Foreword

Abstract

Forward

Welcome to this special issue of Journal of Promotional Communications .

The focus for the papers in this edition is Relationship Marketing and the

strategies organisations are adopting to build relationships or engage

their consumers. Relationship Marketing, emergent in the 1990s as a

response to the particular demands of the service context, has

established itself as a bedrock of the marketing and promotions discipline

(Gummesson 2017). Recent attention on engagement (Vivek et al. 2012,

2014) has reinvigorated the discipline and marketers increasingly

prioritise the ongoing interactions and connections they are able to forge

with relational partners. Whilst trust and commitment continue to be the

core conceptual building blocks of relationship marketing (Morgan and

Hunt 1994) increasingly gratitude is seen as an area central to the

ongoing reciprocal exchange which characterizes mutually beneficial

relationships (Palmatier et al. 2009; Raggio et al. 2014; Cownie 2017).

Key outcomes of relationship marketing can be broadly categorized

into loyalty, co-operation and advocacy.