Atul Parvatiyar

The evolution of 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.

Evolving Relationship Marketing into a Discipline

Abstract Relationship marketing is considered a paradigm change in both academic and practitioner literature. However, despite its popularity, relationship marketing has not yet evolved into becoming a discipline. The authors propose focus on eight areas to help relationship marketing evolve into a discipline. They compare the successful evolution of consumer behavior, services marketing and marketing strategy with the failure of international marketing, social marketing and business marketing as a discipline.

DOES RELATIONSHIP MARKETING PAY? AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION OF RELATIONSHIP MARKETING PRACTICES IN HOSPITALS

Abstract Relationship marketing has been gaining momentum as business entities realize that short-term sales/transaction orientation has several pitfalls for building customer loyalty and continued patronage. Relationship marketing has the potential to improve marketing productivity (Sheth and Parvatiyar, 1995a) . Development and implementation of customer retention programs, partnering with customers, suppliers, and competitors, and other relationship marketing practices have become a way of life in the 1990s. What is the nature of relationship marketing practices adopted by hospitals in the United States? How do these practices correlate with the performance of such hospitals? These and related issues are the focus of this empirical investigation.

The antecedents and consequences of integrated global marketing

International marketing is undergoing a transformation to become integrated global marketing. The emphasis has shifted from understanding and explaining between‐country differences to identifying transnational similarities; and from country‐by‐country functional adjustment of marketing mix elements to seeking global cross‐functional integration. In this paper, the authors discuss how the contextual factors of international marketing are changing to make between‐country differences less relevant for international marketing practice. The emergence of integrated global marketing has a greater potential for theory development in international marketing as it is not contextually bound and thus can be generalized.

Synergistic pay-offs in Indo-US strategic alliances

Abstract In a highly competitive business environment, strategic alliances between companies best ensure their continued survival. An increasing number of firms are therefore willing to share control for the larger benefits which an alliance offers. In recent years many US and Indian corporations have forged an ‘entente’ to derive such synergistic payoffs. The 1990s are likely to witness a further growth in the popularity of alliances between Indian and US firms. This paper examines the benefits derived by the collaborating companies and studies the experience of some of these firms in building cross-border partnerships.