Practices of Comparing in Sellers’ Markets and in Target Marketing: The American and German Automobile Industries in the 20th Century (F03 [A02])

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This subproject (in continuation of A02) is investigating practices of comparing as a central element of capitalist competition in the exploding automobile market since 1900. In this phase of research, the project will not focus exclusively on corporations in automobile manufacturing whose invitations to compare in a specific way were addressed to the state and industrial clients alike. Instead, the individual consumer acquires a privileged position. Furthermore, institutional agents enter the stage who make professional comparing a business model of its own. It will be shown that they, as providers of market services, have been instrumental in actually constituting markets for automobiles proper.