Programme > Keynote Cochoy

Price display technologies and price ceiling policies: Governing prices in the WWII and Postwar US economy (1940-1953)

Drawing on the literature on market devices and policy instruments, this contribution complements previous studies focused on price setting processes by stressing the importance of price display. More precisely, it focuses on the material character of prices by exploring the politics and technologies of price display in US grocery stores during WWII and the postwar inflation period. Thanks to a systematic reading of the trade journal The Progressive Grocer, the authors show how displaying prices in a context of inflation combined the mastery of Government authorities at the Federal level, and the expertise of retail professionals at the shelf level. They demonstrate that price display technologies proved able to reinvent prices and price competition by linking prices to new economic values and qualitative dimensions and by generalizing the practice of price display.

Franck Cochoy is Professor of Sociology at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès and a researcher at the LISST-CNRS. He works in the field of economic sociology, with a focus on the human and technical mediations that frame or equip the relationship between supply and demand. He has conducted many projects and case studies in such areas as the role of packaging, self-service, shopping carts, price tags, trade press, and so on. He is the author of several books, including On the Origins of Self-Service (Routledge, 2015) and On Curiosity, the Art of Market Seduction (Mattering Press, 2016). His most recent articles were published in Economy and Society, Organization, Mobilities and Environment and Planning A.

Click here to download the slides from the conference: JHMO2019_Cochoy.pdf