A relationship marketing approach to guanxi.

The article introduces the concept of guanxi and its most relevant elements with emphasis on the concept of relationship marketing. In recent years there has been a growing interest among both academics and businessmen regarding business practices in Asia, and particularly in China. This interest is to a great extent due to the changes in China's position as a market and the difficulties of European and American companies to address it. It has been argued that doing business in China is particularly difficult because of the higher relative importance of personal relationships (guanxi), as opposed to the specification and enforcement of contracts in the West. Guanxi is briefly translated as personal connections/relationships on which an individual can draw to secure resources or advantage when doing business as well as in the course of social life, and constitutes an important transaction mode in China. Although it refers to the status and intensity of an ongoing relationship between two parties, it has become synonymous with the network of social and business connections necessary to do business in this part of the world.