Relationship marketing and privacy: exploring the thresholds

The advocacy to extend relationship marketing into the management of the exchange processes within retailing and consumer service markets has meant a growing interest in the opportunities which are offered by technology‐based systems of customer management. A prerequisite for the successful translation of the relationship marketing paradigm from organizational to retailing and consumer service markets is customer information. As the technology for collecting customer data has become more sophisticated, so marketing managers have witnessed an increasing concern among consumers about the impact of these new marketing management techniques on their private rights. Discusses different aspects of information privacy and reports an exploratory study of consumers’ different privacy thresholds. The results indicate different levels of involvement towards privacy issues, and different perceptions of the trustworthiness of service sector companies, among consumers. The implications for relationship marketing strategies are discussed.