Avon Marketing Case Study

2.3 The Avon lady
Avon’s roots go back to 1886 when door to door salesman, David McConnell founded the California Perfume Company (Karabell 2009). Its first sales representative was a Mrs Persis Foster Eames Albee who earned a living travelling across America by horse drawn buggy and train, selling perfumes door to door and encouraging others to do the same (Kalan 2013).
Perfume expanded into a range of cosmetics and the Slogan, “Avon Calling,” became an icon of twentieth century America. The company grew into a major employer of women, expanded overseas and kept the door to door model when other companies were opening stores (Karabell 2009).
Avon developed into a USD 11 billion company, selling products in over 100 countries (Kalan 2013).

No pagination) stresses the “paramount” need for brands to make direct and in-person contact with customers and potential customers in India, given that the internet has not yet reached many households. It could be argued that this closer contact allows for a clearer understanding of customers and a climate more conducive to relationship marketing.
Anderson and Roberston (1995 cited by Byrnes et al 2008 p80) state that buyers often have greater loyalty to salespeople than they have towards the employers of salespeople – therefore the success of the relationship is critical for both the customer and the seller.
In many parts of the world, the dramatic growth of companies and their customer bases have created distance between decision makers and those they ultimately serve (Tyagi and Kumar 2004). Relationship marketing takes marketing back to its basic principles by acknowledging the deeply entrenched importance of maintaining customer relationships in order to generate loyalty and repeat business (Drummond et al 2008).
The importance of the relationship between the seller and buyer is the key feature of relationship marketing. This differs from the traditional 4Ps approach (product, price, place, promotion) where the focus is on the products and services and a short term transactional orientation between the buyer and seller (Baines et al

The Chinese claim “If you do not have a relationship, you do not exist” (Doole and Lowe 2008 p93). A similar concept in North India is called “jan pehchan,” which in Hindi essentially means “who you know” reinforcing the importance of the right connections (Yunxia et al. Undated). The strength, shared value and permanence of the dialogue between a seller and customer are referred to as connectedness (Fill 2011).
Personal selling evolved from the time when humankind first experienced a surplus of a commodity and sought to trade with others. In ancient Greece (around 400 BC), criers who would proclaim new laws could also be hired by traders to promote their goods (Egan 2015). It could be said that the outdoor and public sales activities of the Shakti women, promoting their products, are not dissimilar.
Nowadays, India is not the only market where brands have been thinking more laterally to reflect the circumstances on the ground. In South Africa, Nestlé products are sold on foot and if a consumer wants to buy one of the world’s top ten most valuable brands – Coca Cola - (Forbes 2014) in Nigeria, it may come from a vendor in a canoe (The Guardian