Fixing Prices: A Century of Setting, Posting and Adjusting Retail Prices

Shedding light on a range of price fixing mechanisms and price display technologies, this incisive book offers a clear overview of the retail price setting, posting and adjusting processes. Based on a detailed study of a century of pricing practices in the US retail sector, it explores the anthropology and sociology of valuation practices by concentrating on the way prices are fabricated.

Fixing Prices examines the relationship between everyday price display innovations, such as price tag devices, and wider market changes, including the introduction of price regulations about price display and item pricing. Investigating the historical development of price display, the book demonstrates the extent to which the materiality of prices contributes to the creation of different price-based valuation tactics.

Offering a historical perspective on pricing in the US retail sector, this unique book will prove invaluable to students of marketing, economic sociology, and industrial economics. It will also benefit industry professionals wanting to expand their knowledge surrounding pricing procedures.

Franck Cochoy, Professor of Sociology, University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès, and Senior Fellow, Institut Universitaire de France, France, Johan Hagberg, Professor of Business Administration Specialising in Marketing, University of Gothenburg and Hans Kjellberg, Professor of Marketing, Department of Marketing and Strategy, Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden