Collective Consuming: Consumers as Subcontractors in Electronic Markets

Collective Consuming: Consumers as Subcontractors in Electronic Markets

Electronic Travel Markets: Elusive Effects on Consumers' Search Behavior

This article examines the effect of Internet-based electronic markets on consumer search in the travel and tourism industry. Two experiments provide the empirical basis for the article. We address the question of whether consumer search in electronic markets is different from search in conventional markets. In this work we refine the efficiency of consumer search and its effects with the follow...

Nuclear Decommissioning and Organisational Reliability: Involving Subcontractors in Collective Action

The concept of organisational reliability is at the heart of the safety of at-risk systems. Many studies have been conducted in the nuclear industry; all emphasise the study of plants in normal, daily operation or during shutdowns. However, decommissioning, whether ongoing or planned, places a sharp focus on the question. This is because, on the one hand operating companies make significant cha...

Economic Markets as Calculative Collective Devices

How to address empirically the calculative character of markets without dissolving it? In our paper, we propose a theoretical framework that helps to deal with markets without debunking their calculative properties. In a first section, we construct a broad definition of calculation, grounded on the field of STS (science and technology studies). In the next sections, we confront this definition ...

Medicalization, markets and consumers.

This paper examines the impact of changes in the medical marketplace on medicalization in U.S. society. Using four cases (Viagra, Paxil, human growth hormone and in vitro fertilization), we focus on two aspects of the changing medical marketplace: the role of direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs and the emergence of private medical markets. We demonstrate how consumers and pharm...