34 The Marketing Book
1980; Berry, 1983; Jackson, 1985; Webster, 1992),
and therefore are not definitive. Later in the
chapter we will explore the conceptual under-
pinnings of relationship marketing in greater
detail in order to highlight the richness and
diversity of the various research streams.
History of relationship marketing
One of the most interesting things about the
body of knowledge that has come to be known
as relationship marketing is that it emerged at
the end of the 1970s in different research areas
and in several different countries independ-
ently. What is particularly surprising about this
is that it was not until some time later that we
begin to see any discussion emerge between
these various schools of thought. In other
words, relationship marketing was discussed,
defined and explored in different research
‘silos’ with very little consideration of what
was taking place elsewhere. This section will
briefly review the motivation, contribution and
important concepts to emerge in services and
business-to-business research. For a more
detailed review of the history, interested read-
ers are directed to M ̈oller and Halinen (2000).
The relational paradigm has a relatively
long history within the management literature
(Levine and White, 1961; Evan, 1966; Van de
Ven, 1976). In marketing, this approach to
understanding business markets became pop-
ular among the IMP group in Europe in the mid-
1970s with their network or interaction
approach, and received some attention in North
America within the marketing channels lit-
erature (Anderson and Narus, 1984) and later in
the buyer–seller literature (Dwyer et al., 1987).
Since the late 1980s, the issue of inter-firm
relationships has become more strategic (Wil-
son, 1995) because of the increasing emphasis on
networks (Thorelli, 1986) for securing sustain-
able competitive advantage (Jarillo, 1988). The
focus on relationships is still relevant, because
networks are seen to be formed by ‘webs of
relationships’ (Andersson and S ̈oderlund, 1988;
M ̈oller and Wilson, 1995). Thus, by the mid-
1990s, the literature on interorganizational mar-
keting relationships was characterized by a dual
emphasis on single dyadic relationships (the
relational paradigm) and on relationships
within the context of networks (the network
paradigm). Through a review of the contribu-
tions from each sector, it becomes obvious how
‘interaction, relationships and networks’ have
come to dominate contemporary understand-
ings of marketing.Contributions from services
marketing
The 1970s saw the emergence of services
marketing as a distinct aspect of marketing.
Early attempts to apply marketing techniques
were dismissed as being essentially product
focused and failing to deal with the unique
characteristics of services (see Shostack, 1977).
Essentially, the unique characteristics of services- inseparability, intangibility, heterogeneity and
perishability (Zeithaml et al., 1985) – highlight
the importance of people in the service experi-
ence. Although one hopeful contribution to the
services literature in terms of extending the
marketing mix to 7Ps was offered by Booms and
Bitner (1981), this proved to be less compelling
than a focus on the service encounter (Solomon
et al., 1985) and on interaction (Gr ̈onroos, 1983).
The recognition that customer retention was
central to service marketing focused attention
on the notion of creating service relationships
(Gr ̈onroos, 1983, 1989, 1994; Gummesson, 1987)
and led Berry (1983) to coin the term relationship
marketing. To ensure that service delivery
personnel were fully trained and motivated to
build and maintain service relationships, inter-
nal marketing was developed. It rested on the
recognition that ‘a service must be successfully
marketed to the personnel so that the employees
accept the service offering and thoroughly
engage in performing their marketing duties’
(Gr ̈onroos, 1978, p. 594).