Market: What It Means in Economics, Types, and Common Features

What Is a Market?

A market is a place where parties can gather to facilitate the exchange of goods and services. The parties involved are usually buyers and sellers. The market may be physical, like a retail outlet, where people meet face-to-face, or virtual, like an online market, where there is no physical presence or contact between buyers and sellers.

Some key characteristics help define a market, including the availability of an arena, buyers and sellers, and a commodity that can be purchased and sold.

How Markets Work

A market is any place where two or more parties can meet to engage in an economic transaction—even those that don't involve legal tender. A market transaction may include goods, services, information, currency, or any combination that passes from one party to another. In short, markets are arenas in which buyers and sellers can gather and interact.

Two parties are generally needed to make a trade. However, a third party is required to introduce competition and balance the market. As such, a market in a state of perfect competition, among other things, is characterized by a high number of active buyers and sellers.

Beyond this broad definition, the term market encompasses various things, depending on the context. For instance, it may refer to the stock market, which is the place where securities are traded. It may also describe a collection of people who wish to buy a specific product or service in a particular place, such as the Brooklyn housing market. Or it could refer to an industry or business sector, such as the global diamond market.

Certain decisions that help shape the market are determined by an economic system known as the market economy. In this system, factors like investments and the production, distribution, and pricing of goods and services are led by supply and demand from businesses and individuals. As such, a market economy is unplanned and is not part of a planned or command economy where the government dictates all of these factors. Examples of market economies include the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Japan.

Supply and Demand

Whatever the context, a market establishes the prices for goods and other services. These rates are determined by supply and demand. The idea of supply and demand is one of the very basics of economics. The sellers create supply, while buyers generate demand.

Markets try to find some balance in price when supply and demand are in balance. But that balance can be disrupted by factors other than price, including incomes, expectations, technology, the cost of production, and the number of buyers and sellers participating.

Simply put, the number of goods and services available is determined by what people want and how eager they are to buy. Sellers increase production when buyers demand more goods and services. Producers tend to raise their prices when demand increases. When buyer demand decreases, they drop their prices and, therefore, the number of goods and services they bring to market.

Physical and Virtual Markets

Markets may be represented by physical locations where transactions are made. These include retail stores and similar businesses that sell individual items to wholesale markets selling goods to distributors. Or they may be virtual. Internet-based stores and auction sites such as Amazon and eBay are examples of markets where transactions can occur entirely online, and the parties involved never physically connect.

Markets may emerge organically or as a means of enabling ownership rights over goods, services, and information. When on a national or more specific regional level, markets may often be categorized as developed or developing. This distinction depends on many factors, including income levels and the nation or region’s openness to foreign trade.

Features of a Market

Certain features help define a market and are necessary for it to function. The following are the most basic characteristics that shape a market:

• Arena: This is the platform where transactions are conducted between buyers and sellers. Keep in mind that this doesn't necessarily mean a physical location.
• Buyers and Sellers: For the market to function, there must be buyers and sellers. The market can't exist if someone isn't buying something that someone else is selling. These entities can be businesses, individuals, or even governments, and they can execute their transactions physically or virtually, thanks to the internet.
• One Commodity: A single market depends on a single commodity, so a related commodity must be present for a market to operate. For instance, wheat is the commodity bought and sold in the wheat market. Electronics make up the electronics market en masse but can be broken down into subcategories.

Other features include competition, pricing, and the freedom to buy and sell goods and services.

Types of Markets

Markets vary widely for several reasons, including the kinds of products sold, location, duration, and size. The constituency of the customer base, size, legality, and other factors are equally influential. Aside from the two most common markets—physical and virtual—there are other kinds of markets where parties can gather to execute their transactions.

Underground Market

An underground or black market refers to an illegal market where transactions occur without the knowledge of the government or other regulatory agencies. Many illegal markets exist to circumvent existing tax laws. This is why many involve cash-only transactions or non-traceable forms of currency, making them harder to track.

Many illegal markets exist in economically developing countries with planned or command economies where the government controls the production and distribution of goods and services. When there is a shortage of specific goods and services in the economy, members of the illegal market step in and fill the void.

Illegal markets can also exist in developed economies. These shadow markets, as they're also known, become prevalent when prices control the sale of specific products or services, especially when demand is high. Ticket scalping is one example of an illegal or shadow market. When demand for concert or theater tickets is high, scalpers will step in, buy a bunch, and sell them at inflated prices on the underground market.

Auction Market

An auction market brings many people together for the sale and purchase of specific lots of goods. The buyers or bidders try to top each other for the purchase price. The items for sale go to the highest bidder.

The most common auction markets involve livestock, foreclosed homes, and art and antiques. Many operate online now. For example, the U.S. Treasury sells its bonds, notes, and bills via regular auctions.

Financial Market

The blanket term "financial market" refers to any place where securities, currencies, and bonds are traded between two parties. These markets are the basis of capitalist societies, providing capital formation and liquidity for businesses. They can be physical or virtual.

The financial market includes the stock exchanges such as the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), Nasdaq, the London Stock Exchange (LSE), and the TMX Group. Other financial markets include the bond and foreign exchange markets, where people trade currencies.

Regulating Markets

Other than underground markets, most markets are subject to rules and regulations set by governing body that determines the market’s nature. This may be the case when the regulation is as wide-reaching and as widely recognized as an international trade agreement or as local and temporary as a pop-up street market where vendors maintain order and rules among themselves.

The Bottom Line

Markets are an important part of the economy. They allow a space where governments, businesses, and individuals can buy and sell their goods and services. But that's not all. They help determine the pricing of goods and services and inject much-needed liquidity into the economy.

By offering a place to conduct transactions, markets allow entities access to the capital to further their interests, whether to fund infrastructure, fulfill growth plans, make purchases, or invest their money. This helps fuel innovation to secure a competitive edge in the marketplace.