Conceptually, it aims to establish, maintain and strengthen long-term relationships between sellers and buyers.
Operationally, it goes beyond departmental boundaries in order that different functions are coalesced to achieve holistic effectiveness of relationship management for industrial and consumer marketing. In the context of industrial marketing, RM concentrates on business-to-business interactions, while its focus shifts to relationship management between the corporation/brand and its end-users in the context of service brand marketing (e.g. Seijts and Latham, 2003; Swaminathan et al., 2007; Bolton et al., 2008).