Product tastes, consumer tastes

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the role of product development and marketing activities in shaping market relationships. The development of mass consumer products involves various qualification processes which are recurrent and concern different actors of the firm as well as outside partners. This coordination process implies temporary agreements between the actors about what is exchanged. In this ‘economy of judgements’, many definitions of product quality are produced throughout the product development and marketing processes. This suggests that there may be no need for a consensual agreement on a product's quality for exchange to take place. The chapter assumes an ethnographic perspective and details how these different activities produce a proliferation of qualifications of both products and consumers, which are essential to develop and market products.

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