customers in the early stages of marketing program development, facilitating
the future marketing efforts of the company. Also, through individualized
marketing and adoption of mass customization processes, relationship
marketers can better address the needs of each selected customer, making
marketing more effective.
To what extent is the above purpose of relationship marketing a totally new
phenomenon and, haven't these objectives always been important in
marketing? If yes, how is relationship marketing different than exchange
marketing? We will try to address these questions by first agreeing that
marketing has indeed always been concerned with retaining profitable
customers and with facilitating future marketing activities. However,
marketing practices that were adopted to achieve these objectives have
changed over a period of time. The reasons for this change can be attributed to
the prevailing context and conditions of each time period and its influence on
the marketing thought. We examine, in the subsequent sections of this paper,
the causes of marketing practices during the pre-industrial, industrial and
post-industrial eras.