Towards a framework of relationship marketing: A research methodology. 2

ABSTRACT The rise of relationship marketing reshaping of organisations towards flatter, more responsive network forms are related, not as cause and effect, but as part of the same phenomena. They are symptomatic of a common cause in that both are responses to environmental turbulence and the pursuit of a common goal - the creation of competitive advantage in a changing world. As the central tenets of relationship marketing have become increasingly common currency among the academic and business communities, the need for new frameworks which conceptualise the scope, properties and remit of relationship marketing at the organisational level is becoming increasingly apparent. Some writers have endeavored to provide such frameworks, knitting together scraps of plausibly relevant theory borrowed from related fields, but to date these frameworks appear to be empirically untested.