Intangibility and the “State of Being Informed” - an Analysis of their Impact on Market Processes

Abstract

By taking a closer look at the research in marketing and especially services marketing there is to point out that fundamental discussions about the determinants of market processes are taking place. With regard to the hard conditions of competition, nowadays, and the fast growing relevance of customer orientation it was no great surprise that one phenomenon found great attention: It is the so-called “co-makership”. This co-makership means that the customer participates in the dispositions of his supplier. This collaboration is shaping different forms and can be carried out in an also active and passive way. It is very interesting for marketing theory and marketing practice that this state is a characteristic feature of all transactions taking place. The latest step of customer’s participation — sometimes also called “pro-suming” (Toffler 1980) — is the sales respectively distribution act. Here, an integration always takes place. Usually the integration is observable on other steps, such as production, procurement or administration. In the German marketing literature the term “integrativity” is used to name and describe the phenomenon of customer participation (Engelhardt; Kleinaltenkamp; Reckenfelderbäumer 1993). The integrativity means that the customer is owning resources that are relevant in order to form products in a customer-specific way. Therefore, the supplier needs to integrate these resources, the so-called “extemal factors” (Berekoven 1966 and 1974, Meyer 1983), into his own radius of action. Parallels to the resource-dependence-discussion (Pfeffer; Salancik 1978) become evident.