The limits of transactional thinking
Customers who treat their relationships with their suppliers of the goods and services as limited to the individual transaction may overlook something that is of much more value than they realize
Markets are instrumental to our health, wealth and wellbeing. They enable the expression of demand to be passed on to prospective suppliers, and allow the goods or services demanded to reach the customers willing to pay for them. Take a look around you wherever you are, and you will see numerous objects that someone (depending on where you are, that might be you yourself) had a need for, and someone else has supplied through the market. It’s little short of magic. But that near magic can fool us, if we are not careful.
Markets are brilliant
Trading and bartering have been around for thousands of years, likely for longer than records stretch. But we have Adam Smith to thank for, if not being the first person to describe the essence of trade, then certainly being the first person to capture it in the immortal words, “ It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their…
