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ARTICLE IN PRESS

JID: AMJ [m5G; July 18, 2020;11:42 ]

Australasian Marketing Journal xxx (xxxx) xxx

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Australasian Marketing Journal

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ausmj

Commentary: Opportunities and challenges of technology in

relationship marketing

Lena Steinhoffa , ∗

, Robert W. Palmatier

b

a

Institute for Marketing and Service Research, Faculty of Business and Social Sciences, University of Rostock, Ulmenstrasse 69, 18057 Rostock, Germany

b

John C. Narver Endowed Professor in Business Administration, Michael G. Foster School of Business, University of Washington, 418 Paccar Hall, Box 353226,

Seattle, WA 98195-3226, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:

Received 6 July 2020

Accepted 8 July 2020

Available online xxx

1. Introduction

The concept of relationship marketing in the academic market-

ing literature is almost 40 years old. Since its inaugural mentioning

( Berry, 1983 ), a rich body of conceptual and empirical research pa-

pers as well as popular business books has evolved, establishing

the consensus view among academics and managers that strong

customer relationships are key to company prosperity and perfor–

mance (e.g., Morgan and Hunt, 1994 ; Palmatier et al., 2006 ). With

the digital age, rather than entering its maturity stage, relation-

ship marketing is experiencing its next upsurge, such that nour–

ishing customer relationships is “more critical than ever before”

( Palmatier and Steinhoff, 2019 , p. 21).

Specifically, the exponential advancements in technology rev-

Over the past last months, the developments surrounding the

COVID-19 global pandemic have been strongly catalysing the shift

towards online relationships. Likewise, the rapid and in part ad-

hoc move of customer–company relationships to the online sphere

has unearthed both the rich opportunities as well as the unre-

solved challenges, pointing relationship marketers to the strengths

and shortcomings of their relational strategies.

In this commentary, we discuss four major technological trends

(e-commerce and m-commerce channels, social networks, anthro-

pomorphized agents, big data) that shape current and future re–

lationship marketing business practice—jointly referred to as the

relationship marketing technology toolbox—and outline the poten-

tials and pitfalls pertaining to each. Beyond, we shed light on the

implications that the COVID-19 pandemic has on the current state