MarketasNetwork; So What

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1、Market-as-Network; So What?Ivan SnehotaUniversity of LuganoSwitzerlandPaper prepared for the19th IMP ConferenceSeptember 4-6, 2003University of LuganoSwitzerlandAbstractEver since its beginning the IMP research has been concerned with the limits of the market concept as guidance for managerial actio

2、n, especially in markets where customers are businesses and other organisations. At first, it has focused on the empirical evidence of phenomena not foreseen or not considered endemic to the working of the market by the dominating theories of market, namely the existence of continuous exchange relat

3、ionships and interdependencies among these. At a later stage, much effort has been dedicated to conceptualizing relationships, their dynamics and the network form consequent to the interdependencies. In hindsight it appears that the claim of IMP research that (business) markets are networks of excha

4、nge relationships among a varying and various set of actors amounts to postulating that markets are institutions rather then a distinct mechanism in the assumptions of economic theory and much of the marketing discipline. Institutions, whose properties and functioning have some features of pervading

5、 consequences for market actors.The aim of the paper is to explore some of the consequences of adopting the “market-as-network” perspective for research in the marketing discipline and the practice. It puts in relation some of the key concepts of the IMP tradition in relation to the emergent concept

6、s of institutional school in economics. In particular the discussion focuses on the issue of market definition, the concept of differentiation and of the strategic autonomy. Key words: market - exchange processes - market definition - strategic actionMarket-asNetwork; So What? - On the power of a pe

7、rspective and impact of it.Ivan SnehotaThe question of what market is does not seem to bother most of those who refer to it in everyday language. They appear to know the meaning of it and it seems to work perfectly well as a notion that conveys connotations that many apparently can share. It is less

8、 well defined as an analytical category a concept, in some of the disciplines that are interested in “markets” and where the meaning of a “market” is at issue. There are several such disciplines: economics, economic history, sociology and, not the least, marketing and other disciplines of management

9、. Anyone looking for definitions of market in the literature today is likely to agree with the Nobel Prize Winner in economics, Douglas North, who once observed: “it is a peculiar fact that the literature of economics and economic history contains so little discussion of the central institution that

10、 underlies neo-classical economics the market” (North, 1977:710). Economic literature is no exception in this respect; neither of the other disciplines concerned seems to contain much of discussion of the market concept, management and marketing included. The purpose of this paper, however, is not t

11、o debate what market is. Such an attempt would be overly pretentious and probably pointless. Who would discuss what the sun or a chair actually is? Any object or phenomenon is many different things dependent on the angle chosen to approach it and explore it, and can be approached from different angl

12、es. Different perspectives result in different pictures of the landscape where different features of it appear or disappear and assume major or minor proportions. Perspectives always entail “distortions” of the phenomena, but then again no picture can embrace all perspective and any picture always i

13、mplies a certain point of observation. Acting is related to pictures and images. They provide guidance for how to act, if we are to act, on the phenomenon. Therein lies the importance of the perspective. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore how the perspective taken on the “market” aff

14、ects the research in marketing and the way to act of those who act in or on, what they see as “market”.I am concerned here in particular with implications of a perspective that can be labelled “market-as-network” Swedberg credits Wayne Baker (1981) for using the notion in the title of this Ph.D. dis

15、sertation and it has been used by several authors in marketing, e.g. Johanson & Mattsson (19.), elaborated by the IMP stream of research in marketing, as opposed to the perspective which I will label as “exchange facilitating mechanism”, or “price-mechanism”, common in the neo-classical economics an

16、d taken over by many others. As it will become clear further on, I will argue that the market-as-network perspective is clearly siding with the perspective on markets as an institution, discussed in economics and partly in sociology.This paper is written from the angle of the discipline of marketing

17、 where much of research is, perhaps implicitly, inspired by the perspective of neo-classical economics, even if other perspectives have been explicitly proposed in the past (e.g. Alderson 1965) or more recently (Stern & Reve 1980, Anderson, Hakansson & Johanson 1994). I will argue in particular that

18、 the market-as-network perspective yields different normative implications for business management compared to those of the market as exchange mechanism and, if accepted, implies a research agenda in marketing with markedly different priorities. As a side issue it will be argued that the way to look

19、 at market affects also the way to delimit the domain of the marketing discipline, whether defined by problems or subject matter. Why has the market-as-network perspective emerged?To look at the origins of the market-as-network perspective can help us to show why and how perspectives matter. The ori

20、gins of the perspective are linked to studies of business markets in the 70s. It coincides with a period of shift in the marketing discipline that has taken place in the preceding decade. What happens during that period is that the main thrust of interest and research in marketing that has been to l

21、arge extent the functioning of market/distribution system (e.g. Alderson & Cox 1948, Cox & Goodman 1956) shifts towards major concern with marketing management that is with various decisions and activities in producer/seller organisations (Verdoorn 1956, Borden 1965). The interest in research on mar

