CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Introduction
In the 21st century world of business, the ability of an organisation to remain productive in the face of stiff industrial competition has become a focal point for organisational leaders. Many small, medium, and large organisations have gone under because of the inability to envisage the manner to pursue the most relevant tactical decisions. A host of researchers claims that if an organisation wants to survive in the long-term, they must find a formula to guarantee customer loyalty. Bhakar et al. (2015) asserted the role of customer loyalty in driving the sustainability of an organisation by expressing that where the customers are loyal, the proportions they purchase will increase and this allows an entity to survive both in the short and long term.
Similarly, Bustin (2008) promotes that the priority responsibility of the business leaders is to keep their organisations alive, moving towards the higher grounds. The key to this is to increase the company’s value to the customers, which lays the foundation for customer loyalty, thereby driving sustainability. RAI (2014) suppose that where an organisation fails to come up with a visionary methodology that looks into prolonged relationship orientation in interactions with the customers, which equate to customer loyalty, the chances that the firm will enter into a state of myopia is inherently high.

The question, however, is what an organisation must do to drive customer loyalty, and ultimately, the survival of the company. This has to do with the marketing processes pursued by an organisation. Udegbe, Adekunle, and Olumoko (2010) claimed that marketing and customer loyalty are inherently related. As such, marketing is a crucial driver of customer loyalty. While this is the case, Nimako and Mensah (2014) demonstrate that this relationship is not always positive. It mostly depends on the nature of the marketing effort that an organisation puts. Nimako and Mensah (2014) reveal that the inability to select the right kind of marketing plans is detrimental as it contributes significantly towards a growing dissatisfaction among customers, which is a fundamental indicator of diminishing brand loyalty. In their Harvard Business Review Article, McGovern and Moon (2007) express that incompetent marketing propositions play a fundamental role in creating enmity between companies and their customers.

Gilbert (2018) listed 25 products that failed because of inadequate marketing. One of the high profile cases is that of the HP TouchPad. The author claims that while the product was appealing save for some minor design problems, HP's approach to marketing was overly insufficient such that the product lasted in the market for only one and a half months (Gilbert, 2018). This brings to the fore the essence of creating exemplary plans when designing a marketing campaign. In the absence of well-thought marketing efforts, the possibility of tying down the customers becomes an overly challenging cause. Confirming this notion is the inquiry agency HfS Research and Accenture (2017), which claimed that to survive and thrive in the present day and the future, an entity has to show its ability to act quickly with insight, intelligence, responsiveness, and flexibility. These fundamentals, according to the research agency, are the keys to not only enhancing but also maximising the experiences of the customers while delivering superior organisational outcomes.

1.2 Research Background
Most organisations today have found out that pursuing unique marketing options is the key to persistently progressive performance indicators such as customer loyalty. Išoraitė (2016) defines customer loyalty as a voluntary decision to not only create but also sustain a long-term relationship with a company that delivers some value to them. Customer loyalty is also the degree to which the customers devote their scarce resources including money, time, and energy, to an organisation's services and products, besides how strong the tendency of the customers to choose one brand over others. Nacif (2012) adds that customer loyalty, also referred to as brand loyalty, is a multidimensional concept, and tends to include behavioral and attitudinal elements. According to the scholar, the psychological aspect of customer loyalty often captures the attitudes of the purchasers towards a product or brand as evidenced by their preferences and attachment to the attributes of the offerings (Nacif, 2012). The behavioral element, on its part, captures the actual purchase behavior of the customers. While echoing Nacif's (2012) idea about the absolute definition of customer loyalty, Bolton, Kannan, and Bramlett (2000) claim that the concept has four main elements. The first is the decision made by the customers on whether to repurchase from the same vendor or supplier persistently. The second element is the decision of how much money one is prepared to spend in a subsequent period. Thirdly is the decision to allocate "share-of-wallet" across competing vendors. Last yet importantly is the resolve to purchase from the same vendor across numerous product categories, also known as cross-selling.
Strategic alliance or partnership is one of the most prominent contemporary marketing initiatives used to drive customer loyalty.

