Relationship marketing: looking back, looking forward David Ballantyne Monash University, Australia Martin Christopher Cranfield University, UK Adrian Payne Cranfield University, UK Abstract. Relationship marketing has taken off over the past 10 years with a burst of vigour. Were relationships staring marketers in the face and were we too preoccupied to see them? We begin with a short historical perspective on the origins of relationship marketing. A discussion on future directions and theory development based around the concept of value exchange follows. A ‘view from the edge’ of chaos is then offered. We conclude that marketing as a discipline is forever changed. Key Words • chaos and complexity • knowledge generating pathways • networks • relationship marketing • theory development • value exchange Looking back The term relationship marketing was first contributed by Berry (1983) as a new rubric for services marketing. Of course, the emphasis on relationships, played out in various ways, is as old as trade itself. Early scholarly insights in the 1980s were the identification of service risk points in the customer relationship life cycle (Grönroos, 1983), and an emphasis on developing long-term interactive relation- ships between suppliers and customers, integrating both services and B2B per- 159 Volume 3(1): 159–166 Copyright © 2003 SAGE www.sagepublications.com articles 1470-5931[200303]3:1;159–166;033078