تاریخچه تفکر شبکه ها و کانال ها در بازاریابی در قرن بیستم

The development of research explaining the structure and operations of interfirm relations and networks in marketing channels and business markets is described. The focus is on the main contributors and research themes that have underpinned the development of marketing thought in this area since the beginning of the 20th century. I show how ideas have been borrowed from other disciplines such as economics and the behavioral sciences to inform research and develop marketing theory, and how different but overlapping research traditions emerged in North America, Europe and Australasia. A broad picture is painted of the intellectual history regarding the subject of interfirm networks, rather than a detailed exposition of particular theories or contributions. This is followed by a state of knowledge assessment in terms of five fundamental explananda identified at the outset of the article. I conclude by discussing some of the main research issues challenging researchers in the 21st century.

The study of interfirm relations and networks can be traced to early civilizations, as people tried to understand the emer-gence of various institutional arrangements associated with the buying and selling of products and services, including the emergence of markets, retail and wholesale institutions, inter-national trading systems and the like (e.g. Dixon 1982, 1984,1991). The purpose of this article is to put into perspective the study of one aspect of marketing by tracing its historical development in the twentieth century. The timing is appro-priate: as we commence the 21st century we can reflect back on the 20th and see what we have learned.I take a broad view of the field of interfirm relations and networks. It is meant to include theories or concepts devel- oped to help explain why systems of interrelated firms and other organizations arise to carry out production and market-ing work. In the marketing discipline this includes the study of: marketing and distribution channels in domestic and inter-national markets; supply chains; business to business markets and the nature and role of relations between buyers and sell-ers; and institutional studies of intermediaries such as retail- ers and wholesalers. Each of these areas draws heavily on research from other disciplines including economics, geogra-phy, sociology, politics, psychology, social psychology and law.

I have outlined in broad terms some of the main streams of research leading to the current state of thinking and research regarding interfirm relations and networks. We now have a substantial literature and body of research. While much remains to be done we have moved far from the earlier descriptive or prescriptive writing with little underlying theo-ry. We have developed both the economic dimensions of channel and network structure as well as the behavioral dimensions and made attempts to integrate them. We have developed and tested sophisticated measures of many aspects of channel and network structures, operations and environ-ments. We have proposed and tested complex path models among the dimensions of relationships and their performance and have begun to accommodate network level factors into our theories and research. The dynamics and evolution of channels and networks has begun to be more systematically studied and modeled drawing on developments in complexity science. In short we have come a long way.