The genesis of relational interactions in the development of views on competition between market entities

Currently, there is a steady increase in the number of transactions at the level of firms, making it worthwhile to establish relational interactions between market participants. However, traditionally, the relations of market actors are described in theories of competition. In this regard, there is scientific and practical interest in revealing the perspectives of relational interactions between market actors with different approaches to the tenets of competition. To do this, in the present work we investigate the prospects of relational interactions for different concepts of competition. The study of behavioral concepts of competition focused on independent activity of market subjects revealed that, from the perspective of both classical and neoclassical theory, relational interactions are eliminated between firms and stakeholders in the markets of perfect competition. Examination of structural concepts of competition and analysis of the actions of buyers and sellers revealed different patterns. With regard to the markets of imperfect competition, there is a trend of growth, the dependence of some manufacturers from the others. Relational interactions actually become feasible because the limited resources of the enterprise force it, in a number of situations, to search for missing assets, technologies, knowledge, etc., from other market entities. Instead of competitive advantages it is possible to use partner privileges with a number of firms operating in the market. The functional concept of competition makes relational interaction explicit to an even greater extent. After all, from the standpoint of functional concepts, competition forms, and not just reveals, a new competitive advantage, guiding the company to find the factors of accelerated development of production. New combinations of production resources can be found by contacting other market participants. This interpretation of competition contributes to the development of relational interactions. Combined methods of competition include the possibility of structural and functional approaches associated with the presence of a large number of ways to improve the competitiveness of firms. This requires additional measures for their implementation that can be achieved through relational interactions with a number of economic agents of the market, promoting their effective implementation.