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The paper attempts to bring together two management orientations united by a common core value – a customer focus. The paper argues that while both marketing and total quality management (TQM) have customer focus as a core value they both experience difficulties in implementing this operationally – for similar reasons. Developments in thinking about the nature of the two orientations (for example, the move in marketing toward relationship marketing) and their effective operationalisation have created the opportunity for a much greater synthesis of the two and the potential for effective joint implementation. The paper concludes with suggestions regarding the synthesis of TQM and marketing processes.