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.

This book is one of the few contemporary works to begin to reinterpret marketing thought from a marketing exchange perspective. The book consists of sixteen newly authored chapters solicited for this reinterpretation.

The discussion begins with a description of the marketing taxonomy, identifying and distinguishing between marketing behavior and other non-marketing, need-satisfying behavior pertinent to marketers. The controversy surrounding such a taxonomy as well as alternative classifications of specific need-satisfying behaviors are examined in depth as well. Other topics specific to marketing behavior are examined from an exchange perspective by authors who have done specialized work in the field. The discussions include the temporal and spatial aspects of exchange; internal markets; evaluation processes; the attributes of channel exchange in contrast to final exchange; the captive consumer; externalities and legal dimensions as they relate to the exchange process; with a special emphasis on the exchange media and its role in the exchange process. This book is important to marketing teachers and writers who are attempting to conform to the American Marketing Association's description of marketing. The topics examined in this book are likely to serve as the basis for the next generation of introductory and strategy marketing course textbooks.