Relationship Marketing Development in High-Context, Multicultural Settings: Case Studies from Ghana and the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Relationship marketing - the process of attracting and co-operating with customers, suppliers and others through the enhancement of efforts at achieving objectives for the mutual benefit of all parties, over time (Berry 1983; Dwyer, Schurr and Oh 1987; Grönroos 1994) - has emerged as one of the dominant frameworks that guides marketing theory and practice. While relationship marketing and its numerous variates are not unique to the western world (e.g., Alexander 1987; Clark 1994; Trager 1976), scholarly attention has been narrowly focused on the USA, Western Europe and similar cultures (Ambler 1994; Grönroos 1990). With increasing globalisation and its concomitant multicultural milieu for business operations, such narrow focus presents a major impediment to the development of marketing knowledge and practice within cultures based on non-western philosophical and social contexts.