Markets, infrastructures and infrastructuring markets

Abstract

Despite a growing understanding of market infrastructures—the rules and socio-material arrangements that enable agreements on the properties of goods, and the calculation of value, equivalence and exchange—we know little of what lies beneath the arrangements that underpin and are implicated in exchange. The socio-material lens has done much to explain how specific assemblages circulate information and goods, but has done little to explain how different infrastructures configure relations between dispersed market practices. Using the history of the development of the market for market research we show how knowledge-based infrastructures constitute markets as knowledge objects: new expertise emerged through alliances between academia, government, and private actors form a new occupation embodied in specialist agencies that set themselves up in an infrastructural relation to marketing practices. Our conceptualization of markets as knowledge objects extends extant understandings of markets by showing how: (1) extant knowledge-based infrastructures are drawn on to construct new markets; (2) infrastructural relations emerge between different markets to constitute multiple systems of provision and demand, leading to an increasingly valuable knowledge infrastructure; and (3) organized practices in one market are often heavily reliant on connections to other markets, including knowledge-based infrastructures such as market research services.

Instagram no Mercado da Moda Modesta: Análise pela Ótica das Estruturas Sociotécnicas

“…Na antropologia, infraestruturas são entendidas como redes construídas para facilitar o fluxo de pessoas, bens ou ideias (Larkin, 2013), estando sua existência sujeita a um conjunto de práticas (Star & Ruhleder, 1996). Assim, as infraestruturas precisam ser entendidas como deslocadoras (Larkin, 2013), estando em constante interdependência com esse conjunto de práticas e outras infraestruturas (Araujo & Mason, 2021;Fuentes & Fuentes, 2022). Um vasto conjunto de matérias físicas e abstratas pode ser entendido como infraestruturas (Bowker et al, 2019).…”

“…Além dessas características conceituais, destacamos outras que também perfazem as infraestruturas de mercado. São elas: as práticas (Araujo & Mason, 2021;Fuentes & Fuentes, 2022); os arranjos materialmente heterogêneos (Mellet & Beauvisage, 2020), compostos por outros sistemas ou dispositivos (Chakrabarti et al, 2016); a interdependência e a modularidade (Kjellberg et al, 2019); e a poética (Larkin, 2013). Defendemos, portanto, que o Instagram pode ser entendido sob essa ótica, visto que foi desenvolvido e estruturado para permitir a interação entre diferentes atores através de uma rede algorítmica que suporta a classificação e a organização de informações, dados e usuários, bem como por ser desenvolvido e transformado pelas práticas de seus usuários, pela interdependência a outros componentes e sua dimensão poética (simbólica) (Tabela 1).…”

Strategic Orientation: Market Changer or Market Defender?

“…Wilkie and Moore (2007), Marion (2006), Araujo and Mason (2021) and others suggest that there are “layers” to marketing. For Marion, these layers include a practice, a branch of knowledge, and an ideology or “the enduring beliefs and collective representations (perspectives, frame of reference, viewpoints) shared by marketers.” Wilkie and Moore (2007) expressed the third layer not as an ideology, but as a “philosophy.” It is akin to a higher order view of what marketing entails.…”

“…In a sentiment that continues to this day (e.g., Araujo and Mason 2021; Hunt, Hass, and Manis 2021; Kjellbert and Murto 2021; Sheth and Parvatiyar 2021), Kotler and Zaltman 1971 note there “is no universal agreement on what marketing is.” Marketing as an “ideology” would reflect some consensus among members (academics, practitioners, consultants, authors, associations) about the systems, beliefs, and values surrounding what they consider to be the scope and role of marketing in society.…”

“…More recently, scholars such as Sheth and Parvatiyar (2021) call for marketing to be a driver of social change and sustainability. Wilkie and Moore (2007), Marion (2006), Araujo and Mason (2021) and others suggest that there are "layers" to marketing. For Marion, these layers include a practice, a branch of knowledge, and an ideology or "the enduring beliefs and collective representations (perspectives, frame of reference, viewpoints) shared by marketers."…”