Combining mix and relationship marketing

Many marketing scholars have seriously debated the status of marketing as a discipline and in the corporate practice (see for example the special issue of Journal of Marketing, October 2005). Have marketing scholars specialised excessively on narrow perspectives and thus failed to look at the bigger picture in theory and practice? Consequently, it is no wonder that this main theme of the EMAC 2008 Conference raised the following basic questions: Have we gone too far? Do we need a single universal paradigm or multiple paradigms? How can we reconnect with the corporate world? How does marketing respond to its critics? These important questions form the backdrop for this article. The managerial school of marketing and its central tenet, the marketing mix approach (often more or less identified with parameter or transaction marketing) has been the main focus of marketing theory and practice since the 1960s. The marketing mix approach has been widely criticised by researchers who have attempted to develop the field of relationship marketing (Constantinídes, 2006; Ennew, 1995; Grönroos, 1994; Gummesson, 1995; Sheth & Parvatiyar ,2000; Vargo & Lusch, 2004; Van den Bulte, 1991). However, both the parameter based (parameters are usually identified with marketing parameters, competitive parameters, competitive means,