Analyzing key account management from the perspective of transaction cost economics

The previous chapters have shown that key account management is a widely known and used marketing management concept, but research on the various aspects of key account management mostly lacks a thorough theoretical foundation. In contrast to the relationship marketing literature, which does not offer any idea or only inferior techniques concerning the selection of the most efficient and effective organizational marketing management design, transaction cost economics seems to be an adequate theoretical approach to fill in this gap. Transaction cost economics [Williamson 1975, 1979, 1985b, 1988, 1996; Klein et al. 1978; Klein 1980, 1988; Klein/Leffler 1981; Teece 1980; Alchian 1984; Joskow 1985, 1988] is mainly concerned with the analysis and the evaluation of the most efficient organizational mode of completing and executing a transaction or a related set of transactions — on the basis of transaction costs [Williamson 1975, p. 8]. It is a comparative institutional approach to the study of economic organization in which the transaction is made the basic unit of analysis [Williamson 1985b, p. 387].