Business Relationship And Market Transaction Order

The embeddedness theme of economic sociology not only provides a macro approach to examine the market order from the angles of political system,social structure and cultural background,but also helps us to analyze how the transaction order is formed in the interaction of participants from the micro perspective.This paper takes Erquan tea market as an example to analyze the process of commodity chain from tea acquisition to wholesale market,then to distributors and finally to consumer terminal.In this process,the government guides the establishment of tea wholesale market according to the local tea sales experience,supervises the tea market in the commodity circulation,and the relationships between tea traders ensures the smooth operation of the commodity chain.This paper classifies four main types of relationships in the commodity chain: kinship relationship,dependent relationship,partnership relationship and friend relationship.The kinship relations among tea merchants provide information and channels for their relatives to join the market,thus attracting a large number of people to engage in tea production and trade.The interaction among various participants in the commodity chain builds the partnership relationship in the business field,which brings more cooperation opportunities and provides a lot of social resources for the development of the downstream market,thus realizing the extension and operation of the whole tea commodity chain.Some partnership relation can developed into a friend-type relationship,which reduces the transaction cost and market risk and facilitates the maximization of mutual benefit.There is a structural relationship between tea distributors and supermarkets,because the supermarkets determine the entry of a specific terminal market,distributors choose to build up dependent relationship with the supermarket managers as market entry strategy.These relationships bring information,norms,and trust,which complement and work together with formal institutions to maintain order in market transactions.