Relationship marketing: Back to basics?

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Relationship marketing, however defined, has received considerable attention recently. To its advocates, relational exchange between buyer and seller represents a paradigm shift away from the traditional focus on individual transactional exchanges. Critics of relationship marketing argue that the concept is poorly defined and is merely a new way of describing what businesses have been doing for a long time. This paper recognizes that the need to develop long‐term relationships between an organization and its customers is becoming greater. It is however questioned whether marketing educators are providing students with the abilities to take a mature approach to relationship marketing issues, in line with the changing nature of employers' business. Suggestions for introducing relationship marketing to the undergraduate syllabus are made at a number of levels, from an additional module for an introductory “principles of marketing course” to a multi‐disciplinary degree majoring in relationship marketing.