Exchange and Exchange Relationships

Human being is living within a cognitive space that makes perception and interpretation of a certain reality possible (Schmid 2000). This enables them to realize a manifold of what could be comparing to what is and forces the rise of demands and wants through an evaluation of the difference. Needs and wants therefore are the origin of a goal seeking behavior that leads to exchanges (Houston and Gassenheimer 1987). In other words, exchanges are the result of a transformation process between here and now, between debit and credit among interacting entities with the goal to satisfy individual and organizational needs. Because of this fundamental character, investigations in exchanges are widely spread among research disciplines such as economics, sociology, psychology, anthropology, marketing and information science (Bagozzi 1979) Nevertheless, no unique conceptualization of exchange, or well-developed theories do exist (Bagozzi 1997; Houston and Gassenheimer 1987; Dwyer et al. 1987). Thus, a comprehensive view of exchanges shall be developed in this paper filling this gap.