Relational Exchange Norms in Marketing: A Critical Review of Macneil’s Contribution

Abstract

Different theories make different assumptions about the mechanisms that govern economic transactions and there are several reviews that have summarized existing conceptual and empirical work associated with such frameworks as transaction cost analysis or agency theory. However, Macneil's Relational Contracting Theory, another major theoretical foundation of current marketing research into business relationships, has not yet received similar attention. This article provides a review of a core concept developed in this stream of literature: the norm concept. It contrasts Macneil's view of norms with the work developed in the field of marketing. As a result, the authors identify, first, a gap between Macneil's interpretation of the norm concept and the application made by marketing scholars and second, contradictions in the results obtained from empirical marketing research.

Time and the salience of Macneil's relational norms

“…This is important because of the extensive body of research that has used a subset of Macneil ' s 3 -5 norms to distinguish between exchange types. 1,2,6 The marketing and management research drawing on Macneil, however, has focused on relationalism as a step taken to improve customers ' performance, not theory building and surprisingly, not on contracts or the duration of the living contracts that are central to Macneil ' s theory. 7 Like most relational research, this study is founded on Macneil 3 -5 and on the later work of Kaufmann and Dant.…”

Contracts, relationships and innovation in business-to-business exchanges

“…Researchers have proposed two approaches for incorporating contracts into this research agenda: Blois (2002) and Ivens and Blois (2004) have investigated the commonalities and extensions to the concept of relationship through Macneil's theory of relational contract, focusing on contracts in use (Macneil and Campbell, 2001). Mouzas and Ford (2012) and Mouzas and Blois (2013) argue that a contract can be a meta-resource, which can enable business relationships, for instance as framework or umbrella agreements.…”

An exploratory study of factors associated with relational exchange choices of small-, medium- and large-sized customers

“…As reported by Ivens and Blois, 48 98 of the 100 papers they reviewed that explored the effects of Macneil ' s norms on other variables had drawn on Kaufmann and Dant ' s work. In addition, although Ivens and Blois 48 and Blois and Ivens 49,50 raised some issues about the validity of the Kaufmann ' s scales, their research suffers from methodological and analytical shortcomings. Their use of students in classes studying relationship marketing raises concerns regarding demand characteristics and external validity.…”