Electronics and Expertise: Constructing the Smart TV on the Retail Sales Floor

Abstract

This article considers how TV retailers shape public understanding of television as a cultural technology and household device. Drawing on interviews with Australian TV retailers, we identify four sales strategies used when selling smart TVs in-store: simplification, avoidance, empathy, and exploitation. Our analysis shows how these sales strategies seek to minimize and manage the smart TV’s technological complexity, thus downplaying its interactive potential. We critically assess the assumptions about technological expertise that underlie these strategies.