Redefining B2B relationship marketing: Insight from postmodern Alibaba

Cockayne, David ORCID: 0000-0002-5473-6967 (2016) Redefining B2B relationship marketing: Insight from postmodern Alibaba. Journal of Customer Behaviour, 15 (1). pp. 49-66. ISSN 1475-3928

Text Redefining Relationship Marketing, Journal of Customer Behaviour V2.pdf - Author Accepted Manuscript Download (151kB)

Abstract

The cultural and philosophical movement of modernism has defined contemporary marketing knowledge, constructing a powerful narrative that has conceptually bound, yet semantically separated, business to consumer (B2C) and business to business (B2B) marketing knowledge. Perceived paradigm shifts towards relationships, and the birth of relationship marketing are argued to be no more than an evolution of modern marketing, yet at the heart of relational constructs sit the very features that modernism seeks to marginalise in the search for truth and the establishment of power structures. Indeed, while B2C marketing has embraced postmodern thinking in consumer culture theory recently, relationship marketing at the B2B level remains conceptually hinged to modern marketing. Using the lens of the postmodern marketing literature, this conceptual paper investigates the rise of China's ecommerce company Alibaba, and uses this case as a vehicle to argue for relationship marketing knowledge to embrace postmodern thinking and redefine how it should advance in the future.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	35 Commerce, Management, Tourism and Services, 3503 Business Systems In Context, 3506 Marketing
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	09 Nov 2016 16:48
Last Modified:	24 May 2025 07:42
DOI:	10.1362/147539216x14594362873497
Related Websites:	Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3004445