Marketing Systems and Market Failure

Abstract

The paper seeks to re-examine a classic piece of macromarketing scholarship which dealt with market failures. That analysis was based on a transactional approach to markets, rather than a systems approach. Having become more prominent in the macromarketing literature since that time, marketing systems are the focus of the present analysis. The paper looks at six types of market failure: imperfect competition, entry barriers, externalities, imperfect information, inequality, and transaction costs. Definitions, politics and political economy are discussed, as is a more systems-oriented approach to the assessment of market failures.