What Really Defines Relationship Marketing? A Review of Definitions and General and Sector-Specific Defining Constructs

Abstract

This article aims to use content analysis to provide an overview of the existing academic literature on relationship marketing by summarising definitions and major defining constructs based on the previous research findings in this area. The authors have summarised 72 definitions along with 50 general defining constructs of relationship marketing. In addition, sector-specific defining constructs for the banking, insurance, and health care sectors have also been identified. This article bridges the gap in the existing relationship marketing literature by providing a comprehensive list of relationship marketing definitions and identifying major general as well as some sector-specific defining constructs along different industry verticals. The research papers reviewed came from selected databases, which limits the generalizability of the findings to the whole existing literature on relationship marketing. The review of the existing literature was done to reduce the time and efforts of present and future researchers in this area by providing a quick snapshot of the existing definitions and major defining constructs that constitute relationship marketing and specifically the sector-specific dimensions of banking, insurance, and health care.

KEYWORDS:

• banking
• defining constructs
• health care
• industry verticals
• insurance
• literature
• relationship marketing