The Interface between Transactional and Relational Orientation in Small Service Firm’s Marketing Behaviour: A Study of Scottish and Swedish Small Firms in the Service Sector

Abstract

This paper presents and discusses findings of a cross-country study of small service firm marketing behaviour. These findings demonstrate that small service firms are flexible in the marketing approaches that they adopt. They reveal that such firms are transactional and relational orientated in their marketing activities and that for growing firms, marketing activities are used to create short-term transactions and form relations with key stakeholders. This finding implies that transactional and relationship marketing should be regarded as complementary. The findings presented also demonstrate that the marketing approach selected by participating small firms is determined by a range of customer characteristics of which repeat business is only one. An integrated framework containing elements of transactional and relational approaches is proposed as an appropriate way of describing the marketing behaviours of investigated firms.