Transaction Cost Analysis and Marketing

This chapter is a brief and non-exhaustive review of how transaction cost economics has been used in the field of marketing, where it has diffused rather thoroughly and has achieved a considerable degree of acceptance. This review focuses on how an observer might view the version of TCE that marketers have enfolded within their own eclectic, pragmatic, managerial, and above all, empirical paradigm. Empirical research practice within marketing revolves around what an economist might view as a curious blend of values from econometrics, biometrics, sociometrics, and psychometrics. Thus armed, marketers have boldly taken TCE where no economist has dared to go. After reading this exposition, some may conclude that marketers have baldly taken TCE where no economist ought to go. I, however, intend to argue that marketers have used TCE to derive not only useful insights into marketing problems but valuable perspectives on TCE itself, in particular in terms of the explanatory mechanism underlying TCE.