The Complete English Tradesman – business relations, trust, and honesty or ‘let’s rethink the history of relationship marketing’

Abstract

Purpose – 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. Design/methodology/approach – 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. Findings – 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. Practical implications – This paper highlights how ahistorical debates surrounding relationship marketing have been and calls for a return to the archives. Originality/value – 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.