22、ket processes have diminished and the marketing management has drawn heavily on the prevailing perspective in economics with its assumptions about how markets are and work.The assumptions regarding market functioning (borrowed from economics) and the normative postulates of marketing discipline at t

23、hat time, tuned out only partly relevant both to gauge various aspects of business markets and as guidance for action for practitioners. The research tradition that would later become the one following the market-as-network perspective starts apparently from the problems met when approaching the sub

24、ject business markets following the dominant perspective of market as price mechanism. Such a perspective simply did not permit to explain certain features of business market recurrent in various studies.The initial phase of this research has been empirical and inductive and contains little of theor

25、izing. It consists in gathering empirical evidence of some phenomena recurrent in industrial markets that have not been foreseen in the available market theory, in particular, the existence of continuous interactions and exchanges when buyers and sellers were business organizations. There was little

26、 in the available market theory to explain why, business between two organisations should be done on a continuous bases with only limited switching to other suppliers or customers. The empirical observations has led to some quest for the rationale of the phenomenon then called relationships but main

27、ly to more detailed empirical observations focusing on these buyer seller relationships and their various features. One of those that come in foreground was the role of the continuous relationships for the businesses that have taken part in these. It became apparent that continuity appeared to be im

28、portant for various reasons for both buyers and sellers. Another aspect of the business markets that came thus to the foreground was that numerous interdependences, in the sense that what happened in one relationship could produce effect in another one, appeared to exist between the relationships of

29、 a company. The interdependences, further explored in the subsequent research, have turned out to be generalized in business markets. At a later stage, such findings have been formulated in terms of relationships between buyers and sellers in business markets forming a network-like structure.The exi

30、stence of relationships and the network structure of business markets, main empirical observations of the IMP research have not been foreseen or explained in the perspective of market as mechanism. Once observed they became the problem of theory and assumed, naturally, the centre of the stage. Subse

31、quent research has been more and more focusing on relationships and their role for market actors. The perspective, here labelled as “market-as-network”, yielded thus different pictures and different needs for theorizing that is for explaining the unexpected phenomena - the development of buyer-selle

32、r relationships and interdependences.What is the essence of the market-as-network perspective?The effort to explain the existence of buyer seller relationships and of the network-like structure of the business markets has not been very systematic. It has been rather concerned with gathering evidence

33、 of the various processes in the relationships and their impact on the companies involved. Nevertheless, the mounting empirical evidence has lead to formulating numerous hypotheses regarding critical relationship processes and the role of relationships for the market actors involved.Some of the hypo

34、theses that emerged and have found apparent support in the empirical observations appear to be falling in three broad categories. The first is that social relationships play an important role and affect in various ways on the development of business relationships (e.g. Hakansson ed.,1982, Easton & A

35、raujo 1992). The second that interdependences and continuity in relationships favour in particular development of new technical solutions (e.g. Hakansson 1989, Waluszewski 1990, Lundgren 1995) and finally that continuity is important for the development of the business and for the economy in use of

36、resources in business enterprise (e.g. Hakansson & Snehota 1995, Gadde & Hakansson 2002).The common underlying theme in these hypotheses is that the buyers and sellers, being limited in their knowledge and understanding of the context in which they act bounded in their rationality, do find in contin

37、uous market relationships (and interaction) a way to overcome their own limitations. Continuous interactive market relationship permit not only access to resources of others but also to find and work out solutions to problems they meet drawing on experience and capabilities of others. Relationships

38、existing in the market appear thus to be instrumental to solve, broadly put, the resource problem of the actors (Ford et al. 2003). The market seen as a network of patterned relationships appears thus more than the mechanism to facilitate exchange, as implied in the market as mechanism perspective.

39、It appears as a platform that facilitates the economic behaviours of market actors. Those who study business markets have not been the only ones to find the market concept resulting from the market as mechanism perspective of limited use for their respective purposes. Within the very same marketing

40、discipline there has been, until the turn of the discipline to the marketing management, a long tradition of approaching the market from a distinct perspective, different from the one of neo-classical economics. It has been pointing to the systemic dimension of the markets and postulating the notion

41、 of market as a complex behavioural system (e.g. Alderson & Cox 1948, Cox & Goodman 1956, Alderson, 1965) in which various actors interact with different roles. Similar argument seems to be underlying much of the research in marketing on distribution systems and channels (Stern & Reve 1980).Both in

42、economics and management, but also in other disciplines there have been and continue to be several schools and research traditions that have expressed their dissatisfaction with what it offered for the purpose at hand. What these appear to have in common is the complaints, or rather concern with, th

43、at the prevailing market perspective provides very limited guidance in dealing with and explaining various phenomena that this or that research group have been concerned with. It is beyond my capacity and ambition to provide an exhaustive account of the various alternative perspectives on markets in

44、 other disciplines. It stands clear, however, that there have been numerous instances in which in other disciplines similar phenomena as those characterising business markets, has been met and trying to explore these by turning to the market as price mechanism perspective have not been of much help.

