• Journal of the Korean Society for information Management
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.183-197
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• 2015

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to identify the library services market and its characteristics versus the common commodity market so that marketing and management in library services can be more fruitful in terms of research and development. Based on the developed hypothetical market, a library services market is identified; the market is then characterized in comparison to the common commodity market using three theoretical characteristics of the library services market: indirect exchange, limited competition, and time-lagging exchange. Based on these characteristics, two possible research directions are suggested: development of goals for library management and consideration of applications in library marketing.