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Online interactions have emerged as a dominant exchange mode for companies and customers. Cultivating online relationshipsdefined as relational exchanges that are mediated by Internet-based channels-presents firms with challenges and opportunities. In lockstep with exponential advancements in computing technology, a rich and ever-evolving toolbox is available to relationship marketers to manage customer relationships online, in settings including e-commerce, social media, online communities, mobile, big data, artificial intelligence, and augmented reality. To advance academic knowledge and guide managerial decision making, this study offers a comprehensive analysis of online relationship marketing in terms of its conceptual foundations, evolution in business practice, and empirical insights from academic research. The authors propose an evolving theory of online relationship marketing, characterizing online relationships as uniquely seamless, networked, omnichannel, personalized, and anthropomorphized. Based on these five essential features, six tenets and 11 corresponding propositions parsimoniously predict the performance effects of the manifold online relationship marketing strategies.

Avatars are becoming increasingly popular in contemporary marketing strategies, but their effectiveness for achieving performance outcomes (e.g., purchase likelihood) varies widely in practice. Related academic literature is fragmented, lacking both definitional consistency and conceptual clarity. This article makes three main contributions to avatar theory and managerial practice. First, to address ambiguity with respect to its definition, this study identifies and critically evaluates key conceptual elements of the term avatar, offers a definition derived from this analysis, and provides a typology of avatars’ design elements. Second, the proposed 2 × 2 avatar taxonomy suggests that the alignment of an avatar’s form realism and behavioral realism, across different contingencies, provides a parsimonious explanation for avatar effectiveness. Third, the authors develop an emerging theory of avatar marketing, by triangulating insights from fundamental elements of avatars, a synthesis of extant research, and business practices. This framework integrates key theoretical insights, research propositions, and important managerial implications for this expanding area of marketing strategy. Lastly, the authors outline a research program to both test the propositions and insights as well as advance future research.

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Research on interorganizational relationships is predicated on the idea that fairness is always important. The authors question this assumption because most fairness research has been conducted in Western countries, and mixed empirical support draws into question how important fairness actually is. Drawing on Hofstede's cultural dimensions framework, the authors examine culture as an antecedent to the importance of outcome fairness (OF) and procedural fairness (PF) in retailers' assessments of their relationships with suppliers. The authors also propose that cultural exposure moderates the impact of culture on fairness importance. Using responses from retailers in ten countries analyzed with hierarchical linear modeling, the authors find that uncertainty avoidance enhances the importance of OF and PF, power distance marginally decreases the importance of PF, and long-term orientation increases the importance of both OF and PF. Cultural exposure also positively moderates the impact of uncertainty avoidance and masculinity on both fairness types. The pattern of effects is robust when compared with two alternative models. This study offers a first step in understanding culture's impact on when fairness is more or less important.

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