ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview delineating diverse disciplines’ contributions to relationship marketing theory as it has evolved over time. It presents key insights from evolutionary psychology as an overarching theoretical framework to understand the mechanics of marketing relationships. The chapter describes multiple theoretical perspectives and constructs to distill three key types of customer–company relationships, focused on interpersonal relationships, interfirm relationships, and online relationships mediated by technology. It examines these three types of marketing relationships to weave a comprehensive theoretical framework of relationship marketing. The chapter discusses the specifics of customer–company relationships, as detailed by these various theoretical approaches, and instead comprehend the overall functioning of relationships. It reviews the critical pairs—gratitude and reciprocity and unfairness and punishment—in detail next. Interfirm relationships involve multiple interactions among many people at multiple levels in the organization—in effect, a network of multilevel relationships. The composite relationship quality construct parallels the concept of tie strength in network theory.
