ABSTRACT
The increasing absorption of “interactivity” into the discourse of contemporary marketing theory can be seen as a function of the mainstream struggle to adopt a service rather than product orientation. Relationship Marketing, CRM, the Service-Dominant Logic of Marketing (Vargo & Lusch, 2004), and the gradual prioritizing of value creation within the marketing enterprise (manifesting in such diverse ways as the AMA re-defi nition and Prahalad’s co-creation of unique value) are all networked expressions of a dissatisfaction with, and consequent withdrawal from, a product orientation, or Goods-Dominant Logic. While interactivity appears to be a common central element across all of these variations of the service orientation, there have so far been no studies looking specifi cally at the part it plays in helping to build the foundations of this increasingly dominant discourse stream in mainstream marketing. Consequently, in this chapter I intend to examine the way in which understandings of interactivity have been developed and used in this service (re-)orientation, specifi cally in the discourse of Relationship Marketing and the S-D logic that has latterly appeared to bolster it. My contention will be that RM discourse avoids constructing a coherent understanding of interactivity because it attempts to avoid engaging with issues of communication altogether. The constructions that it has put in place of communication (learning, experience, and value) are developed with almost no real concern for the details of the interactivity that is asserted to lie at their center. Relationship Marketing is thus typifi ed by an intense turning away from communication that I will metaphorically associate with an autistic response to relationships.
