Measures of Structural Change in Macromarketing Systems

Marketing systems can be thought of as exchange networks and modeled in graph theoretic terms. In aggregate form, networks of exchanges cumulate to trade flows and can be modeled using the trade flows methodology. Beginning with a trade flows table, a potentially useful approach to assessing structural change is suggested by Theil's (1972) work on entropy-based measures. These measures are applied to the Australian trade flows data for 1968-1969,1974-1975, and 1978-1979. An alternative graphic approach to the assessment of structural change using dual scaling also is considered.