functional department to another, whereas traditional marketing uses the functional (or 'silo') department approach where stages of production are handled by different departments. The legacy of traditional marketing can still be seen in the traditional four Ps of the marketing mix: pricing, product management, promotion, and placement. According to Gordon (1999), the marketing mix approach is too limited to provide a usable framework for assessing and developing customer relationships in many industries and should be replaced by the relationship marketing alternative model where the focus is on customers, relationships and interaction over time rather than markets and products. In contrast, relationship marketing is cross-functional, organised around processes that involve all aspects of an organization. In fact, some commentators prefer to call relationship marketing 'relationship management' because it involves much more than that which is included in normal marketing. Because of its broad scope, relationship marketing can be effective in many contexts. As well as being relevant to 'for profit' businesses, research indicates that relationship marketing can be useful for organizations in the voluntary sector and in the public sector. Martin Christopher, Adrian Payne and David Ballantyne at the Cranfield School of Management claim that relationship marketing has the potential to forge a synthesis between quality management, customer service management and marketing. Approaches Satisfaction Relationship marketing relies on the communication and acquisition of consumer requirements solely from existing customers in a mutually beneficial exchange usually involving permission for contact by the customer through an opt-in system. With particular relevance to customer satisfaction, the relative price and quality of goods and services produced or sold through a company alongside customer service generally determine the amount of sales relative to that of competing companies. Although groups targeted through relationship marketing may be large, accuracy of communication and overall relevance to the customer remains higher than that of direct marketing. Retention A principle of relationship marketing is the retention of customers in order to ensure repeated trade from preexisting customers by satisfying requirements above those of competing companies through a mutually beneficial relationship. This technique balances new customers and opportunities with current and existing customers to maximise profit and counteracts the leaky bucket theory of business, where new customers in older direct marketing-oriented businesses are gained at the expense of the loss of older customers. This process of 'churning' is less economically viable than retaining all or the majority of customers using both direct