【正文】 nels through which panies and customers maintain their relationships. The capacity to obtain and apply customer information within processes has bee a key strategic issue. This often places the pany in the position of requiring sensitive personal information from customers. Gummesson (1987, 1994, 1995) views marketing as a set of relationships, works and interactions and lists 30Rs (relationships) in contrast to McCarthy’s (1981) 4Ps (Product, Price, Place amp。 Promotion). Gummesson highlights the fact that the electronic relationship is not discussed in the marketing literature even though it is practised widely by many businesses. He links relationship marketing to the imaginary (similar to a virtual or work) organisation. He argues that by increasingly applying IT, more relationships are established. They create a new type of bond to customers and between employees. The electronic relationship extends beyond the bounds of the organisation into the market as seen in the example of airline, hotel and car rental reservation systems. The munities established have a reenforcing effect. These insights force us to reexamine traditional theories of economics, systems, organisations, marketing, petition and transaction cost analysis. As the boundaries between firms and markets dissolve, a characteristic of relationship marketing and work organisations, a new image of interaction and business is needed. The importance of information exchange in relationship marketing (particularly using an electronic channel) requires a clear understanding and recognition of the potential problems. Privacy is also an issue what is private changes from one person to another as well as between different cultures. Those who use the Inter are likely to be better educated and less willing to give information, unless they trust the recipient. Companies need to realise that the only reason they hold information on a customer is because they have a relationship with that customer something which is not transferable. Those using electronic channels to reach customers are likely to target better educated and more affluent customers. They need, therefore, to ensure that their customer information systems are appropriate. An understanding of the trust building process is also required. Firms need to make a feature of their trustworthiness (a unique selling point!). Trust is best developed through processes. Processes tend to be customer facing within each customer interaction trust is builtup or eroded. Companies must be absolutely clear about the value and intended use of information. Collecting information because it is technically possible (and one day might be useful) is likely to weaken trust development. Hoffman and Novak (1996) assert that the Web heralds an evolution in marketing concepts. In order for marketing efforts to succeed in this new medium, a new business paradigm is required in which the marketing function is reconstructed to facilitate electronic merce in the emerging electronic society underlying the Web. The many or any munication model of the Web (in fact many instances of manytoone) turns traditional principles of mass media advertising inside out (a onetomany model) (Hoffman and Novak, 1994). The application of advertising approaches which assume a passive, captive consumer are redundant on the Web. Surprisingly, as it is currently evolving, there is little activity aimed at including the consumer in the development of emerging media (Dennis amp。 Pease, 1994). In order to adopt a market orientation, firms must understand their customers and engage in consumer research. Potential customers are most effectively engaged through new conversational marketing approaches. Anecdotal evidence suggests there are two types of customers ‘convenience shoppers’ and ‘explorers’ (those streetsmart consumers who are happy to surf the Web looking for the best deal or most appropriate product bination). Furthermore, the sheer size of the Web (trillions of documents and growing exponentially) means finding relevant information is being more and more difficult despite the best efforts of search engines such as Yahoo. Our research suggests that the large proportion of Web users would rather rely on an intermediary (munity operator) to sift and select information on their behalf. Web sites not endorsed will requi