Most of today’s marketing organizations take what might be called the industrial approach to consumers: snagging demographic data, matching it with purchasing data, and segmenting customers into profitability tiers.

But are consumers just resources to be harvested for the next up-selling opportunity? Jill Avery of Harvard Business School, Susan Fournier of Boston University, and John Wittenbraker of the market-research firm GfK argue in the July-August issue that this view misses an important reality: that consumers are looking for certain kinds of relationships with companies. Some consumers might want to be treated as friends, others as colleagues. Some might want to be just fleeting or casual acquaintances. Because marketing organizations don’t get this, consumers are too often frustrated by companies’ inability to meet their relationship requirements.

Marketing organizations need to reorient themselves so that they can use their powerful customer-relationship-management technologies to capture and make good use of relationship data and, ultimately, become good relationship partners with consumers.

Global research into more than 200 brands in 11 industries, including hair care, airlines, cars, and media, led the authors to identify 29 distinct types of relationships, ranging from complete strangers to best friends and including both negative and positive types of connections. Companies not only need to figure out what kinds of relationships their customers have and want with the brand, they also have to figure out how much value each type of relationship offers, so that consumers’ ties with the firm can be managed intelligently. Ideally, a company should maintain a relationship portfolio that supports its long-term strategy.

Determining the value of various relationship types requires considering a number of trade-offs. One of them is whether a given type makes it easier or harder for the company to charge a premium. Another is whether a particular type can help a firm build market share. This chart shows where each type stands on those two dimensions.

Fling relationships, for example, are marked by passion, so the company can charge a premium when dealing with these customers, but a company with a lot of fling customers might not be able to build much market share. In a best friend relationship, the customer is looking for a close connection, so building market share with these customers is easier. But close relationships offer relatively low potential for charging premiums—in fact, a price increase can be seen by consumers as a betrayal of trust.