Both inflated prices and payment to suppliers and the government in goods rather than cash allow value-destroying enterprises to appear solvent. In order to answer this question, we need a more complete description of barter in its many forms, and an accounting of the various types of participants. Initial interviews with Russian managers engaged in barter indicate that both viable and nonviable enterprises take advantage of the mechanisms that have arisen to facilitate barter transactions. In this case, the barter economy consists of unproductive firms struggling to survive, and productive firms using strategic behavior to lower costs, avoid taxation and function in an environment lacking in contract enforcement and other institutional support. Among other important questions, it would be interesting to know whether or not these productive firms could survive without barter.
Much research remains to be done.
While several papers were 'multi-country' studies, others focused on individual countries, such as China, the Czech Republic, Hungary, South Korea, Poland, Romania, Russia, and South Africa. The papers presented spanned five major themes. The first theme was the way in which consumers in these countries were changing, as their marketing environments offered them greater choice and complexity. Russell Belk of the University of Utah discussed the seeming anomaly of low-income consumers in transitional economies spending money on 'luxury' goods, discussing the history of luxury goods and why, throughout history and across economies, luxury goods have always been in demand. Finally, David Tse and two co-authors of the City University of Hong Kong discussed research on generational differences among women in mainland China in their modes of resolving disagreements in family purchase decisions.