Relationship marketing

Relationship Marketing is emerging as a new phenomenon. However, relationship oriented marketing practices date back to the pre-Industrial era. In this article, we trace the history of marketing practices and illustrate how the advent of mass production, the emergence of middlemen, and the separation of the producer from the consumer in the Industrial era led to a transactional focus of marketing. Now, due to technological advances, direct marketing is staging a comeback, leading to a relationship orientation. The authors contend that with the evolution of Relationship Marketing, the hitherto prominent exchange paradigm of marketing will be insufficient to explain the growing marketing phenomena of collaborative involvement of customers in the production process. An alternate paradigm of marketing needs to be developed that is more process rather than outcome oriented, and emphasizes value creation rather than value distribution.     

Trade in Services and the Multilateral Trade Negotiations

The dispute between developed and developing countries overthe inclusion of services in the Uruguay Round of trade negotiationsreflects critical differences in perspective on substantiveissues. In particular, these substantive divisions arise fromthe differences between services and goods in matters such asregulation and the requirement in many instances of freedomto move productive factors across national boundaries—forexample, the "right to establish" that would permit the providerof services to get to the user. In addition, developing countriessee the developed countries as seeking concessions on servicetrade in exchange for removal of the latter's existing and potentialbarriers on trade in goods, rather than establishing quid proquos within the service compact itself. Developing countrieshave possible export advantages in the service sector and havemuch to gain by joining actively in negotiating a services compactthat permits them to exploit these advantages.