Market making and organization of consumer goods markets

Modern markets are highly complex and organized institutions.  They do not emerge spontaneously, but are created, reproduced and organized by efforts of various market-makers, typically but not exclusively large firms, who try to shape markets according to their own interests, capacities, and perceived comparative advantages.  In this paper, I analyze the co-evolution of market institutions and market makers in the 20th century history of consumer goods markets.  Despite being the most ubiquitous and generic type of markets, consumer goods markets have not attracted as much theoretical attention as financial markets do in economics or labor markets in sociology.  Drawing on post-Keynesian economics, macromarketing literature and economic sociology, and elaborating on previously published work, I emphasize the key analytical and empirical benefits of focusing on consumer goods markets in understanding the general logic and the current transformation of market organization.  The paper is organized around three analytic themes:  (a) the micro-level analysis of market institutions, i.e. the institutions of searching and matching, pricing and contracting, and product management, and the way these are combined in various types of organized and reproducible "market packages," (b) the role and performance of market making organizations in creating such institutions and thus generating organized markets, and (c) market replication, integration, and growth of organizational complexity at the macro level.  The interplay between these multi-level structures and processes is illustrated empirically through two historical examples: the emergence of mass-replicated consumer goods markets in the late 19th and the early 20th century American economy; the current process of the globalization of consumer goods markets with a special emphasis on the diffusion of shopping centers and e-retailing.  The paper concludes by drawing general implications for market analysis in terms of market making and market organization.