Suchergebnisse

Combining previous work on market formation and regulation with a case study of the emerging legal cannabis markets in the United States, we develop the argument that interrelations to other markets contribute significantly to constitute the social systems of regulated markets. Specifically, market interrelations enacted during legitimation and regulation influence who becomes involved in the market formation process and direct attention to specific issues in that process. After successfully (re)regulating a market, new interrelations are enacted via practices borrowed from historic, parallel and auxiliary markets, and via material influences based on complementarity and substitutability. While these multiple interrelations to other markets complicate market delineation, they are also a historical precondition for it.

The purpose of this article is to elaborate conceptually on the user–market relationship. Existing research reports a limited user–market relationship, which simultaneously exaggerates and underplays user influence on markets. Assuming a constructivist market studies (CMS) perspective, we argue that the scope of the user–market relationship is broader than developing offers and uses. We conceptualize market shaping as five interrelated subprocesses in which users may be involved as agents: qualifying goods, fashioning modes of exchange, configuring actors, establishing market norms and generating market representations. The extent of user influence in these subprocesses is likely to vary both within a specific market and across markets. By identifying conditions conducive to user involvement in each subprocess, we lay the foundation for empirical research into how users shape markets.

This article explores the notion of price representation, the various ways in which prices are made available to market participants, an important aspect of contemporary markets that has been relatively neglected in previous research. Specifically, the article uses the representation of prices in contemporary retail markets as a backdrop for theorizing about the role of price representations. We propose a number of conceptual relations between price representations, prices and the practices of producing them. We further elaborate on what price representations represent by relating their generation to the process of qualifying goods. We conclude by relating our conceptual discussion to existing research, drawing out implications for future research on prices and pricing, for theorizing about markets and for marketing strategy.

This article presents the results of a poll made among the members of the editorial and advisory boards of Valuation Studies. The purpose is to overview the topic that is the remit of the new journal. The poll focused on three questions: Why is the study of valuation topical? What specific issues related to valuation are the most pressing ones to explore? What sites and methods would be interesting for studying valuation? The answers to these questions provided by sixteen board members form the basis of the article. Based on these answers, it identifies a number of themes concerning the study of valuation, elaborating on the rationale for attending to valuation, the conceptual challenges linked to this, and the specific issues and sites that deserve further attention. Co-authors: Diane-Laure Arjaliès, Patrik Aspers, Stefan Beljean, Alexandra Bidet, Alberto Corsín, Emmanuel Didier, Marion Fourcade, Susi Geiger, Klaus Hoeyer, Michèle Lamont, Donald MacKenzie, Bill Maurer, Jan Mouritsen, Ebba Sjögren, Kjell Tryggestad, François Vatin, Steve Woolgar.

This article extends the S-T-P framework of market segmentation (i.e. segmentation, targeting, and positioning), showing that firms have more sources of segments than previously acknowledged, including the option of integrating feral segments that emerge publicly in the marketplace. While the S-T-P framework currently focuses on ad hoc segmentation tailored for a focal firm and syndicated segmentation made for commercialization to multiple firms, this article introduces feral segmentation in which cultural intermediaries (CIs) coin consumers categories through their familiarity with popular culture. Empirically, the article investigates how CIs constructed the lumbersexual segment, a neologism combining the narcissism of the metrosexual with the roughness of the lumberjack. The findings include a four-step feral segmentation process: (1) Establishing deviance—singling out anomalies that lower the explanatory power of existing segments. (2) Prototyping—sketching profiles that enhance familiarity and allow identification. (3) Anchoring—attaching the segment into public discussions. (4) Vaccination—coining preemptive validations against criticism.

This article presents a conceptual model of markets as constituted by practice. Drawing on recent sociological research on the performativity of market theories, the article stresses the need to take seriously the role of ideas in the making of markets. Since extant studies of performativity focus on the role of economics in shaping markets, it is argued that marketing as an academic discipline is a particularly apt partner in expanding this endeavour. The conceptual model presents markets as the ongoing results of three interlinked types of practices: normalizing practices serving to establish normative objectives; representational practices serving to depict markets and/or how they work; and exchange practices serving to realize individual economic exchanges. The links between these practices, which are conceived as translations, are elaborated upon using a number of empirical studies. Finally, the model is used to illustrate differences in how markets are being continuously realized. This highlights the lack of studies on performativity in markets constituted by configurations of market practices in which marketing theories and techniques are likely to be important.

Marketing Shares, Sharing Markets focuses on stocks, stock markets and the relevant professionals. Previously, financial markets were epitomized by the stock exchange, a physical space where traders communicated about and engaged in market transactions on behalf of buyers and sellers. Developments during the past 25 years or so, however, have fundamentally reshaped the financial markets. The result has been a tremendous growth in the number of transactions, the number of products, the number of markets and, not least, in the value of financial assets worldwide. At the same time, financial products have become increasingly decoupled from the ordinary economy of production, distribution, and consumption through the construction of derivative products and the growth of speculative trade. While stock markets have become less important, relatively speaking, they arguably remain an important fundament for the financial markets. This is reflected in the media coverage of global stock markets. The current crisis has also illustrated the risks associated with more complex financial products. Few studies have attended to the joint involvement of several professional groups in either the organizing of investment banks or in the shaping of capital markets. This book addresses this research gap through a unique empirical investigation into the action nets of investment banks. Analysing the practices of traders, analysts, brokers and bankers it reveals how their contrasting perspectives on shares are put to use and the consequences this has for investment banks, corporations, investors and to the shaping of the stock markets.

AbstractThis article explores the politics and technologies of price fixing and price display in US grocery stores in the mid-20th century. Drawing on the literature on market devices and policy instruments, it complements previous studies focused on price setting processes by stressing the importance of price display. Through a systematic reading of the trade journal The Progressive Grocer, the article shows how displaying prices during World War II and the postwar inflation period combined the mastery of Government authorities at the federal level, and the expertise of retail professionals at the shelf level. It demonstrates that the regulation of prices is linked to mundane policies, technologies and practices, in particular the technique of 'stereoscopic prices' aimed at linking a reference price (the ceiling price set by the government) and the selling price (the actual price set by the retailer). Such technologies proved able to reinvent prices and price competition through their 'bifurcated agency', i.e. their propensity to both enact the scripts delegated to them (conveying price ceilings) and produce major side effects, like generalizing the practice of price display and linking prices to new values and qualitative dimensions of grocery products.

This article is part of a project examining the long-term process of price display digitalization, ranging from manually written prices to contemporary electronic shelf labels. Based on the etymology of the term 'digital' (from digitus, finger or toe), we intend to show that the display of prices in retail settings surprisingly rests on a long-term digitalization process that started in the early 20th century. The study is based on a systematic reading of the trade magazine The Progressive Grocer during its first decades (1922-1947). This magazine assisted independent American grocers in their move from counter-service to self-service, and in facing the challenges of new competitors like chain stores and supermarkets. In this process, the disclosure of prices and their proper writing—their ethno-graphy—was central. We focus on a crucial and transitional period: the move from coded to open prices. This period entailed a double development of price 'fingerization' (using the fingers to write the prices) and price 'de-fingerization' (getting rid of handwriting thanks to novel price tag and printing devices). Ethnographying these mundane evolutions illuminates the role of the fingers of the invisible hand that animates the market, so to say.