne, et al., 2005). Consequently, RM directs the entire marketing management process through a stakeholder engaging approach, where each of the associated stakeholder’s prospective causal scope in terms of identifying, establishing, maintaining and enhancing alternative ways of marketing can be accountable. Stakeholder Causal Scope (SCS) in RM is seen as the “possibility of contributing mutually beneficial value among the key stakeholders or value network” (Shams, 2011a, p. 13; Gide & Shams, 2011a, p. 1063) or cause and consequence of stakeholder relationships and interactions under a contract in the completion of a project (Business Dictionary, 2010).