The antitrust implications of relationship marketing

By definition, firms engaged in relationship marketing favor one another, which can be desirable because it promotes advantageous strategic and competitive positioning. However, antitrust legislation mandates that firms avoid favored treatment of trading partners if it adversely affects competition or excessively affects the free flow of goods and services to consumers-potentially an unintended consequence of relationship marketing. Therefore, a firm's commitment to the marketing concept may diminish if strengthening channel relations reduce competition and possibly customer benefits. To anticipate future antitrust problems induced by relationship marketing, public policy makers and scholars should scrutinize new-market-dominating mergers, business-to-business online exchanges, tying agreements, and price discrimination. (C) 2002 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.