Relationship Marketing and School Success

School marketing and its contribution to school success is a controversial issue in education, and although marketing activities are taking place in schools, they are usually not recognized as such. Relationship marketing (RM), collaborative interactive relations that enlist partners in loyal and supportive long-lasting connections, is no exception. By studying five successful Israeli schools, this study aims to reveal how successful school principals engaged in RM and contributed to their school's success. An “ideal type” of RM was extracted from the data, showing that good RM starts with a key event, develops under enabling conditions, and brings about the desired outcome along with additional consequences. It concludes that successful school principals, like Molière's protagonist who has unwittingly been speaking prose all his life, create RM in their ongoing work without terming it this way, and that this RM contributes to school success. Theoretical and practical implications are presented in the discussion.