Ghalami (2006) describes strategic partnership as a cause where stakeholders, who might differ in terms of their nature, dedicate their resources to a mutual project over an extended period, spreading the underlying risks among themselves, sharing information, and distributing rewards realised from the relationship. PWC (2015) provided further elucidation concerning strategic partnership. According to the agency, strategic partnership entails some form of a bilateral agreement or a network partnership that have reached consensus to share skills, finances, information, and other numerous resources to pursue a common goal or a host of them. PWC (2015) holds out that strategic partnerships do not include mergers, acquisitions, and supplier relationships. This is so even though such arrangements might include aligning elements. In his article, Czechowska (2013) supposed that strategic partnerships often combine profound rapprochement and flexibility. At the same time, the researchers purport that strategic partnership might take a formal or informal shape. According to Ghalami (2006), the stakeholders that mostly enter into strategic alliances are those that have a business orientation and majorly include suppliers.

Henderson, Dhanaraj, and Avagyan (2014) express that partnerships and alliances have always formed part of humanity in every sphere of life, from the public to private, and from political to business domains. As such, firms have operated with cohorts across businesses as well as inside their value chains for an array of reasons, but the main drivers are the need for sharing risks, knowledge diffusion, and industry deconstruction. Citing a PwC CEO Survey conducted in 2014, Henderson, Dhanaraj, and Avagyan (2014) claim that at least 80 percent of the American Chief Executive Officers are at present seeking for tactical partnerships or are looking forward to doing so in the short or moderate-term future. Henderson, Dhanaraj, and Avagyan (2014) identify that premeditated partnerships are typically established when firms want to procure novel capabilities within their current business. Still citing the PwC study, Henderson, Dhanaraj, and Avagyan (2014) state that 60 percent of the participants surveyed by the research agency revealed that they had had a progressive experience with strategic conglomerates, but 31 percent purported to have failed miserably. To this end, the scholars presented the various factors that determine the success of strategic partnerships. They named these as the alignment of objectives, values, and relevant interest groups, besides effective governance and an emphasis on mutual benefits.

Henderson, Dhanaraj, and Avagyan (2014) suppose that strategic partnerships are especially rife in the pharmaceutical and automobile industries. While this is the case, as demonstrated by the recent trends, the strategic partnership has become vastly ordinary in the telecommunication industry of Saudi Arabia. Prominent service providers such as Zain Saudi Arabia, STC Telecom, and Etihad Etisalat/Mobily have all pursued tactical alliances, however with different stakeholders (Zain Saudi Arabia, 2011, Rasooldeen, 2012, and ZTE, 2018). Founded in 2008, Zain Saudi Arabia became the third telecommunication company in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. One of its legacies is that the firm enrolled more than two million subscribers within a record four months span following its launch. Over the years, Zain Saudi Arabia has recorded persistent improvements in its profitability. For example, as reported by Telecom Lead (2018), the company posted revenues worth SAR 1.952billion and a net profit of SAR 48million in the third quarter of the 2018 financial year. In the previous third quarter of the year 2017, the company had registered net profits equal to SAR three million (Telecom Lead, 2018). What this shows is that Zain Saudi Arabia has in place a winning formula.

STC Telecom, Saudi Telecom Company in full, was the very first telecommunication company offering mobile, landline, internet services, and computer services. The company came into being in 1998 and prevailed as a monopoly in April 2007 upon the incorporation of the second telecommunications company in Saudi Arabia. Nevertheless, STC Telecom remains as the largest company in the sector in almost every sphere ranging from the asset base to the number of employees recruited. Just like Zain Saudi Arabia, STC Telecom has continued to record impressive financial performance over the years. For example, in the first quarter of the 2018 financial year, TeleGeography (2018a) indicates that the company registered a

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