Relationship marketing 797 European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 34 No. 7, 2000, pp. 797-815. # MCB University Press, 0309-0566 Received February 1998 Revised July 1998 Relationship marketing in consumer markets Rhetoric or reality? Lisa O'Malley Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, Wales, UK Caroline Tynan Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University, UK Keywords Relationship marketing, Consumer marketing, Consumer behaviour Abstract Relationship marketing (RM) was conceived as an approach to industrial and service markets, and was considered inappropriate in other marketing contexts. Recently, however, the domain of RM has been extended to incorporate innovative applications in mass consumer markets. Much has changed in a few short years. Recent applications of RM in consumer markets have been facilitated by developments in direct and database marketing within an increasingly competitive and fragmented marketplace. This paper presents a critical review of the history of RM in consumer markets, and incorporates important conceptual, practical, empirical and popular contributions. A number of critical issues which remain unresolved are identified in the paper. These form the basis of ten research propositions which are crucial to justifying and advancing the domain extension into consumer markets. Introduction Relationship marketing (RM) was initially conceived as an approach to marketing in inter-organisational and service situations on the basis that, contextually and structurally, these sectors required an alternative paradigm to that which was dominant in mass consumer goods markets (Berry, 1983; Ford, 1997; Ha Êkansson, 1982). A decade ago, thoughts of appropriating the relational perspective and transferring it into mass consumer markets would have been unthinkable, yet today RM is embraced by both practitioners and academics in a wide range of markets and contexts. As such, applications in consumer markets represent a significant and somewhat surprising domain extension. RM is now considered to be a feasible strategy in mass consumer markets (Christy et al., 1996; Gro Ènroos, 1996; Sheth and Parvatiyar, 1995a). Discussions of business to consumer relationships (BCRs) have been broadly influenced by the emerging literature on relationship marketing, and by developments in direct and database marketing. In terms of the former, literature from industrial and service marketing contexts provides the conceptual underpinning for BCRs. This literature suggests: that there are distinctions between transactional and relational exchange (Dwyer et al., 1987; Frazier et al., 1988); that relationships develop over time through interaction between participants (Ford, 1997; Gro Ènroos, 1981; Gummesson, 1987; Ha Êkansson, 1982); and that the attributes of inter-personal relationships can be usefully employed to describe exchange relationships (Morgan and Hunt, 1994; Wilson, 1995). In contrast, the The research register for this journal is available at http://www.mcbup.com/research_registers/mkt.asp The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at http://www.emerald-library.com