If exchange is the core concept of the discipline of marketing, what is the discipline’s unit of measurement? The answer is a transaction. A transaction consists of a trade of values between two parties. We must be able to say A gives X to B and gets Y in return. Jones gives $400 to Smith and obtains a television set. This is a classic monetary transaction, although transactions do not require money as one of the traded values.

A barter transaction would consist of Jones exchanging a refrigerator to Smith in return for a television set. A barter transaction can also consist of the trading of services instead of goods, as when lawyer Jones creates a will for physician Smith in exchange for a medical examination.

A transaction involves at least two items of value, provisions that are agreed to, a time of agreement, and a place of agreement. Usually a legal system develops to support and enforce obedience by the transactors. Transactions can easily give rise to support conflicts based on misinterpretation or malice. Without a law of contracts, people would set about transactions with some distrust, and everyone would lose.

Businesses keep track of their transactions and analyze them vigilantly. For example, sales analysis entails evaluating a company’s sales transactions by product, customer, territory, and other precise variables.

A transaction differs from a transfer. In a transfer, A gives X to B but receives nothing explicit in return. Transfers include gifts, subsides, and altruistic acts. It would seem that marketers should confine their study to transactions rather than transfers. However, transfer behavior can also be understood through the concept of exchange.

The transferrer gives a gift in the expectation of some benefit, such as a good feeling, relief from a sense of guilt, or the wish to put the other party under an obligation. professional fundraisers are acutely aware of the „reciprocal“ motives underlying donor behavior and try to provide the benefits sought by the donors. If they neglect the donors or show no gratitude, they will soon lose the donors‘ support. As a result, marketers have recently broadened the concept of marketing to include the study of transfer behavior as well as transaction behavior.

In the broad sense, the marketer is seeking to bring about a response to some offer, and the response is not buying or trading in a narrow sense. A political candidate wants a response called votes, a church wants a response called joining, a social action group wants a response called adopting the idea.

Marketing is made up of actions undertaken to bring about a desired response from a targeted audience toward some item. Marketing goods and services on a global scale can happen in an „engineered“ way, but often it is as a result of expert and well documented planning. Transactions get executed quickly and for maximum value, regardless of location or market conditions.