An Asymmetric Information Based View Of Marketing

Marketing theory, which appeared in USA in 20th Century, has a hundred-year history in which there were many ideas such as Market-ingredients, Relationship-Marketing, and Integrated-Marketing. Etc. But all of the schools including Market-ingredients have no firm theoretical basement, because they deem marketing activities as marketing itself. And so it's necessary to form a band-new framework of marketing.The thesis tries to construct a framework based on asymmetric information with game theory, institutional economics and information economics, and explore the nature of marketing.In the real market the firm with more information will implement opportunistic activities and the consumers have to face "moral hazard". In the meanwhile the consumers with less information will act strategically in order to avoid the risk, which leads to "adverse selection". As a result the transaction, which will benefit each part, cannot come true. And so some activities have to be done to reduce the influence asymmetric information wield on the market. That is marketing activities. The nature of marketing is to alleviate asymmetry of information and help the transaction that will benefit each part come true.The former marketing theories can be explained rationally under the framework based on asymmetric information. Take marketing-ingredients for example, product and price identify with signal to alleviate the asymmetry of information, and promotion and place are communicating process. And Relationship-Marketing can avoid the opportunistic activities and the decrease of specific assets which asymmetric information leads to.So the conclusion comes that the former theories, which regard marketingactivities as marketing itself, are just generalization of experience; and the nature of marketing is to alleviate asymmetry of information and help the transaction that will benefit each part come true.