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The purpose of the editorial is to accompany this special issue on “Social marketing: social change”.

The editorial presents three invited reflections by Philip Kotler, Michael Polonsky and Gerard Hastings. It also discusses the articles in this special issue.

Overall, the contributed papers demonstrate that there are many layers to social marketing.

The articles featured in this special issue help to advance social marketing theory as well as offer valuable implications and recommendations for managers, practitioners and policymakers.

The purpose of this paper is to promote energy saving measures concurrent with major planned renovation/refurbishment in residential buildings.

The methodology comprises of case studies, in which the influence of various factors is identified on the overall decision making related to building renovation/refurbishment.

The employed operational decision support process enables energy saving opportunities for residential buildings in conjunction with planned major renovations/refurbishments.

The research scope is confined to residential buildings in Sweden and cooperatives with tenants as the owners and governors.

A novel approach to synergistic energy saving and renovation in residential buildings is exhibited.

The paper presents an altered viewpoint of energy renovation means for residential buildings in the built environment.

The paper presents a novel approach for building owners to renovate a building in terms of improved performance, energy efficiency and indoor comfort in combination with planned renovations/refurbishments.

Marketing has changed significantly since it first emerged as a distinct business and management phenomenon. We identify some of the major factors causing the observed change in marketing practice. We then describe a classification scheme that is based on transaction marketing and relationship marketing, each of which is characterised using five marketing exchange dimensions and four managerial dimensions. The two general marketing perspectives encompass five distinct types of marketing: transaction marketing, database marketing, e‐marketing, interaction marketing, and network marketing. We consider real‐life (mainly European) companies that have implemented these different marketing approaches. Finally, we deal with the pedagogical contributions including an examination of how it is possible for business schools to teach the subject of marketing from a relationship marketing perspective in such a way that the relevance and quality of teaching and research in relationship marketing is useful to students, faculty, and the business community.

This paper aims to investigate the trend and/or paradigm shift to relationship marketing as a dominant framework that has shaped the way in which relationships are understood, and also to consider how the understanding of relationships can be improved.

A case‐based study was conducted in order to examine issues concerning relationships. A series of constructs was elicited from the relationship marketing literature to be used as the basis for this study.

Relationship development is explained by stages or state theory, whereby relationships develop over time or simply emerge. Confirmation is offered to the states theory, which suggests that relationships are relatively static and develop in less well‐defined ways.

This study is limited in scope, bounded by the context of the cases, which were limited to business‐to‐business suppliers of manufactured industrial goods.

Managers should be cautious of attempting to tactically change relationships as in practice this is more challenging than continuum‐based models would imply.

Continuum models imply that the process is one of tactical implementation rather than strategic redirection. This is not confirmed by the research, which provides an alternative model to understand and manage relationships.

This study investigates consumers’ affective attachments toward products, based on generalizable and managerially relevant product attributes. Two surveys of 123 consumers found that high‐involvement, high‐meaning products tend to share ten common attributes. The managerial implications of each attribute are discussed, including specific ways that brand managers and new product development teams can engineer relationships between brands and customers.

Provides an example of a firm’s use of distinguishing product attributes to engineer and nurture strong consumer‐brand relationships. Ty Inc., manufacturer of the popular Beanie Babies brand, has effectively engineered the brand to incorporate attributes of nostalgic value, personification, uniqueness, facilitation, engagement, aesthetic appeal, quality/excellence, association, social visibility and image congruence, and price risk. By incorporating these attributes and actively nurturing consumer‐brand relationships, Ty has benefited from greater customer satisfaction, which has led to higher purchase volumes, brand loyalty, and positive word‐of‐mouth communications. The straightforward methodology used to examine customer perceptions of Beanie Babies involved asking respondents to rate Beanie Babies on the ten characteristics associated with high‐involvement, relationship‐prone products. The same measurement approach could be easily replicated by managers of other firms to evaluate the relational potency of their own brands.

The proliferation of various interpretations of the marketing concept suggests a lack of unanimity as to its meaning. This article outlines five definitional “schools” of the marketing concept.

In his piece on the “globalization of markets,” Ted Levitt creates yet another challenge to our thinking. Whereas in his past writings he advocated knowing diverse customer needs and serving them differently, he is now calling for overall standardization, that is, less segmentation and adaptation worldwide.

After briefly reviewing the recent development of interest in social marketing, some areas where it differs from business marketing are explored. “Social” and “societal” marketing are said to be distinct developments but both have substantial implications for the marketing concept. Four distinct types of social marketing are identified depending largely upon the marketeer's sources of financial support.