Description

Book Synopsis
We live in a world of seemingly limitless consumer choice. Yet, as every shopper knows without thinking about it, many everyday goods from beds to batteries to printer paper are available in a finite number of standard sizes. What makes these sizes standard is an agreement among competing firms to make or sell products with the same limited dimensions. But how did firms often hotly competing firms reach such collective agreements?In exploring this question, Colleen Dunlavy puts the history of mass production and distribution in an entirely new light. She reveals that, despite the widely publicized model offered by Henry Ford, mass production techniques did not naturally diffuse throughout the U.S. economy. On the contrary, formidable market forces blocked their diffusion. It was only under the cover of collectively agreed-upon, industrywide standard sizes orchestrated by the federal government that competing firms were able to break free of market forces and transition to mass pr

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    A Hardback by Colleen A. Dunlavy

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      Book details

      Publisher John Wiley and Sons Ltd
      Published 1/30/2024
      ISBN-13 9781509561735
      978-1509561735
      ISBN-10 1509561730
      Also in:
      General and world history

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      We live in a world of seemingly limitless consumer choice. Yet, as every shopper knows without thinking about it, many everyday goods from beds to batteries to printer paper are available in a finite number of standard sizes. What makes these sizes standard is an agreement among competing firms to make or sell products with the same limited dimensions. But how did firms often hotly competing firms reach such collective agreements?In exploring this question, Colleen Dunlavy puts the history of mass production and distribution in an entirely new light. She reveals that, despite the widely publicized model offered by Henry Ford, mass production techniques did not naturally diffuse throughout the U.S. economy. On the contrary, formidable market forces blocked their diffusion. It was only under the cover of collectively agreed-upon, industrywide standard sizes orchestrated by the federal government that competing firms were able to break free of market forces and transition to mass pr

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