Has today's dominant marketing mix paradigm become a strait-jacket? A relationship building and management approach may be the answer. The marketing mix management paradigm has dominated marketing thought, research and practice since it was introduced almost 40 years ago. Today, this paradigm is beginning to lose its position. New approaches have been emerging in marketing research. The globalization of business and the evolving recognition of the importance of customer retention and market economies and of customer relationship economics, among other trends, reinforce the change in mainstream marketing. Relationship building and management, or what has been labelled relationship marketing, is one leading new approach to marketing which eventually has entered the marketing literature. A paradigm shift is clearly under way. In services marketing, especially in Europe and Australia but to some extent also in North America, and in industrial marketing, especially in Europe, this paradigm shift has already taken place. Books published on services marketing and on industrial marketing as well as major research reports published are based on the relationship marketing paradigm. A major shift in the perception of the fundamentals of marketing is taking place. The shift is so dramatic that it can, no doubt, be described as a paradigm shift. Marketing researchers have been passionately convinced about the paradigmatic nature of marketing mix management and the Four P model. To challenge marketing mix management as the basic foundation for all marketing thinking has been as heretic as it was for Copernicus to proclaim that the earth moved. The purpose of this report is to discuss the nature and consequences of the dominating marketing paradigm of today, marketing mix management of the managerial school and how evolving trends in business and modern research into, for example, industrial marketing, services marketing and customer relationship e...
