Business Marketing Relationships: An Empirical Generalization with Implications for Future Research

An important fundamental issue in marketing is the understanding of the relational context in which exchanges occur (cf. Bagozzi 1975; Houston and Gassenheimer 1987; Kotler and Levy 1969). Several marketing scholars have maintained that relationship marketing actually represents a paradigm shift in marketing (Gronroos 1991; Sheth and Parvatiyar 1995; Webster 1992), permanently changing the competitive playing field for firms and consumers (McKenna 1991). Given its importance, we argue that future research on relationships in marketing needs to be driven by a clearer understanding of the complexities and intricacies of these relationships. To guide this understanding, we review and integrate a large body of empirical work by marketing scholars on business marketing relationships (BMRs). We build a theoretical framework, against which we can assess extant relational theories, e.g. transaction costs economics, resource dependence, social exchange, and suggest areas for future research.