Relationship Marketing Strategy, Organizational Resources, and Organizational Performance

Abstract

Many scholars have attempted to explain why organizations in the same industry and markets differ in their performance. Propositions have been attributable to variations in the strategic foundations and strategic elements upon which the organization is anchored. However strategic marketers remain disillusioned in attempts to explain why firms implementing relationship marketing strategies have not realized similar success stories. Fundamental question within marketing and strategic management circles. Researchers have partly attributed the variation to barriers to entry, resources of a firm, and continuous innovation that keep a firm a head of competition. On a global scale, there is no conclusive established theory or framework that completely explains the source of variation in organisational forms, behaviours and performance. This piece has reviewed literature that demonstrates the existence of a direct relationship between resources and performance consistent with extant empirical and conceptual literature. It is apparent from the literature that most scholars have focused on the individual effect of organizational resources, innovation and relationship marketing strategy on organizational performance. This work, in attempt to make a significant contribution to these developments, takes cognizance of the fact that organizational performance may be a function of factors key among them being, and effect implementation relationship market strategy. However, this relationship is affected by a host of intervening and moderating factors such as the organized resources, innovation and competencies. The purpose of this independent conceptual paper was to extoll the relationship between relationship marketing strategy, the organizations resources and organizations performance, and in so doing making a novel contribution to the current state of play through an integrated conceptual model that enables investigation of the moderating role of the relationship market strategy and the intervening role in the resourceperformance relationship.The study was founded on Network Theory, Commitment and Trust Theory, Relational Contracting Theory, Social Exchange Theory, Contigency Theory and Resource Based View. It integrates individual attempts at explaining firm performance from multiple lenses and advances a novel framework on the drivers of firm performance which could guide empirical research to address the gaps in knowledge. Key Words: Relationship Marketing Strategy, Resources, Performance.