Relationship Marketing: Theory and Implementation

The field of relationship marketing can be viewed as a sub-area of market focused management. In this issue, we present some cutting edge work on relationship marketing (RM). At the most simple level, RM strategy prescribes that it is more effective to invest in long-term customer interactions than to rely on a series of potentially unrelated, one-time exchanges. In practice, however, RM is not that simple to implement. There are multiple stakeholders to consider, and organizations must make certain that value is provided for all members of a potential partnership. Here, we consider several strands of relationship marketing, including the concepts of: customer relationship management, stakeholder theory, affinity marketing, promotional incentives, strategy, and leadership.