The American Marketing Association defines marketing as an exchange process. Exchange, however, has yet to be integrated into marketing thought. The authors map marketing, showing the role exchange plays in the discipline. This mapping results in not only a taxonomy of exchange, but a broader taxonomy within which we find exchange, offering one of the few contemporary discussions of a more general theory of marketing.

The authors examine the conditions necessary for exchange, the form value takes, and the law of exchange. In addition, they develop the importance of potency--the...