Relationship marketing has come into prominence over the last two decades or so. It has made its presence felt both in academics as well as in practice, but there is a lack of empirical research on the same. This article looks into the various definitions of relationship marketing, while distinguishing between transaction marketing and relationship marketing. It also outlines the purpose of relationship marketing, throws light on some of its dangerous axioms and illustrates the most accepted relationship marketing framework. Finally, it concludes with the different challenges that the new paradigm of marketing is facing and leaves the readers with the suggestion that relationship marketing could be used as one of the advertisement tools to build brand image and create awareness about a brand.

Marketing for many years has been based on the management of demand, for example, by advertising and promotion, and the management of price to stimulate demand, or by developing new and different products appealing to different segments of the market at different price points. There is a view, however, that this conventional micro-economic perspective focused on the interaction between supply and demand is no longer adequate in the post-industrial era. The basic micro-economic framework should not be seen as an adequate description of the analytical and processing complexities in specific situations. The reason for this is the changing pattern of demand in keeping with the rise in the service-based industries and a fall in the consumer and industrial sectors. Services play an important role in the whole process of product offering.

Relationship marketing has emerged as a new paradigm in marketing. Marketing is experiencing a paradigm shift from "transaction-orientation" to "relationship-orientation". The relationship marketing concept suggests that instead of the narrow, transactional, one-sale-at-a-time view of marketing, emphasis should be laid on the relationship between the organization and its markets. In addition to this, it is not only the transaction-orientation of the traditional marketing paradigm that hampers the development of customer relationships, but also the structure of the organization itself limits its ability to satisfy customers.

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