Successful exchange relationships between organizations and their various partners in those exchanges - suppliers, customers, employees, or a wide variety of other types of exchange partners - have become critical to the overall success of organizations in an economy that is increasingly global, hypercompetitive, and evolutionary. This Handbook highlights relationship marketing as an area of growing interest and ongoing development within marketing, providing key insights that illustrate its important role in guiding customer-directed business strategies.

Relationship marketing is an approach to increase long-term profitability through loyal customers. With increased customer retention, fewer resources need to be invested in acquiring new customers and marketing costs go down. The Handbook on Relationship Marketing brings together contributions from some of the leading figures in the field to analyze the role of marketing with suppliers and customers, as well as internal and lateral partners.

The Handbook will appeal to scholars and students of marketing and business. It will also be a useful resource for practitioners looking to exploit relationship marketing for better customer retention.

Contributors: M. Bose, T. Boyd, S. Cadwallader, G. Deitz, J.A. Garretson Folse, D.D. Gremler, T.W. Gruen, E. Gummesson, K.P. Gwinner, J.D. Hansen, B.B. Holloway, M.J. Howley Jr., R. Lacey, S. Lampo, K. Landua, K.N. Lemon, H. Majra, R.W. Palmatier, J.T. Parish, R.D. Raggio, S.A. Samaha, R. Saxena, J.N. Sheth, M. Sinha, A. Thomas, P.C. Verhoef, A.G. Walz, S. Wang