76 The Marketing Book
predictive one, let alone one which aids the
diagnostic process. The basic micro-economic
framework which underlies the ‘competitive
advantage’ approach, central to much market-
ing strategy analysis, should not be seen as an
adequate description of the analytical and
processual complexities in specific situations. It
is a framework for predicting the key impacts
of a series of market-mediated transactions: at
the very least outcomes are the joint effect of
decisions themselves and the selection process.
In this sense the only valid criticism of the
application of such a model is that either the
needs of the situation are not met by the
inherent nature of the model or that the model
fails to perform within its own terms.
Relationship marketing
Equally, we may wonder how far the new
found concern for relationship marketing is
indeed new at all. The recognition that custom-
ers faced switching costs and that therefore the
retention of existing customers was clearly an
effective economic strategy is certainly not new.
One can therefore sympathize with Baker
(1993) when he commented:
For example, the propositions that companies
need to understand the industry infrastructure
and/or that working closely with customers is
likely to improve product development success
rates have been known and accepted many
years now and are embedded in the curricula of
most business schools.
(p. 88)on the book by Regis McKenna (1992), Relation-
ship Marketing.
More recently, Mattsson (1997) has con-
sidered much more critically the relationship
between the underlying approaches in the
‘markets as networks’ and relationship market-
ing perspectives. He rightly observed that
much of the problem lay in the various differ-
ent approaches claiming to represent relation-
ship marketing:
My conclusion is that if we take the limited
view of relationship marketing, we come close
to the first extreme position stated in the
beginning of this article: relationship marketing
and the network perspective have very little in
common. Some relationship marketing aspects
are even contradictory to basic views in the
network perspective. Relationship marketing in
its limited interpretation is just a marketing
strategy aimed to increase customer loyalty,
customer satisfaction and customer retention.
Relationship marketing is aided by modern
information technology that makes it possible
to individualize communication with custom-
ers in a mass market. In that sense relationship
marketing is just a basic application of the
marketing management thinking.
However, let us consider the extended
view that the relationship marketing means
true interaction between the parties over time, a
relatively high mutual dependency between
seller and buyer and a major concern for how
individual relationships are interconnected in
nets and networks. Then we will come much
closer to my second initial position that rela-
tionship marketing and the network perspec-
tive have much to gain from more research
interaction and mutual awareness than what is
presently the case. Relationship marketing
research would benefit from the following
aspects of network perspective research: more
focus on embeddedness of actors and relation-
ships, more consideration of the buyer’s point
of view, more descriptive studies on interaction
and relationships over time, more concern at
the meso and macro levels in the governance
structure, more use of longitudinal research
methods, including case studies. Obviously,
both relationship marketing and the network
perspective must become increasingly aware of,
and contribute to, research developments in a
broader social science framework where the
focus is on the function of relationships
between economic actors.It may well be that the relationship marketing
movement will have a rather similar impact
on marketing to that of the market share in
the 1970s and early 1980s. As such, the
renewed emphasis on the nature of the cus-
tomer relationship, which is self-evidently