Corporate barter as a marketing strategy

As business grows increasingly competitive, more and more companies use corporate barter as a viable and valuable marketing strategy, not just as a way to solve financial problems. It is estimated that corporate barter in North America alone will grow to $8.4 billion this year.

"Retail" barter exchanges are trades of products and services among local small businesses and individuals, each paying the trade exchange a transaction fee. By comparison, corporate barter companies take title to the goods themselves. Transactions can involve millions of dollars of goods and services and are conducted primarily with large companies-in many cases publicly traded ones.

While corporate barter originated as an industry in the 1950s, it really took off during the U.S. recession of the early 1970s. Many companies had excess inventories and limited cash resources. Corporate barter companies stepped in and bartered inventory for media time and space, allowing companies to continue their advertising and marketing efforts without spending cash they didn't have.

Today's corporate barter industry is a lot more than an alternative to liquidation of excess or obsolete inventory; it's actually a marketing tool that can help companies enter new markets without incurring extra costs, generate incremental sales, use excess production capacity, expand advertising and marketing budgets, inexpensively extend geographical distribution, reduce...