Abstract

This paper imperially investigates impediments to barter trading in domestic market environment using a sample of firms from the media industry in South Africa. Data was collected from a total of 70 firms, 61 of whom indicated that they practiced barter trade while 9 were non-practitioners. A structured questionnaire was the main instrument used to collect the data. The questionnaire was designed after a review of literature and conducting in-depth interviews with some media practitioners conversant with barter trade. The results show that barter trade is a common practice among firms in the South African media industry. On the difficulties associated with barter trade, it was found that there are many factors that can act as impediments to barter trading and that in general non-practitioners perceive more impediments to barter trading than practitioners. The results further show that although practitioners can in general be said to perceive few impediments to barter trading, there are wide variations on how different firms perceive the impediments with some regarding many of them as important impediments to their barter trading activities and others disagreeing. The results have significant practical implications on the management of barter trade and these have been highlighted in the paper.

Key words: Barter trade, impediments, media industry, South Africa, barter trade practitioners, barter trade non-practitioners.