ABSTRACT

Understanding market structure is central to firms’ success. It helps organizations understand competition and in turn develop strategies to improve performance. The market structure literature is traditionally driven by three schools of thoughts, supply-side competition, demand-side competition, and target market-based competition. However, researchers are developing more intricate models of market structures, which are inspired by the ecosystem concept and are supported by network analysis techniques. In this article, we present new insights regarding market structures based on an ecosystem metaphor approach. In particular, we propose that a market structure can be classified using six ecosystem-based relationships (mutualism, commensalism, neutralism, amensalism, parasitism, and competition), which are based on how the sales of a market offering affects the sales of other offerings in the same ecosystem. Based on these relationships, we examine these relationships in detail and provide proposals for future research.

摘要

了解市场结构是企业成功的关键。它可以帮助组织了解竞争并进而制定战略来提高绩效。传统上，市场结构文献是由三个学派驱动的，即供应方竞争，需求方竞争和目标市场为基础的竞争。但是，研究人员正在开发更复杂的市场结构模型，这些模型受生态系统概念的启发并得到网络分析技术的支持。在本文中，我们基于生态系统隐喻方法提出了有关市场结构的新见解。尤其是，我们建议可以使用六个基于生态系统的关系（互惠主义，共荣主义，中立主义，仁爱主义，寄生主义和竞争）对市场结构进行分类，这基于市场产品的销售如何影响同一生态系统中其他产品的销售。基于这些关系，我们将详细研究这些关系，并为将来的研究提供建议。