ABSTRACT
The efficiency argument which is commonly advocated by transaction/exchange-oriented managerial marketing scholars is by RM scholars normally rejected on the basis that discrete transactions involve transaction costs in search, negotiation and other associated activities. Markets for manufactured goods as conceptualised by mainstream marketing do not assume consumer participation in production processes, and the producer communicates with consumers through the use of advertising and market research. At a normative level, simultaneous production and consumption processes in high-touch services industries and industrial markets represent the basic premise which is seen as necessitating the shift of focus to cross-functional organisational structures and decentralization. Although many European/Scandinavian and Asian market economies are commonly said to be much more cooperative and collaborative by nature than those of the US and the UK, increasing globalisation of financial markets seems to exert significant pressure on the former to conform to Anglo-Saxon ways of thinking competition and market dynamics.
