Description
Book SynopsisShedding light on a range of price fixing mechanisms and price display technologies, this incisive book offers a clear overview of the retail price setting, posting and adjusting processes. Based on a detailed study of a century of pricing practices in the US retail sector, it explores the anthropology and sociology of valuation practices by concentrating on the way prices are fabricated.
Fixing Prices examines the relationship between everyday price display innovations, such as price tag devices, and wider market changes, including the introduction of price regulations about price display and item pricing. Investigating the historical development of price display, the book demonstrates the extent to which the materiality of prices contributes to the creation of different price-based valuation tactics.
Offering a historical perspective on pricing in the US retail sector, this unique book will prove invaluable to students of marketing, economic sociology, and industrial economics. It will also benefit industry professionals wanting to expand their knowledge surrounding pricing procedures.
Trade Review‘Fixing Prices
reveals how retail shopping was transformed by the posting of prices through the invention of new techniques and technology. The book delightfully captures how these innovations had to be learned by store owners, sold to customers, and created new and unforeseen opportunities. We now take these innovations for granted but as the authors suggest, they continue in the digital age to evolve in startling ways.’ -- Neil D. Fligstein, University of California, Berkeley, US
‘Markets are built on price setting. Yet we don’t know how price setting works. Drawing on brilliant scholarship from three leading scientists of our times, Fixing Prices is the first book that gives a definitive answer. A must read for anyone who wants to understand what makes a price.’ -- Koray Caliskan, The New School, US
Table of ContentsContents: Introduction: studying the display of prices 1. Indexing prices: prices and the fingers of the invisible hand 2. Tagging prices: the proliferation of price tag technologies 3. Managing prices: price cutting strategies 4. Ruling prices: price ceiling policies 5. Printing, sticking, and stamping prices: rebalancing power between manufacturers and retailers 6. Infrastructuring prices: from paper to digital price systems 7. Digitalizing prices: the long history of Electronic Shelf Labels 8. Conclusions References Index
