Impersonal vs. Personal Exchanges in Marketing Relationships

Considerations about the future of marketing discipline bring to the surface an important question of marketing relationships management. The aim of this paper is to analyse the phenomenon of marketing relationships as a paradigmatic shift in the marketing discipline. Through the critique of marketing management approach we are searching for the theory that will help to transcend the action oriented marketing philosophy. Our discussion is rooted in the social exchange theory and the two fundamental processes of human exchange interactions – the process of friendship building and the process of power relations. Through the application of the analysis of the processes of interpersonal relations we discuss marketing relationships and extreme types of marketing perspectives: power relations, intrusive selling, conventional marketing exchange and marketing relationships. Conventional (transactional) marketing management and marketing relationships fundamentally at odds with one another, resembling the old Chinese concepts of yin and yang. We conclude that managers are facing the problem of "schizomarketing disorientation", when entering into different marketing processes with different segments of customers.

[1]  S. Fournier,et al.  Preventing the premature death of relationship marketing. , 1998, Harvard business review.

[2]  L. Berry.  Relationship marketing of services—growing interest, emerging perspectives , 1995 .

[3]  Martin Christopher,et al.  Relationship Marketing: Bringing Quality, Customer Service and Marketing Together , 1993 .

[4]  S. Hunt,et al.  The Commitment-Trust Theory of Relationship Marketing , 1994 .

[5]  P. Seybold.  Get inside the lives of your customers. , 2001, Harvard business review.

[6]  Douglas Brownlie,et al.  The Four Ps of the Marketing Concept: Prescriptive, Polemical, Permanent and Problematical , 1992 .

[7]  Louise Young,et al.  Business Dancing — the Nature and Role of Interfirm Relations in Business Strategy , 1994 .

[8]  R. Bagozzi.  Reflections on relationship marketing in consumer markets , 1995 .

[9]  Russell W. Belk,et al.  Gift Giving as Agapic Love: An Alternative to the Exchange Paradigm Based on Dating Experiences , 1993 .

[10]  C. Tynan.  A review of the marriage analogy in relationship marketing , 1997 .

[11]  S. Fournier,et al.  Consumers and Their Brands: Developing Relationship Theory in Consumer Research , 1998 .

[12]  Frederick E. Webster.  Market-Driven Management: Using The New Marketing Concept to Create a Customer-Oriented Company , 1994 .

[13]  Z. Jancic.  Establishing Marketing Relationships in the Advertising Agency Business: A Transitional Economy Case , 1998 .

[14]  C. Tynan,et al.  Relationship marketing in consumer markets – Rhetoric or reality? , 2000 .

[15]  P. Ekeh,et al.  Social Exchange Theory: The Two Traditions. , 1975 .

[16]  T. Levitt,et al.  The Marketing Imagination , 1983 .

[17]  William E. Halal.  The new management : democracy and enterprise are transforming organizations , 1996 .

[18]  C. Grönroos.  The Marketing Strategy Continuum: Towards a Marketing Concept for the 1990s , 1991 .

[19]  Terry G. Vavra.  Aftermarketing: How to Keep Customers for Life Through Relationship Marketing , 1992 .

[20]  Elizabeth C. Hirschman,et al.  People as Products: Analysis of a Complex Marketing Exchange , 1987 .

[21]  G. C. Homans,et al.  Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms. , 1975 .

[22]  C. Grönroos.  Relationship marketing: strategic and tactical implications , 1996 .

[23]  G. Day.  Managing market relationships , 2000 .

[24]  Robert J. Keith,et al.  The Marketing Revolution , 1960 .

[25]  Jule B. Gassenheimer,et al.  Marketing and Exchange , 1987 .

[26]  J. Sheth,et al.  Relationship marketing in consumer markets: Antecedents and consequences , 1995 .

[27]  Sandra E. Moriarty,et al.  Driving brand value : using integrated marketing to manage profitable stakeholder relationships , 1997 .

[28]  R. McKenna.  Relationship Marketing: Own the Market Through Strategic Customer Relationships , 1992 .

[29]  R. Brodie,et al.  Understanding contemporary marketing: Development of a classification scheme , 1997 .

[30]  E. Gummesson.  The new marketing—Developing long-term interactive relationships , 1987 .

[31]  C. Tynan,et al.  The Utility of the Relationship Metaphor in Consumer Markets: A Critical Evaluation , 1999 .

[32]  J. Scanzoni.  3 – Social Exchange and Behavioral Interdependence , 1979 .

[33]  Humanistic Marketing: Beyond the Marketing Concept , 1987 .

[34]  R. Bagozzi.  Marketing as Exchange , 1975 .

[35]  P. Blau.  Exchange and Power in Social Life , 1964 .

[36]  Mark S. Granovetter.  Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness , 1985, American Journal of Sociology.

[37]  Evert Gummesson,et al.  Total Relationship Marketing , 1999 .

[38]  Richard D. Christy,et al.  Relationship marketing in consumer markets , 1996 .