Relações de troca sob a ótica do marketing de relacionamento e da teoria da dádiva

Abstract

In the area of marketing, there is a tendency to consider the exchange relations only from an economic and utilitarian perspective. However, since the exchanges are a social phenomena, they shouldn’t be handled only under this perspective. Hence, it was aimed in this paper; to demonstrate theoretically, that the commercial exchanges of the contemporary society are composed of utilitarian and symbolical elements. To achieve such goal, it was taken in consideration a theoretical research consequent of a masters dissertation. In an interdisciplinary perspective it was aimed to accomplish a comparative analysis between the exchanges of the traditional societies, under the optic of the gift theory and the exchanges of the contemporary society, under the optic of the relationship marketing. As a result, besides demonstrating that both the symbolical elements as well as the utilitarian elements are present in the exchange relations of the contemporary society, it was made clear that the symbolical elements are predominant. Finally, it was presented the contribution of the gift theory to marketing and it was formulated four hypotheses for future researches. It is believed that the handling of these hypotheses can expand the knowledge about RM and its injunctions in the symbolical-relational world represented here by the gift theory. After all as affirmed by DaMatta (1990) in his studies of the Brazilian society: we are a society, above all, relational.