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Achieving relationship marketing effectiveness in business-to-business exchanges

  • Original Empirical Research
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Abstract

Relationship marketing research and practice operate according to the paradigm that firms should invest in relationship marketing to build better relationships, which will generate improved financial performance. However, findings that relationship marketing efforts vary in their effectiveness across customers and may even be detrimental to performance challenge this belief. This article, therefore, offers a theoretical model that addresses three key issues: 1) what factors determine a customer’s need for relational governance (relationship orientation); 2) what mediating mechanism captures the negative effects of relationship marketing on performance (exchange inefficiency); and 3) how does a customer’s relationship orientation determine the effectiveness of relationship marketing, thus allowing for effective segmentation. The authors demonstrate in an empirical study that the trust in the salesperson and exchange inefficiency both mediate the effect of relationship marketing on seller financial outcomes. In addition, customers’ relationship orientation moderates the impact of relationship marketing on both trust and exchange inefficiency.

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Acknowledgment

The authors thank Mark Houston and Murali Mantrala for their input on this project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Washington, PO Box 353200, Seattle, WA, 98195-3200, USA

    Robert W. Palmatier

  2. Department of Marketing, University of Missouri, 428 Cornell Hall, Columbia, MO, 65203, USA

    Lisa K. Scheer

  3. Price College of Business, University of Oklahoma, 307 W. Brooks, Room 207, Norman, OK, 73019-4007, USA

    Kenneth R. Evans

  4. Spears School of Business, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, 74078, USA

    Todd J. Arnold

Authors
  1. Robert W. Palmatier
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  2. Lisa K. Scheer
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  3. Kenneth R. Evans
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  4. Todd J. Arnold
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Robert W. Palmatier.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 4 Measurement items and factor loadings
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Palmatier, R.W., Scheer, L.K., Evans, K.R. et al. Achieving relationship marketing effectiveness in business-to-business exchanges. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. 36, 174–190 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-007-0078-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-007-0078-5

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