Innovation by demand New Dynamics of Innovation and Competition The series New Dynamics of Innovation and Competition, published in asso- ciation with the ESRC Centre for Research in Innovation and Competition at the University of Manchester and UMIST emanates from an engagement of the Centre’s research agenda with a wide range of internationally re- nowned scholars in the field. The series casts new light on the significance of demand and consumption, markets and competition, and the complex inter-organisational basis for innovation processes. The volumes are multi- disciplinary and comparative in perspective. Series editor: Mark Harvey, Senior Research Fellow at CRIC Innovation by demand An interdisciplinary approach to the study of demand and its role in innovation edited by Andrew McMeekin Ken Green Mark Tomlinson Vivien Walsh Manchester University Press Manchester and New York distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave Copyright © Manchester University Press 2002 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors. This electronic version has been made freely available under a Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC-ND) licence, which permits non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction provided the author(s) and Manchester University Press are fully cited and no modifications or adaptations are made. Details of the licence can be viewed at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-publication data applied for ISBN 0 7190 6267 5 hardback First published 2002 100908070605040302 10987654321 Typeset in Sabon with Helvetica Neue Condensed (HNC) by Northern Phototypesetting Co. Ltd, Bolton Printed in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, Guildford and King’s Lynn Contents Figures and tables page vi Series foreword vii Contributors viii 1 Innovation by demand? An introduction Andrew McMeekin, Ken Green, Mark Tomlinson and Vivien Walsh 1 2 Social mechanisms generating demand: a review and manifesto Alan Warde 10 3 There’s more to the economics of consumption than (almost) unconstrained utility maximisation G. M. Peter Swann 23 4 Variety, growth and demand Pier Paolo Saviotti 41 5 Preferences and novelty: a multidisciplinary perspective Wilhelm Ruprecht 56 6 Social routines and the consumption of food Mark Tomlinson and Andrew McMeekin 75 7 Social categorisation and group identification: how African- Americans shape their collective identity through consumption Virág Molnár and Michèle Lamont 88 8 Hyperembedded demand and uneven innovation: female labour in a male-dominated service industry Bonnie H. Erickson 112 9 Greening organisations: purchasing, consumption and innovation Ken Green, Barbara Morton and Steve New 129 10 Information and communication technologies and the role of consumers in innovation Leslie Haddon 151 11 The incorporation of user needs in telecom product design Vivien Walsh, Carole Cohen and Albert Richards 168 12 Markets, supermarkets and the macro-social shaping of demand: an instituted economic process approach Mark Harvey 187 Index 209 Figures and tables Figures 1 Modelling routine consumption page 82 2 Habitus-dominated routine 83 3 Mobility-adjusted routine 83 4 Habitus-neutral routine 84 5 The Runciman ‘map’ 196 6 The branded goods configuration 200 7 The own-label configuration 201 Tables 1 Examples of the three different types of model 84 2 The phase review process 173 3 Supermarket consumption class society 203 Series foreword The CRIC–MUP series New Dynamics of Innovation and Competition is designed to make an important contribution to this continually expanding field of research and scholarship. As a series of edited volumes, it combines approaches and perspectives developed by CRIC’s own research agenda with those of a wide range of internationally renowned scholars. A distinctive emphasis on processes of economic and social transformation frames the CRIC research programme. Research on the significance of demand and con- sumption, on the empirical and theoretical understanding of competition and markets, and on the complex inter-organisational basis of innovation processes, provides the thematic linkage between the successive volumes of the series. At the interface between the different disciplines of economics, sociology, management studies and geography, the development of economic sociology lends a unifying methodological approach. A strong comparative and historical dimension to the variety of innovation processes in different capitalist economies and societies is supported by the international character of the contributions. The series is based on international workshops hosted by CRIC which have encouraged debate and diversity at the leading edge of innovation studies. CRIC is an ESRC funded research centre based in the University of Man- chester and UMIST. Contributors Carole Cohen Centre d’enseignement et de recherche appliqués au management, Nice Bonnie Erickson Department of Sociology, University of Toronto Ken Green Manchester School of Management, UMIST Leslie Haddon London School of Economics Mark Harvey Centre for Research in Innovation and Competition, Manchester Michele Lamont Department of Sociology, Princeton University Andrew McMeekin Centre for Research in Innovation and Competition, Manchester Virag Molnar Department of Sociology, Princeton University Barbara Morton Manchester School of Management, UMIST Steve New Said Business School, University of Oxford Albert Richards Manchester School of Management, UMIST Wilhelm Ruprecht Max-Planck-Institut zur Erforschung von Wirtschafts- systemen, Jena Pier Paolo Saviotti Institut national de la recherche agronomique– Sociologie et économie de la recherche et développement, Grenoble G. M. Peter Swann Manchester Business School Mark Tomlinson Centre for Research in Innovation and Competition, Manchester Vivien Walsh Manchester School of Management, UMIST Alan Warde Centre for Research in Innovation and Competition, Manchester 1 Innovation by demand? An introduction Andrew McMeekin, Ken Green, Mark Tomlinson and Vivien Walsh Sociologists and economists on consumption and demand The structure and regulation of consumption and demand have recently become of great interest to sociologists and economists alike, ‘consumption’ being the focus of sociological accounts, whilst ‘demand’ has been the pre- serve of economists’ analyses. At the same time, there is growing interest, especially among economists, in trying to understand the patterns and drivers of technological innovation. The connection between consumption/demand and innovation suggests a number of interesting questions. How do macro- social shifts influence patterns of consumption? How do firms and other organisations structure markets and create demand? How do perceptions of demand influence the innovative activities of firms? How do consumers respond to the innovative offerings of firms? In 1999 the Centre for Research in Innovation and Competition (at Manchester University and UMIST) ran an international workshop to explore these themes. The primary aim of the workshop was to bring together sociol- ogists and economists to look at how they study the role of demand and consumption in the innovation process. There have been few attempts to find points of contact between the diverse approaches. So the focus of the work- shop was on identifying differences and complementarities in approach, with a view to finding possible common ground and new interdisciplinary research directions. This book presents some of the papers from the workshop and others of CRIC researchers that explore the same theme. The first two chapters set the scene for the whole volume. They offer broad conceptual overviews of ways that the sociological and economics literatures address issues of innovation, demand and consumption. Alan Warde, in Chapter 2, reviews the sociological literature on consumption, focusing in particular on research that offers alternative or complementary views to the concepts of ‘conspicuous consumption’ and individual choice, which has dominated much work in this area. From this, he proposes a research agenda for examining everyday consumption, that is, consumption that is unremark- able, bound by habit and routine, and which takes place in the context of social networks and institutions, by which it is also constrained. As he points 2 Innovation by demand out, many things can be consumed only within the boundaries of practices that are social, cumulative and governed by convention. Furthermore, his approach is sufficiently embracing to include public and institutional con- sumption, as well as individual consumption. It also allows consideration of the downstream generation of demand for infrastructural and complemen- tary products, and hence of environmental sustainability in consumption. In Chapter 3, Peter Swann offers a companion piece to Alan Warde’s. He examines the way in which economists have understood demand. Main- stream, neoclassical or ‘standard’ economists, he maintains, focus on demand as a process in which selections are made among commodities, typically assuming ‘rational’ and profit-maximising behaviour on the part of the actors making the selections.