Human resource management, services and relationship marketing: the potential for cross-fertilisation

This conceptual paper notes the re-casting of marketing from a focus on products and transactions to a focus on services and relationships – strongly implying that people are core to the delivery of promises. In so doing, it highlights that the recruitment, training, development, retention, rewarding and management of people are therefore central in achieving strategic marketing objectives, building on extant research which confirms that a satisfied workforce contributes to the creation of happy customers. This highlights that marketing has a great deal to learn from HR, and perhaps the means to achieve key strategic marketing objectives already exist within the domain of HR theory and practice? Structurally, the paper summarizes the evolution of marketing from the transactional to the relational and focuses on selected areas in which value could be obtained for marketers in drawing on the existing HR literature and concepts before considering what the future relationship between marketing and HR could, and should be.