Browsing by Author "Cochoy, Franck"

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An ethnography of Electronic Shelf Labels. The resisted digitization of prices in contemporary supermarkets
(2017) Soutjis, Bastien; Cochoy, Franck; Hagberg, Johan
Contemporary retail markets have experienced and are experiencing an important digitization shift in the form of computers and associated technologies. Among a large array of digital innovations, Electronic Shelf Labels (ESLs) deserve particular attention. ESLs, despite their long history and many benefits, have not become ubiquitous. The purpose of this paper is to account for this “resisted evolution” of digitized prices. It draws theoretically upon science and technology studies, infrastructure studies, market studies, and previous literature on price representations in retailing. It draws empirically on a combination of ethnographic and historical methods. The paper shows that ESLs do not replace paper prices, but, rather, work together with them: on one hand, they compete to represent prices with their respective features, and on the other, they co-operate in order to reinforce the visibility and attractiveness of products and promotions.
Digitalizing consumption: Introduction
(2017) Cochoy, Franck; Hagberg, Johan; Petersson McIntyre, Magdalena; Sörum, Niklas
Managing leaks: Shoplifting in US grocery retailing 1922-1969
(2017) Hagberg, Johan; Kjellberg, Hans; Cochoy, Franck
The purpose of this paper is to further develop the general program of managing overflows by attending to the managing of leaks. Specifically, the paper explores efforts to manage the problem of shoplifting in US grocery retailing during the period 1922-1969. The study identifies three different yet interrelated ways of managing leaks: identifying, preventing, and caulking leaks. Each of these rests on a combination of skills and devices as well as on efforts to align with the other ways of managing leaks and routinize them as part of ordinary retail operations. By providing an analysis of leaks management the paper proposes a theoretical and empirical complement to the research program on managing overflows, which has p
Price display technologies and price ceiling policies: Governing prices in the WWII and Postwar US economy (1940-1953)
(2021) Cochoy, Franck; Hagberg, Johan; Kjellberg, Hans
This article explores the politics and technologies of price fixing and price display in US grocery stores in the midtwentieth 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 WWII 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.
The ethno-graphy of prices: on the fingers of the invisible hand (1922-1947)
(2018) Cochoy, Franck; Hagberg, Johan; Kjellberg, H
The technologies of price display: mundane retail price governance in the early twentieth century
(2018) Cochoy, Franck; Hagberg, Johan; Kjellberg, Hans
How are everyday retail pricing practices and devices linked to large-scale, market wide movements in retail prices? This paper investigates how the development and spread of seemingly insignificant price display technologies in US grocery retailing related to the development of US food prices at large during the interwar years (1918-1939). We find that the development of these new technologies (e.g., preprinted price cards, price tags, and price mouldings) afforded new retail pricing practices (e.g., price cutting, specials, and bundles). This development both fed off and contributed to the periods of intense price competition that marked the development of US food prices in the studied period. We conclude that price formation mechanisms are historically situated socio-technical phenomena rather than the product of abstract and historically constant market forces. As such, well-working markets hinge on the efforts of a wide range of market actors to continuously test the contextualization of particular price mechanisms and develop alternative solutions to overcome the shortcomings that such reflexive efforts are able to establish.
Win, earn, gain: gamification in the history of retailing
(2016) Cochoy, Franck; Hagberg, Johan