– This paper aims to provide a close reading of Daniel Defoe’s The Complete English Tradesman. It makes a case that many of the themes that Defoe engages with are consistent with later arguments offered by relationship marketing scholars.
– This is a close reading of one of Defoe’s most popular texts, The Complete English Tradesman. It links this discussion with relationship marketing tenets.
– Defoe pays considerable attention to key relational ideas, including the cultivation of a public perception of business honesty, the need to cater to customer requirements, treating the customer as the “idol” of the practitioner and undertaking a variety of actions to ensure that consumers trust the words and actions of the tradesman.
– This paper highlights how ahistorical debates surrounding relationship marketing have been and calls for a return to the archives.
– This paper supplements existing research that charts the implications for marketing thought of Defoe’s work, extending this via a juxtaposition of his writing with relational tenets.
