Relationship Management: Strategic Marketing’s Next Source of Competitive Advantage

This paper integrates two major themes, relationships in business contexts and strategic marketing. Strategic marketing must be understood as the way marketing is carried out in a firm, not as the province of but a select few firm members. Given this theoretical understanding, we develop the idea that how the firm manages relationship processes, consumer and business alike, is fully a strategic marketing issue and not an issue for an unnecessary new marketing paradigm entitled relationship marketing. Insights from consumers are discussed and then a relationship continuum is presented with its associated managerial implications.