Fields of opportunity: How marketers design the transaction game with transaction field maps

While the importance of transaction institutions, or rules, has long been established in the area of marketing governance, marketers and academics alike would benefit from guidance in the strategic use of the rules of the transaction game. This is particularly important in B2B and industrial markets where innovations in the rule-making environment have a significant effect on innovation. Strategically, the organization achieves its customer objectives by creating arenas for transacting, termed transaction fields, in which social actors transact. The fundamental argument is that organizations create transaction fields to depict the benefits of transacting to customers. Accordingly, managers must focus on strategic transactions; those that fundamentally change the way that transacting takes place in the transaction field. Using a historical case of the American cotton factor, this research demonstrates how marketers overcome factors that limit transacting by mapping their actions in transaction fields using rules. This specialization may result in the emergence of marketing intermediaries and lead to competitive advantage.