45、 There are few doubts that the prevailing perspective of market as pricing mechanism has considerable appeal as it yields theories that delight, are elegant and parsimonious. It is equally clear however, that it is not “performative” for certain classes of phenomena and that is where the doubt have

46、been raised and quest for a different perspective is taking place. It is also clear that some of those can be easily related to the market-as-network perspective. A quick glance at some of the disciplines concerned with market shows some of these common themes. Building on a long tradition, several

47、sociologists and historians approaching and observing some market phenomena have pointed out the difficulty of separating the working of the market from the social and institutional sphere (e.g. Polanyi 1957, Granovetter 1985, Smelser & Swedberg 1994, Lindblom 2001). Others have been concerned with

48、the relationship between social structure of markets and the economic action (e.g. Willer 1985, Burt 1992). In economics concern have been expressed, to put it very broadly, with need to explain dynamics of change in markets and their evolution, an issue for which the perspective of market as pricin

49、g mechanism has not much to offer because it relegates the factors of change to the forces that are external to the market. (Coase 1988, North 1977, Hayek 1945, Kirzner 1973). Another issue on which there is some agreement among the critics of the prevailing perspective that it yields “a theory of v

50、alue allocation, but it lacks a theory of value creation” (Lazonick 1991:65). Others have focused on market phenomena, empirically observable but lacking sufficient explanations in prevailing market theory, such as the growth of the firms and existence of buyer supplier relationship, similar to hose

51、 found by the market-as-network perspective (e.g. Penrose 1959, Richardson 1972). More recently an institutional perspective has found many advocates in order to produce better understanding of observable dynamics of markets (e.g. North 1990, Loasby 2001). Indeed, the market-as-network perspective y

52、ields a concept of market that is equivalent to the idea put forward in several disciplines that market is, primarily, an institution. It is an institution in so far as it consists of a set of actors connected by exchange relationships to a network like pattern of behaviours. The claim that market i

53、s an institution leads to stressing that its form is always specific resulting from interaction of its elements the single actors that form the institution and that as an institution it is formed by evolutionary processes. It also implies that institutions are the structure of the context of action

54、imposing limits on but also enabling action. The market-as-network perspective yields thus pictures and images of market that differ in several respects compared to those produced by the perspective on market as price mechanism. For our purpose there are at least three aspects on which the differenc

55、es are rather profound and that need to be underlined: the first concerns the nature of the relationships among market actors; the second regards the boundaries of the market and the third is about the dynamics of market evolution.On the first point the neo-classical perspective on markets assumes t

56、hat the interaction among buyers and sellers in the market, which are the only two types of actors, is limited, and is (and should be) mainly reduced to price signalling. Price conveys all (or nearly all) the necessary information to clear the market and make the exchange happen. The importance of o

57、ther information is limited. That because both sellers and buyers know the needs and availabilities and capacities of each other. According to this perspective exchange takes form of single discrete transactions with counterparts offering and agreeing to the “best” price available. The needs are a g

58、iven and relatively stable and the relationship between a buyer and a seller is only virtual; it is the instantaneous transaction.On the second point, it is assumed that boundaries of a market are given by the product (and its substitutes). The set of actors that form the market consists of buyers a

59、nd sellers of a given product. It is two-layered in terms of roles; buyers/consumers of the product on one side, and sellers/producers of the product on the other side. The product is the parameter of the market; price is the variable over which market actors exercise influence and on which they mos

60、tly compete. Basically every product has a different market in the sense different set of producers/sellers and consumers/buyers.On the third issue, it is assumed that markets are stable or tend to stability; they tend to equilibrium on both the seller and buyer side. Changes in the market are conse

61、quence of changes elsewhere that can, but not necessarily will, be brought into the market. The exogenous factors that can induce change in the market can be the technology that affects the production function and in the social sphere that affects the preferences of the customers. The conduct of mar

62、ket actors is such that it tends to equilibrate the market as they adapt to exogenous changes. The picture of the market produced in the market-as-network perspective differs markedly on the three aspects. First, it puts into foreground rich communication and interaction between market actors (mainl

63、y buyers and sellers) entailing not only information exchange but also important elements of social exchange. Building some degree of trust and commitment appears a necessary condition for carrying economic exchange transactions. The interaction and communication tends to have a time dimension; ther

64、e is some need for mutual adjustments and thus for continuity. The past and expected future interaction tends to bind selectively single specific actors and creates specific interdependences. On the aspect of market boundaries the market-as network perspective entails a picture of a variable set of

65、actors connected by continuous relationships within which different good are transacted. What defines the market is the set of actors and relationships. Markets are thus not defined by the product. Product is a variable in the single exchange relationships and across relationships between actors. All market actors are differentiated (heterogeneous) with respect to the products they demand and offer. They are also differentiated with respect to their role set. Sellers are not necessarily manufacturers and buyers not necessarily consumers, their sets o