Marketing de relacionamento

THE DOMAIN AND CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS OF RELATIONSHIP MARKETING

Atul Parvatiyar, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Marketing Goizueta Business School Emory University Atlanta, GA 30322 [phone]

Jagdish N. Sheth, Ph.D. Charles H. Kellstadt Professor of Marketing Goizueta Business School Emory University Atlanta, GA 30322 [phone]

Prepared for: Handbook of Relationship Marketing Jagdish N. Sheth and Atul Parvatiyar, Eds. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA, 1999.

Revised August 28, 1998

THE DOMAIN AND CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS OF RELATIONSHIP MARKETING

In the current era of intense competition and demanding customers, relationship marketing has attracted the expanded attention of scholars and practitioners. Marketing scholars are studying the nature and scope of relationship marketing and developing conceptualizations regarding the value of cooperative and collaborative relationship between buyers and sellers as well as the relationship between different marketing actors, including suppliers, competitors, distributors and internal functions in creating and delivering customer value. Many scholars with interests in various sub-disciplines of marketing, such as channels, services marketing, business-to-business marketing, advertising, and so forth, are actively engaged in studying and exploring the conceptual foundations of relationship marketing. However, the conceptual foundations of relationship marketing are not fully developed as yet. The current growth in the field of relationship marketing is somewhat similar to what we experienced in the early stages of the development of the discipline of consumer behavior. There is a growing interest in the subject matter and many explorations are underway to finding its conceptual foundations. In the floodgate of knowledge, such diverse perspectives are required for understanding this growing phenomenon. Each exploration offers a perspective that should help in further conceptualization of the discipline of