What is a Market?

A market is a group of buyers and sellers of a particular good of service. The buyers as a group determine the demand for the product, and the sellers as a group determine the supply of the product.

Markets take many forms. Sometimes markets are highly organized, such as the markets for many agricultural commodities. In these markets, buyers and sellers meet at a specific time and place, where an auctioneer helps set price and arrange sales.

More often, markets airless organized. For example. Consider the market for ice cream in a particular town. Buyers of ice cream do not meet together at any one time. The sellers if ice cream are in different locations and offer somewhat different products. There is no auctioneer calling out the price of the ice cream. Each sellers posts a price for an ice-cream cone, and each buyer decide how much ice cream to buy at each store. Nonetheless t these consumers and producers of ice cream are closely connected. The ice cream buyers are choosing from the various ice-cream sellers to satisfy their hunger and the ice-cream sellers are all trying to appeal to the same ice-cream buyers to make their businesses successful. Even though it is not organized the group of ice-cream buyers sellers forms a market.

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