{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","title":"Time, Consumption and Everyday Life Practice, Materiality and Culture","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","id":"1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","uuid":"1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","title":"Time, Consumption and Everyday Life Practice, Materiality and Culture","normalized_title":"timeconsumptionandeverydaylifepracticematerialityandculture","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":null,"isbns":[],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":236,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%2C%20Consumption%20and%20Everyday%20Life%20Practice%2C%20Materiality%20and%20Culture","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/1dc0854c-957b-4fb1-af9a-bb4fdb76b77e/search"},"page":{"printed_page":138,"pdf_page":139,"physical_index":139,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"b5bbf38a34ab4ea736575c640478e8cfc15f62b295d576fe0b338039b1d12473"},"chapter":"List of Tables and Figures","content":"It is essential to White’s analysis that a firm can only use a limited amount of information in judging its own and its competitors’ positions in the market role structure. Firms observe each other. All the firms producing and selling related products or services form a group of partly overlapping clusters which are concentrated around the biggest firm in the market. The only firms that really matter are those which, according to some relatively limited criteria such as production technique, marketing and product quality, are regarded as rivals. (For an interesting empirical example in the Scottish knitwear industry, see Porac et al. 1995.) Since the firms usually have no direct information about their consumers’ demands and tastes at their disposal, they reproduce their market positions – or create new ones – mainly by observing their closest competitors. A ‘real’ innovation is always equal to the emergence of a new role set for the cluster of firms and, thus, a new market emerges. When the car industry developed the new mini-van, the same actors could successfully coordinate the emergence of a new product and more or less reproduce and preserve their old relative positions in this new market.\n\nConclusion\n\nI have claimed that among the consumers or users the criterion of a ‘real’ innovation depends on the degree to which its adoption and spread has broken old routines and habits and has succeeded in establishing new ones. As a rule, new product labels emerge in this process (cf. Meyersohn and Katz 1957). It would seem natural that these two sides of the coin – the firm and the customer – must somehow coincide, mutually reinforce each other or, on the contrary, work against each other in individual cases. The Schumpeterian model of innovation presumes that the entrepreneur must play an active and even decisive role in the process of creating new practices and changing old ones in the use of his or her new product or service. Innovators need access to, and must be able to interfere in, the cultural habits and social practices of their potential customers. In order to succeed they would have to convince potential users of a new product that it is necessary and worthwhile, and they need to change their routines and habits, even when they actively resist. This is what firms try to do – with better or worse success – with their advertising, market research and marketing efforts. At times, they can be lucky enough to find a ready-made set of new practices awaiting their invention. Arvidsson pays attention to an important principle in brand management which could probably be applied more generally to innovation processes too: ‘brand management works by enabling or empowering the freedom of consumers so that it is likely to evolve in particular directions’ (2005: 244) In doing so, it can be just as important to resist certain uses as to invite others.\n\n138\n\nJukka Gronow","previous_page":137,"next_page":139}