Foreword

This book completes a trilogy that began in 1991 with Relationship
Marketing, which was one of the first attempts to define the newly
emerging concept from which the book took its name. Following
this in 1995 the current team of authors produced a companion
volume of selected readings, Relationship Marketing for Competitive
Advantage. These readings were chosen to provide a broad, multi-
faceted view of the by now rapidly developing arena of
Relationship Marketing.
Such has been the interest amongst teachers and students of
Relationship Marketing that we felt it appropriate to augment these
first two volumes with a third, this time constructed around a
number of case studies and case histories.
The framework used within this book is a modified version of the
‘Six Markets’ model, first advanced in the original Relationship
Marketing. This simple but practical framework suggests that there
are a number of market domains as well as the final marketplace
that must be addressed if long-term profitability is to be assured.
Since the development of the original Six Markets model, the
authors, their colleagues and students have used this framework as
the basis for assessing the extent to which true, pan-company rela-
tionship marketing strategies are applied in the world of business.
It has proven to be a powerful diagnostic tool, capable of aiding the
development of successful relationship marketing strategies by
highlighting potential weaknesses in one or more of the market
domains and the stumbling blocks that may arise as a result of such
neglect.
The Six Markets model, though continually evolving, has been used
by the authors and their students in over 50 real world applications.
During this time the framework has demonstrated its merits through
the insights it provides, establishing its worth as a practical analytical
tool to explain and predict success or failure in the marketplace.