The American Marketing Association defines marketing as an exchange process. Exchange, however, has yet to be integrated into marketing thought. The authors map marketing, showing the role exchange plays in the discipline. This mapping results in not only a taxonomy of exchange, but a broader taxonomy within which we find exchange, offering one of the few contemporary discussions of a more general theory of marketing.
The authors examine the conditions necessary for exchange, the form value takes, and the law of exchange. In addition, they develop the importance of potency—the construct specified by Alderson that makes marketing dynamic. The book then studies both marketing and nonmarketing behaviors to enhance potency. This has direct implications for the application of transaction cost analysis to marketing. The interrelationship of the exchange transaction and the exchange relationshp is examined, which leads to an in-depth study of gray marketing. The authors go on to discuss brand equity, data base marketing, and important questions having to do with the boundaries of marketing. Marketing Exchange Transactions and Relationships will appeal to marketing faculty and the advanced marketing student in addition to marketing managers.
